Yeah, everyone knows the game Cave Story. Its from Nicalis, they also made NightSky game, which I have in my Steam library.

RedTheGreen introduced me to the game a week or so ago, and I spent several hours in it before tearing myself away. I am afraid for my life if I enter the game again.

@Pavke: It's actually by Studio Pixel. The original game, I mean. Nicalis came to Pixel several years after its initial freeware release and worked with him for a wiiware version. There are very few differences in the wiiware version, being just some more exact translations and some graphics being remade.

@MOM: Oh, you tried it? How far did you get in those hours?

http://youtu.be/Z9ZYitN-QAg
This world is more fun when it's random.

I got decently far, I think. I got to the 5-more-rockets-in-your-rocketlauncher upgrade and kept dying in that boss fight right after that. Wondering what'll happen if I look in the fireplace first...
So yah, I'm on the find-these-three-pieces-to-blow-that-guy-outta-the-building part. Not sure how far along that is in the whole game, since I just sat down and started playing rather than looking anything up or watching videos or anything. Makes the game more fun that way.

Very well-done game, I might add. And the Linux port is nice. I was so pleased with myself when I avoided the first boss battle on my first try. And disappointed when I had to fight the same guy later.

EDIT: Fighting a very tough machine-like boss in the labyrinth now. 4+ hours into the game. Guess what I've been doing all day today?

Ha! That's amazing! Yea, the Bushlands is only about 1/8 of the game completed, depending on which ending you end up doing. As for the machine in the Labyrinth, its name is Monster X, and it's the reason I originally quit playing. (rage-quit!)

Hints: When you see Prof. Booster fall in the room after Monster X, don't talk to him. You'll find him later, alive. Another hint is simply, "you can keep her from drowning."

Wait, avoid talking to Professor Booster? How in the world am I supposed to avoi.. OOOH!
Interesting. The only other game that I've seen that pulls that shooting-down trick is Duke Nukem 2. More games should. It's terribly fun.

Oh, by the way, I died about a zillion times trying to fight Moster X, so I whipped out a hex editor and gave myself 9999 HP. That boss is just too stinking hard for me. *Editing back to give myself the HP I had before...*

Interestingly enough, after hacking and beating Moster X, I ended up with about 40 HP down, when my max HP before was 36. Just 4 HP too hard.

Right after that...

More on topic: I played Cave story for like, 5 seconds, then I did something else. It's not that I don't like it, I just never got around to starting it again.

I agree with James. I feel ashamed to know you, for hacking. I beat Monster X on the DSi's Super Hard Mode, which makes it impossible to boost your life past 3HP.

Yeah, the total HP you can get in the game by the end is 50HP, 55HP if you pursue the best, and hardest, ending.

I meant just don't speak to him when he falls. You'll find him later in Arthur's House and you'll get a MUCH better version of the Booster. Of course, that means you'll have to get all the way back To Mimiga Village without the aid of the original Booster. It's a little harder, but the result is the rest of the game being MUCH easier.

Another hint: The best weapon in the game requires you don't trade your Polar Star for the Machine Gun OR the Snake.

Let me tell you something, then, bud.
When I said I died a zillion times, I meant a zillion times. Probably about two hours of starting from the closest savepoint, going to the boss battle, and dying. I tried several different tactics; I looked at tutorials and advice people had for beating the boss fight; I even used the life potion flask thingy when I was almost dead, in every battle. And still died when the boss had around 1/4 HP left. I saw a major discrepancy between the difficulty of this particular boss and the difficulty of the rest of the game leading up to this point. I recognize, of course, that being an indie game, it isn't perfect, and potentially didn't have a wide range of beta testing, or else this discrepancy would have been noticed and remedied. Not to say that this boss battle is impossible; it just didn't match the skill level that one would expect at this point in the game.
Let me get another point straight: I suck at gaming. And when I say I suck at gaming, I mean I suck at gaming. I have only just started gaming extensively in the past year, and I have built a very large amount of skill for such a short period of time. But if I so choose to have spent the earlier portion of my life doing something more productive than wasting my time in front of my computer screen or TV screen gaming, can you honestly judge me for that? No, but I can judge you for it. So there. Get a life. Let me tell you the console games I played growing up:
-Game Boy Color:
Donkey Kong Country (10+ hours I spent in this game. In the first level only; the other levels were too hard. Never beat any of the other levels)
-Game Boy Advance:
Yoshi's Island (about 20 mins)
-Nintendo 64:
1080 Snowboarding (3 hours or so. Only once beat the computer opponent in a race)
Baseball [I forget which game]: About 5 hours tops.
Donkey Kong Country: About 10 mins. Didn't like the game much.
-PS2
A bit of some LA racing game or something. Never raced; just drove around.
Spiro 1&2: About 5 or so hours max. Just played in this skateboarding place a bit; never fought any enemies without being creamed.

I would invite you to compose a list of the console games you have played growing up. My guess is that there's too many for you to count or remember. My list is comprised of 7. And this is ALL of the console games I have ever played. The list of computer games I have played is slightly longer, but doesn't include many games either.
So, is your solution for me for Monster X "come back after gaming for a few years when you don't suck"? Or "Well, keep trying for about 5 hours more; maybe you'll get it". I don't have that kind of patience or time. Nobody does at my age.
So, is hacking a viable alternative? This is a dilemma I face with most games in general. There is a very large gap between the expected players' skill level and my actual skill level. And don't go telling me to keep trying a game until I get good at it; if I can play a game for hours and I'm dying constantly and having to reload a save constantly, I'm not going to get better; I'm going to get frustrated to the point where I never play the game again (Yes, ragequit). And I'm going to hate the game for the rest of my life.
To be sure, hacking has a way of ruining the fun of games. But I think that's because people use it wrong. "Oh, look, I gave myself infinite diamonds in Minecraft." To be fair, since the dupe bug on the Minecraft server, I haven't played Minecraft much, as it ruined the fun of searching for diamonds legitimately. Exploiting glitches and using mods or hacks has a way of just ruining the fun. I understand that perfectly. However, after giving myself 9999 HP in Cave Story, I have still died several times. So does it ruin the fun? Well, yes, my pulse isn't pounding as hard when I'm facing Monster X, since I know that it's virtually impossible for him to kill me, but what did this do for me? I personally think that I got a lot better at understanding the rhythm of the boss battle by being able to stop and think for a second about what the best way to avoid dying was. And that made me a better player in general. Why do you think I play indie games? I play them because I enjoy relaxing, nonstandard gameplay. There's absolutely nothing wrong with the kind of shoot-em-up gameplay that's in Cave Story. Quite the opposite, in fact. I just happen to like other gameplay better. The kind where you're building wobbly structures to get to a pipe rather than worrying about a few hundred green missiles that are chasing you around while you're avoiding getting crushed by giant tank wheels. I enjoy Braid and VVVVVV because of infinite tries and infinite lives. That way, the cumbersome save/load method is avoided altogether.
Another point, and I'm writing this one down so I avoid it in the games I make: I would also have been far less frustrated in this boss battle had there been a save point right before it. If I could immediately go into this battle over and over, I would most definitely get it eventually. But the lack of a savepoint anywhere close by made me spend minutes on end going back over the same (easy, but cumbersome) screens over and over for absolutely no reason other than that the game's designer didn't want to put a save point before the first difficult boss fight. There's no good reason to do something like that in game development. If a particular battle is going to be difficult, ALWAYS have a save point right before it. It will save your players hours of frustration and annoyance.

All this aside, my major point is this: This isn't the end of the story. I hacked Aquaria to make the game more playable also, when I first started playing Aquaria. For the life of me, I couldn't get past the boss Mithala. After playing through the entire game in hacked mode, did I toss the game aside, saying I'd seen it all? No. I'm currently going back through the game and playing it again, this time without hacks. And I'm enjoying it immensely. Because of this "hacked" gameplay, I'm far better of an Aquaria player. I was surprised, in fact, when I discovered how easily I could beat the Mother Nature boss without hacks. I can see myself doing the same for Monster X. I'll never be able to beat him by trying over and over and getting frustrated, but playing later parts of the game will give me the skill I need to succeed when (and I do say when) I come through the game again. The fact is that I don't like hacking games. But I will if they're frustrating for no reason. Game developers beware. I think that a good portion of players hack games because something about the game frustrates them. I didn't hack World of Goo because I didn't find anything that frustrated me. What's your reason for the hacking you did, then? *nudge, nudge, wink wink*. Good games shouldn't have any reason for people to hack them. I'm not saying that Cave Story isn't good; I'm just saying that it could be better.

My personal qualm, really, is games that have a specific goal set in mind of "THIS is how good the player has to be to pass the game." That's just dumb. What I would like to see is more creativity and innovation in gameplay. Hence why I'm playing indie games in the first place. I would also like to see games that intelligently match the players' skill level, which I'm hoping to implement in my game.

tl;dr. I hacked for this boss battle because it was TOO STINKING HARD. SO THERE! Deal with it.

/rant

Well...

Here's a hint: Never play Super Meat Boy. Ever.

I was just posting a little funny video to say about the hacks. I didn't mean anything personal MOM4Evr, geez, calm down and get a smoothie and something.

*cough* *cough*

Gosh I was only teasing! And I'm not a hypocrite! The reasons then were boyish cravings for forum badges. :3

I'm not going to reply with a big paragraph. (like yours, at least)

The main thing is you have made a few incorrect assumptions about me, same the other way around. Don't think I'm some elite pro gamer. I'm not! That boss took me an hour (at least) to beat the first time. In fact, I had originally quit playing because of it. A few months later, I gave it a go again on the DSi version. That's when I finally beat it. As for childhood console games, I had never even owned a console until age 12, (or sometime around then) and THAT was a Gamecube! I had an extremely unresponsive controller, too.

I'm sorry for labeling your cheating as bad. It starts to make sense when you put it in a 200+ line post!

/apology

There we go, no harm done. We are all friends

Hee, hee. I'm actually surprised that I was able to write that much that made sense that late at night. I knew you weren't entirely serious. But hey, gotta work on my writing skills some, right? Can't let them go to waste over the summer.

But yeah, absolutely no harm taken or done. Sorry, I think I just get kinda grumpy late at night. And going to college and thinking I know everything doesn't help much, either. So, I'm sorry for misunderstanding you as well.

And anyhow, I was actually planning on getting SMB sometime. I think it falls into the same category as VVVVVV, where it's insanely hard, but it's well-made, since you can try levels over and over immediately. I noticed while playing VVVVVV that the "...Not as I do" screen (I think it was in level 3 or whatever; it's right after you rescue the third crew member counting Violet) was made more obnoxious for me since the checkpoint before that screen wasn't directly on the screen itself, but was midway through the screen before. Kinda interesting.

But yeah, sorry about the rant. It helped me think through the reasons behind my frustration about the boss fight, anyhow.

I think there's something going on with late-night replies and long rants. I wrote my reply at 2am.

Anyway, aren't the crew members supposed to not be in any specific order? (other than Violet) I think I found the second-to-last first. (not counting Violet)

VVVVVV's save system is really great, but I don't like how long-term saves have to be at teleporters. About Cave Story, Monster X was the most frustrating boss for everyone back at the Tribute Site forums, except of course Ballos, but that's the FINAL FINAL boss only found in the best ending. Even the eight or so bosses AFTER Monster X don't compare in difficulty. Every boss in that game fights in a unique way, and Monster X's unique ability is the power to frustrate you, but trust me, it gets even harder near the end.

You can quicksave in VVVVVV manually from the Enter menu, you know. It has the same effect as a long-term save.

Yeah, the crew members aren't supposed to be found in any particular order, but after finding member number 3, you get launched into a parallel dimension or something where you have to lead them around without killing them or yourself. It got kinda frustrating for me, so I tried rescuing a different crew member, only to find that I was thrown into the same alternate dimension, so I had to finish it no matter what. You get slightly different dialogue, though, which is sweet. Makes me want to try it with all of them. But not really...

Yeah, late at night for me again. Time for bed.

Heh, I might try that sometime. (not really)

I know, but I dislike how it was a misnomer.

Sorry, how what was a misnomer?

The quicksave being the same as a save.

Ah, right.

And I got my brother hooked on Cave Story too. Heh, heh.

Great.

I know some people aren't too into the 3D-transformation, but I'm really looking d to it! Nicalis representatives have stated and showed videos of the amount of depth in the new version! It's crazy! It's like, Mimiga Village is this gigantic cave going way into the background with stalagmites and underground lakes. It looks really amazing. They're going to have Curly Story, Time Attack, and Boss Mode (or something) from the Wii as well as new modes. They even said they've expanded some levels to include much more in it.

At first, they even considered including Cave Story DSi (just original Cave Story they ported to DSiWare) along with it, but by the end, they couldn't because they had already used almost all of the 8GB on the 3DS card!

*skips all replies*

Never heard of Cave Story. But I liked the LOTR reference

http://cavestory.org/
Download. NAO!

That's the kind of site I should make for Puggsy.

I'll give Cave Story a shot sometime, hopefully soon.

Is that where your username came from?

Indeed. It all started when I made a Google account, I wanted puggsy, but it was (miraculously) already taken. So I made it puggsoy, and then decided to make that my general online username.

See?