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Cave Story is a jumping-and-shooting action game.
Explore the caves until you reach the ending.
You can also save your game and continue from where you left off.
Explore the caves until you reach the ending.
You can also save your game and continue from where you left off.
PC / Computer - Cave Story / Dokutsu Monogatari - The #1 source for video game sprites on the internet! PC / Computer - Cave Story / Dokutsu Monogatari - The Spriters Resource Wiki Sprites Models Textures Sounds Login. There’s no denying that Cave Story has made its mark in the minds of those who’ve played it. The explorative, platformer-shooter hybrid with narrative to spare has found a new home on the.
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You wake up in a cave. You shoot your way out of the cave, so you can get to a village in another cave. Then you have to go to a different cave, followed by...
Well, it's aptly named.You might just come for the fun,Mega Man-style gameplay, but the story is what you will end up staying for.
Cave Story is a freewareMetroidvania game by Daisuke Amaya, aka Studio Pixel. The game thrusts you into the action with no explanations, forcing you to figure out the plot by yourself as you go. There are robot soldiers, bunny people called Mimigas, and a Mad Scientist with a magic helmet and a Morally Ambiguous Doctorate trying to Take Over the World.
This game was created entirely by one man in his spare time. Daisuke Amaya wrote the scenario, drew the artwork and scenery, animated the sprites, designed all of the levels, composed all of the music, and programmed the entire game engine, all by himself over the course of five years.note
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Its breeding ground on the English-speaking Internet is here. There have been many ports. There's a Mac OS X port available here, and a Linux port available here. A port to the original Xbox also exists, as well as a PSP port, here (requires custom firmware).
It's on the Wii and DSI Ware with some extra features. There's a commercial version, Cave Story+, available in the Apple Mac Store, on Steam (for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux), on Desura (for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux), and (formerly) as part of Humble Indie Bundle 4 and 7; it has the Wii/DSI Ware features plus an extra level. Cave Story 3D is a remake for the 3DS with new content. Another port was confirmed for the 3DS eShop, which features 3D sprites and Cave Story+ extras, minus the HD graphics and sound. It was released on October 4, 2012. This version also released on Nintendo Switch on June 20th, 2017 with added co-op play.
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Pixel has confirmed that a sequel is very, very likely. Also, Kero Blaster can be seen as a Spiritual Successor.
This game provides examples of:
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- 2.5D: The 3DS remake.
- Ability Required to Proceed: Very early on, a door grows an eye and prevents you from opening it. Find the Polar Star and blast the door open.
- Accidental Pervert: There's a hidden chestWhere? in Curly's house that yields her panties. They don't do anything in the original, but in the remakes they unlock Curly Mode.
- Achievement Mockery:
- The Steam version has an achievement for being killed by Toroko. As in, the harmless little Mimiga who 'attacks' by running back and forth waving a stick, which only does 1 damage per hit, and you have to deliberately stand still and wait to die, if you have more than 1 HP. Even the achievement name ('Toroko Wins!') sounds surprised that it ever happened.
- Also in the Steam version, if you get the Bad Ending, by accepting Kazuma's offer to run away from the island, then you also earn the achievement called 'Coward'.
- Action Girl: Curly Brace. She's more than competent in battle, especially if you're playing as her in Curly Story.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Misery's portrait has blue hair instead of green in the 3DS remake, much like her actual sprite.
- Aerith and Bob: Jack, King, Arthur, Igor, Sue, Booster, Kazuma, Momorin, Toroko, Chie, Kanpachi, Mahin, Sandaime, Megane...
- Affably Evil: Balrog and Misery. As it turns out, they don't even want to be evil,but they have no choice due to the Demon Crown's influence.
- Air-Aided Acrobatics: Toward the end of Bushlands/Grasstown, you're required to make these kinds of jumps after activating the necessary fans.
- All There in the Manual: The names of many NPCs and enemies are only given in the end credits. The writing on the player character's hat (only mentioned once, by someone who doesn't understand what it says) is revealed in Pixel's artwork from the Beta version of the game. It doesn't seem to have an explanation. And that's all there is—in spite of many clues hinting at a large, interconnected backstory, Pixel has said of everything beyond what's shown in the game: 'It is up to the player to decide'.
- Almost Dead Guy: The robot in the Core chamber. Professor Booster becomes this in the Labyrinth.
- Always Check Behind the Chair: In Cave Story 3D, the map is handily always shown on the bottom screen after you get it.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted with Ballos, whose right eye is always red while his left eye is always white. Malco does fall for this trope, though.
- Ambiguous Robots: Quote and Curly Brace are unambiguously combat robots, and both are capable of things no combat robot would ever be programmed to do, such as emoting, eating and digesting food, sleeping to repair damage and (for Quote at least) having an implied Optional Sexual Encounter. They seem to be somewhere between artificial humans,war machines, and Ridiculously Human Robots. They're also not by any stretch Three-Laws Compliant.
- Ambiguous Situation: The neutral ending implies the island was decimated by crashing to the earth, but the 'Where Are They Now?' Epilogue shows the Labyrinth, Jenka's house, the Power Supply Room, and the Cemetery seeming none the worse for wear.
- American Kirby Is Hardcore: The Japanese version of Cave Story 3D's artwork is a lot less 'hardcore' and more cutsey than the North American◊ version. (Unusually for this trope, the North American version came first, and is far more accurate to the content of the game).
- Amnesiac Dissonance: Subverted! Quote and Curly think they're robots from a past war who helped kill off the Mimigas, and their amnesia has shifted their allegiance. However, when Curly's memory returns, she remembers that their mission was to destroy the Crown, and that they didn't kill any Mimigas.
- Another Side, Another Story: In the WiiWare version and Cave Story+, it's possible to unlock 'Curly Mode' or 'Curly Story', which essentially asks the question of 'What if the roles of Curly Brace and 'Mr. Traveler' were reversed?' The story goes pretty much the same way, the only differences being the fact that you get to see what Curly Brace would say if she was in 'Mr. Traveler's' shoes (unlike him, she's not a Silent Protagonist) while he remains silent apart from one brief moment (with Curly providing the rest of the dialog for him).
- Antepiece: The game heavily relies on this to teach new players various game mechanics they would encounter throughout the game. Even the room the player starts in is designed to allow them to get a feel for the in-game jumping mechanics (and the fact that it's possible to drown within the game).
- Anyone Can Die: If you haven't played the game yet, be warned that it's not as cute and innocent as it looks.
- Apocalypse How: Never explicitly spelled out, but the first time berserk mimigas reached the surface, humans responded by building an army of robot soldiers to go to the island and kill everything there. In addition, Crazed mimigas under the control of the Doctor could easily lead to societal collapse, because he is smart enough and insane enough to wipe out civilization as we know it.
- Arc Words: 'The surface,' 'soldier from the surface,' and 'killer robots.' Justified by the amnesia you have when the game begins.
- Artifact of Doom: The Demon Crown.
- Art Major Biology: As pointed out by the author of a walkthrough, the 'Jellyfish Juice,' which is presumably made of, well, jellyfish juice, is oddly kept in jars in treasure chests inside the jellyfish. Wouldn't things be interesting if people kept their blood and internal organs in jars in treasure chests inside of them?
- As Lethal as It Needs to Be: Sometimes, the player's guns hurt only as much as the plot needs them to.
- The Mimiga children fighting you alongside Curly can't be killed or permanently disabled; shots only stun them for a period of time.
- Similarly, Toroko only gets briefly stunned when you have to shoot her. Unfortunately, her luck runs out when the red flowers turn her into Frenzied Toroko. Much like Igor, you can't stop the transformed Toroko without killing her.
- Sue and Misery in the fight against the Undead Core. You can knock them down with sustained fire and knock them out with enough damage, but Sue gets back up after the fight ends, and it is eventually revealed in the good ending that Misery also survived.
- Assassin Outclassin': Balrog clumsily attempts to ambush you about five times and hilariously fails every time. ...except for the time when it actually works, though Quote might've been a bit distracted by the sudden horrible deaths of two of his friends. It doesn't help that he tends to yell 'HUZZAH!'/'Oh Yeaaah!' whenever he jumps out at you.
- Asteroids Monster: The Polishes in the Sand Zone, which split up into a whole bunch of smaller versions of themselves.
- Attack Its Weak Point: All of the game's nastiest bosses also happen to only be vulnerable by shooting them in the face/mouth/eyes during a specific part of their attack pattern, always the part where they are spamming a ridiculous number of bullets onto the screen. Always. Also, Ballos's second and third forms, though the weak points don't disappear at any point.
- Award-Bait Song: Moonsong is essentially an instrumental example of this trope.
- Background Music Override: While getting Life Capsules and Missile upgrades are usually accompanied by a jingle, they are not in the Sacred Grounds. 'Running Hell' plays there non-stop until the fight with the Heavy Press, at which point 'Eyes of Flame' kicks in.
- Back-to-Back Badasses: Curly gets strapped to your back when raiding the Brutal Bonus Level.
- Badass Adorable:
- Due to the art style, nearly all the badasses in the game are like this, but 'Mr. Traveler' and Curly Brace really take the cake.
- Monster X could qualify for this trope, once you see its true form. Meow!
- Bait-and-Switch Boss: After Malco is reactivated, he declares you a threat and then is stomped into the ground by Balrog. This is made even more amusing by the fact that the music that normally would indicate a boss fight starts when Malco appears, and then abruptly stops when Balrog lands.
- Misery is subject to this a LOT of times, but instead of her being upstaged, she just can't be bothered to fight you. Misery is very pragmatic and loves using resources on hand to kill you. This includes powering-up Balrog to fight you, provoking a gigantic monster from beneath the sand, and simply throwing you into the Labyrinth, which you spend a third of the game trying to escape. It's cathartic when you finally get to take her on.
- Bald of Evil: Ballos, the True Final Boss and The Man Behind the Man, has not a hair on his head (Holiday Mode costumes aside), though he has his reasons for being evil.
- Baleful Polymorph: Sue and Itoh, humans whom Misery transformed into Mimiga.
- Balrog gets transformed into a massive frog by Misery for his third fight (named 'Balfrog'), though he returns to normal as soon as the fight is over.
- Ballistic Bone: Some skeletal enemies shoot them. Additionally, you fight the True Final Boss of the game on a floor made of bones. In the first two parts of the fight, he frequently performs a Ground Pound which sends out a shock wave of bones capable of hurting you. In the third part of the fight, he drops flaming skulls on you.
- Barefoot Cartoon Animal: Mimigas.
- Bare Your Midriff: Curly.
- Battle Couple: Curly Brace and Mister Traveler.
- Battlecry: Balrog's 'Huzzah!', which was changed into 'Oh Yeeeah!!' in Nicalis' translation.
- Bewitched Amphibians: Misery turns Balrog into a giant frog for a boss battle.
- Big Damn Heroes:
- After defeating the True Final Boss, it looks like Quote and Curly are going to die from Ballos's last trap. Then—'Huzzah!'—Balrog smashes through the ceiling to rescue them.
- This trope is subverted in the Sand Zone: King arrives too late to save Toroko - and so do you.
- Big Entrance: In Balrog's first appearance, there's an ominous pounding on a door, then he smashes down the door and the wall around it, shouting (depending on the translation) either 'Huzzah!' or 'Oh Yeaaah!!'
- Big Ol' Eyebrows: Santa sports them in the high-resolution graphics.
- Black Bead Eyes: The game's art style lends itself to these, though several characters' dialogue portraits show them with more normal-looking eyes.
- Bleak Level: Mimiga Village, specifically when you return there after escaping the Labyrinth.
- 'Blind Idiot' Translation: Just one line, actually, in an otherwise superb translation. The secret password in the Plantation is Litagano Motscoud. Pretty random, right? Well, actually, in Japanese, it's the reverse of the game's name: 'Doukutsu Monogatari' 'Do-U-Ku-Tsu-Mo-No-Ga-Ta-Ri' becomes 'Ri-Ta-Ga-No-Mo-Tsu-Ku-U-Do'. The translator missed the intended meaning and just transliterated it as best he could. It's not really that bad, considering it's not really supposed to mean anything, being a password.
- The Nicalis translation changes it to 'yrotS evaC' in keeping with the original intent.
- 'It's running!'
- Blown Across the Room: King in the Sand Zone, when he attempts to kill the Doctor.
- Boisterous Bruiser: Balrog. Huzzah!
- Bonus Boss:
- Ma Pignon and the Red Demon are completely optional bosses when you're going for the normal ending, but they have to be fought in order to get to the real final level. Also the Sisters, Skippable Bosses who guard a missile upgrade in the Egg Corridor(?).
- The bonus level Wind Fortress has G-CLONE, a mysterious machine that makes Curly clones.
- Bonus Feature Failure: Curly mode in the WiiWare/Steam version simply changes some dialogue and the places of the main character and Curly, and Sanctuary Time Attack denies you the use of missiles (although it lets you use both the Blade and the Nemesis, which is more than a fair trade in B3).
- Bookends: The area you start in at the start of the game is titled 'First Cave'. The last cave before the Final Boss is titled... 'Last Cave'.
- Boss Arena Recovery: Due to how the game's weapon energy system worksnote , most Cave Story bosses are Mook Makers, Flunky Bosses or have item-dropping projectiles to allow you to take the drops.
- Boss Bonanza:
- The endgame has you fight against Misery, The Doctor and his superpowered form, and then the Undead Core, Possessed Sue, and Possessed Misery at the same time, without any kind of checkpoint and limited ways to heal yourself (namely, Mookdrops, help from a certain purple Mimiga, and the Too Awesome to Use instant-heal item which you'll want to save for the Brutal Bonus Level, if you're going there).
- After the endgame, if you have the Booster 2.0 and Iron Bond in your inventory, you can enter the Prefab House before leaving the island to find the entrance to the Brutal Bonus Level. At the end, you fight two more bosses in a True Final Boss Bonanza: The Heavy Press and Ballos. The Heavy Press has only one form, but you have to fight it while dodging the two Rollings in the room, and it will kill you in one hit if you do not get to the side of the room after defeating it. Ballos has three health bars, and before you can even damage the third health bar, you need to attack eight little rock things surrounding him, making for a total of five parts to the fight. Apart from the single-use full heal item you can carry, the healing you get in between the two bosses is a Luck-Based Mission, attempting to go for item drops to heal while fighting Ballos is a borderline Suicide Mission, and dying will send you back to the nearest used save point all the way back at the very entrance. Have fun.
- Boss Corridor: The outdoor bridge to Ballos' room.
- Boss Rush: The WiiWare version and Cave Story+ both have a Boss Rush as an unlockable.
- Brains and Brawn: Misery and Balrog.
- Breakable Power-Up: You collect yellow triangles to level up your weapons and make them more powerful. You lose a few of these points every time you take damage, and it's possible to de-level your weapons this way.
- Brutal Bonus Level: Hidden Last Cave and the Sacred Grounds in the main game, the Nemesis Challenge and Wind Fortress in the Steam and 3DS eShop versions. If you want practice on the first two, you can play Easy Mode (provided you're not playing the original game) and practice for when you do them for real. If you're playing the 3DS eShop version, you can do this for the other two, but your best time is only saved on Classic/Normal.
- Bullfight Boss: Balrog is a ridiculously weak version, Monster X quite a threatening one. The Muscle Doctor is an even more threatening one.
- But Thou Must!: Subverted. If you save Curly, then go to the mushroom to get his cure for her amnesia, he will say, 'But in reality, you don't really want this, right?' Upon answering no, he'll say, 'You really want it that bad?' Answer yes, and he says, 'Are you sure you want it?' Answer yes, and he says, 'But in reality, you don't really want this, right?' Answer no, and he'll finally give the Mushroom Badge. It really isn't what you want, although you still have to get it before you can get what you do want.
- Averted during the very first boss fight. Balrog asks if you want to fight him with that 'pea shooter of yours'. If you say no, he'll leave.
- Also played straight at a couple points.
- The Cameo:
- The boss of the Waterway, Ironhead, and his Porcupine Fish minions are characters from Ikachan, an earlier Pixel game. Beating the boss without taking any damage will cause a swarm of Ikachans to swim across the screen as well.
- The protagonist and Curly Brace themselves cameo as fully-playable classes (though on opposing teams) in Gang Garrison 2.
- Can't Refuse the Call Anymore: The end of the Sand Zone. You can only watch, horrified, as Toroko and King are killed in front of you, and are then effortlessly defeated and cast into the Labyrinth by Misery. Then everything gets much worse.
- Captain Ersatz: Some enemies are shout-outs to classic video games. For example, Sandcrocs appeared in a Mega Man (Classic) game, and enemies looking like Basil were found in the Metroid series. Also, the Muscle Doctor looks a lot like the Cyclops summon from Final Fantasy Tactics.
- Cast of Snowflakes: The entire named cast is unique, with no two characters looking alike. Quite a few unnamed characters are unique as well.
- Catchphrase: Balrog's 'Huzzah!', which got changed to a Kool-Aid Man-style 'Oh Yeaaah!' in the NiCALIS translation, and can be either/or in the Cave Story+ version due to a mod that returns the original Fan Translation.
- Cats Are Mean: Monster X's true form is a gigantic cat.
- Cephalothorax: Critters and Balrog.
- Chain Reaction Destruction: Bosses tend to explode violently.
- Character Portrait: Every major character except Mister Traveler has one (and even then, he gets one for his single line in Curly Story), and they are generally used if there's more than two NPCs talking.
- Character Tic:
- Jack constantly points his finger at people.
- Mahin constantly eats.
- Curly constantly displays her Genki Girl personality.
- Misery seems to always get a kick out of making other people miserable, usually through some form of relatively subtle trolling.
- Balrog is overly obsessed with busting through walls and yelling 'HUZZAH!'/'Oh Yeaaaaah!'
- Charged Attack: The Spur can be charged to Wave Motion Gun levels.
- Checkpoint Starvation: The Sacred Grounds area wouldn't be half as frustrating if it weren't for this trope.
- Climax Boss: The Core.
- Colony Drop: What Ballos does in his final attempt to kill himself and stop his out of control magic. In the good ending, Curly and Quote kill him and stop the island.
- Cool Bike: A rather nifty hoverbike can be found in the Grasslands. At least, until Kazuma takes a crack at riding it...
- Credits Montage: Done in reverse chronological order — and it's a bit longer if you beat the True Final Boss.
- Crosshair Aware: One of the True Final Boss's attacks.
- Cutscenes: Probably the only thing you'll hate about this game is the fact that these are unskippable and you'll have to watch them every time you retry a boss battle. Though at least the Scrolling Text speeds up a bit on subsequent viewings or if you hold down the Jump or Fire button.
- Cutscene Incompetence:
- There's a room with a Green Ogre in it, the same type as those you may have fought and killed several of in the past area; it guards a teleporter, but you can't hurt it or interact with it at all. If you walk right past it and try to use the teleporter, it knocks you out and throws you in prison.
- The player character standing right there, with a weapon in hand, while the second boss (the first if you skip Balrog's first fight) punches Sue in the face repeatedly and then carries her away.
- Cute 'em Up: At level 3, the Nemesis fires rubber duckies. They do almost no damage.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- In most PC games, pressing the Escape key will pause the game and bring up a save/load/quit menu or somesuch, and pressing Escape again will close the menu and send you back to the game. In Cave Story, pressing Escape brings up the menu — and pressing Escape again quits the program without confirmation. Averted in Cave Story+, where you are prompted to go to the main menu instead of quitting the game (and 'No' is highlighted by default).
- Also, if you upgrade from the DSi ware version to the 3DS version, the programmers switched the jump and fire button for no apparent reason. Averted in the 3DS eShop version, where there's an option to unflip the jump and fire buttons.
- Used to pressing up to enter doors? Or a non-directional button to speak or interact? Too bad. Pressing down serves both those actions in this game. Somewhat justified in that during a shootout around scripted objects, you may have to aim up to shoot enemies, and the last thing you'd want is to accidentally interact with them and screw up your flow. Especially around doors, as entering them will respawn all enemies.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The Mimigas share one as a race. Also, Ballos.
- Darkest Hour: The bit between the Iron Head fight and the Outer Wall. All your allies are either dead, kidnapped, injured and lost, or telling you that it's hopeless to keep fighting and that you should run away. The unexplained destruction of the Egg Corridor (and the music accompanying it) certainly reinforces this.
- Dark Reprise: Compare the tempo and drumline of 'Mischevious Robot' to that of 'Scorching Back'.
- Death Seeker: Ballos.
- Defeat Means Friendship: For Toroko, Curly Brace, and eventually Balrog.
- Deflector Shield: Curly Brace has one that deflects missiles.
- Degraded Boss: Igor. He appears as a regular enemy at the Balcony. He's even more powerful than before, shooting more energy balls at once and having more HP. However he never uses his punch attack, and you have more powerful weapons and more HP.
- Desert Skull: Sand Zone is full of bones... including animated ones.
- Destructible Projectiles: Many projectiles can be shot and drop hearts, energy crystals, or ammo, allowing Boss Arena Recovery.
- Developers' Foresight:
- If you beat the game with Mr. Little still in your inventory, he interjects '...Aren't you forgetting something?!' after the last cutscene.
- If you try to take the sprinkler from the Mimiga Village (in order to deliver it to Momorin), you'll get the message 'It's fixed firmly to the ground!'.
- The Beast Fang is in the item files of the remakes, still being Dummied Out. However, its original description has been changed to saying that you're not supposed to have it.
- The Curly's Panties item is instead called 'Your Panties' in Curly Story.
- Difficulty Spike: Things up to Plantation are relatively easy with save and refill points scattered around. However, Last Cave, especially if you're going for the best ending, ramps up the difficulty a lot. You do get a little breather at the Balcony with its one save and healing point before having to fight three bosses in a row with essentially no refills in between. This is not counting the Brutal Bonus Level and four/five-stage True Final Boss that await you if you want to actually see the best ending....
- Dirty Coward: Kazuma. After spending the whole game generally being useless, he plans to abandon his captured sister and missing mother to save his own skin. Agreeing to join him results in the game's worst ending
- Disk One Nuke: If you remember a certain fireplace from the beginning of the game, you can acquire the Bubbler quite early, and it is really useful all the way up to the endgame (where you would obtain it if you didn't pay enough attention).
- Distressed Damsel: Sue, more than once.
- Downer Ending: If you complete the game without taking any extra effort (aka the bare minimum), it ends with Prof. Booster and Curly dead, the sky island crashing to earth, causing devastation to those on it and possibly the people below, and since you did not find the true source of its power, the Demon Crown will rise again one day, thus you have failed in your mission to destroy it for good.
- Down the Drain: The Waterway.
- Dracolich: Some of the dragon eggs in the Egg Corridor turn into 'Dragon Zombies' after it's destroyed, though it's unclear if they're actually undead or just malformed due to hatching prematurely.
- Dual Boss: The Sisters. And a trio boss, Undead Core, with a mutated Misery and Sue.
- Dummied Out:
- The character portraits displayed during dialogue include one for Sue as a human. Since Sue doesn't turn back into a human until the end credits, the sprite goes unused.
- There's unused sprite sheets for a Mimiga soldier, a Mimiga watching a TV or computer, a Mimiga with a yellow shirt, and a guy smoking a cigarette.
- There is one dummied out area in the game listed as Cook.pxm in the game's files. It is an empty room similar to many of the Mimiga houses. What makes this more interesting was that it was last modified August 7, 2002, two months before Pixel restarted development.
- You can find an unused weapon by modifying any of the game's scripts to give you said weapon at some point.
- One can also find the Beast Fang hidden under the Heart Container in the plantation area of Mimiga Town. It's still in the remakes, and its description has been changed to say that you shouldn't have it.
- There are instruments assigned to melodic channels '0' and '5' within the song 'Zombie' that correspond to the instruments exclusively used within the expanded portion of the song from both Guxt and Kero Blaster. Said channels are unused within the Cave Story version of the song due to it lacking the aforementioned expanded portion.
- The Nintendo Switch port has unused button mapping icons◊ for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita, and Wii U, none of which got a port of Cave Story, but they may have originally been planned to.
- Dying as Yourself: As if taking down Mimigas under the Red Flower's influence wasn't depressing enough, scripted battles with frenzied Mimigas (like Igor and Toroko) end with them reverting to their normal selves right before expiring.
- Easter Egg: An astounding number of them. A few examples include -
- Finding a hidden corridor in Curly's House and inspecting the chest inside will yield her panties, which are just for show in the original, though they unlock Curly Mode in the remakes.
- After visiting Santa's house and then going to Chaco's house, should they use the bed before leaving after checking the fireplace, Chaco will be sleeping on the bed when the player wakes up, and they'll have the Chaco's Rouge/Lipstick item in their inventory, which, while having no purpose like Curly's Panties, has... implications.
- Beating the Ironhead boss in the Waterway area without taking any damage will cause multiple Ikachans to swim across the screen and give the player the Alien Medal. Again, it has no use.
- Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Bizarrely enough, on Hard Mode (3 HP, No Missiles), this is what happens. Most of the levels don't get as much of a difficulty increase as the bosses, especially the Core. Formerly easy bosses such as some of the Balrog fights and Puu/Pooh Black will destroy you mercilessly. The Sacred Grounds is the big exception.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Picking easy mode will make the player character wear a yellow costume (as opposed to the normal Red). When this costume was first announced, there was great public outcry because many fans did not realize that various difficulty modes had been implemented for the game.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The path to the happy ending is far more hazardous than the path to the bittersweet one. If you're playing blind, it is nearly impossible get the good ending on your first try unless you're clairvoyant.
- Emergency Energy Tank: The Life Pot. You can only carry one at a time, and you only get two over the course of the whole game (unless you backtrack), so you'd better make good use of them.
- Empathic Weapon: The Blade, at its maximum level, summons King's spirit, who slices and dices up anything near whatever it hits first.
- Enemy Roll Call: The credits list all the characters, then all the bosses, then all the regular stage enemies.
- Energy Ball: They can be fired both by you and enemies.
- Equipment-Based Progression: The game has you collect various guns, each one leveling up and down individually as you collect XP triangles and take damage.
- Equipment Upgrade: In addition to each weapon being an Evolving Weapon, there's a sidequest which allows the player to upgrade the Polar Star into a powerful charging weapon with infinite ammo (assuming they didn't trade it away).
- Essence Drop: When defeated, enemies drop hearts that refill your health, energy crystals that increase your weapon power, or missile ammunition.
- Event Flag: Jellies? Never seen 'em before, but now that you mention it, they're right out the door!
- Evil Albino: Misery.
- Evolving Title Screen: Beating Sacred Grounds and the True Final Boss quickly enough will change the cursor on the title screen (normally in the shape of the player character) into a different character and also changes the music that plays. Interestingly, this is the only way to hear the songs 'White' or 'Toroko's Theme' in the game.
- Evolving Weapon: Every weapon (except the Spur) changes slightly as it collects experience points, especially the Blade and the Bubbler.
- Eyes Always Shut: Kazuma. The Sky Dragon as well.
- Face of a Thug: King has a massive scar on his face and his eyes are constantly red from eating cooked red flowers. He's a good guy.
- Faux Action Girl: Sue. She's convinced that she's a fighter, and claims to never have lost in a fight with her brother (which isn't saying much). In the first (of three) times that you have to rescue her, she grossly overestimates her fighting abilities, and grossly underestimates those of a frenzied Mimiga four times her size. In a fist fight.Then she gets rather pissed if you admit that you rescued her.
- Fetch Quest: Several, including one involving puppies.
- Final Boss: Misery, The Doctor, and the Undead Core. See also True Final Boss below.
- Fireballs: You can fire them from the Fireball weapon.
- Fission Mailed: After the fight against the first Load-Bearing Boss, the room floods, leaving you trapped underwater with your Air Meter ticking down to zero. Curly gives you her air tank after you lose consciousness, saving you at the cost of her own lifeif you haven't taken the proper steps towards saving her.
- Flawless Victory: Defeating Ironhead, the Waterway boss, without taking any damage awards the Alien Badge, which does nothing besides look cool in your inventory.
- Flunky Boss: Many, many boss battles are of this type, primarily because your weapons lose experience points each time you take damage; destroy the flunkies, collect experience crystals, keep your weapons up to level. Most of the bosses which don't summon minions have projectiles you can shoot for powerups.
- The battle with the Undead Core actually has two levels of this - It already has two minions, and one of them is a Mook Maker.
- Special mention goes to G-CLONE from the Secret Level, Wind Fortress, in Cave Story+. The battle consists of a stationary computer that does nothing but sporadically shoot bullets and send naked Curly clones to do most of its dirty work. You have to focus on attacking the computer to do damage.
- The Heavy Press has, in addition to regular enemies, two Invincible Minor Minions fighting with it.
- Floating Continent: The cave you wake up in at the beginning of the game is part of an interconnected series of caves inside a floating island — the setting for the adventure.
- The game actually does a fairly good job of hiding the fact that the island's floating for quite some time. It's easy to assume that you're in an underground network of caves until the nature of the island is spelled out for you.
- Floating in a Bubble: Misery's (and the Doctor's) favoured method of capturing and transporting people.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: Mimigas (especially the ones mutated by the demon flowers) and Balrog love to do this.
- Foreshadowing:
- After Grasstown/Bushlands, if you find Jack and talk to him, he'll mention why Arthur was a hero: He drove away a demon that was eating Mimiga, making him a true hero. If you're on the path to the True Ending, you'll have to finish what Arthur started and defeat it in the Hidden Final/Last Cave, becoming a true hero yourself. As the credits say, true heroes fight him, and both you and Arthur are/were.
- A room in Grasstown has a bed with red flower petals scattered around it. Should you open the chest inside, a frenzied Mimiga jumps out of the empty fireplace. This foreshadows the true nature of the red flowers, and what they do when fed to the Mimigas.
- Frickin' Laser Beams: The Spur, and only when it is fired between Level 2 and 3. Firing it with a MAX charge unleashes a blast of Wave Motion Gun proportions. Even the achievement is named 'Freakin' Lazer Beams'!
- Friendship Trinket: Curly Brace gives the protagonist the Iron Bond after regaining her memories as a sign of friendship.
- The silver locket you find early on was a gift from Sue to Toroko for Toroko's kindness to her.
- From Bad to Worse: Most of the plot does this, even the opening screen.
- Fungus Humongous: The Mimiga Graveyard is festooned with various walking mushrooms. The small ones already come up to your chest, while the singular big one just barely beats you in height.
- Funny Animal: The Mimigas. They stop being so funny when they eat red flowers, though...
- Game Mod: The original PC freeware version became rather easy to mod once the tools were developed. Also, Curly Mode in the Wii version is based off a well-known sprite hack for the PC version.
- A fan recoded the entire engine from scratch and released it open-source, opening up the door for even more advanced mods to be made.
- Gameplay Ally Immortality: When you tag-team with Curly deep in the Labyrinth, Curly takes no damage whatsoever from enemies or spikes. The same also applies in the Brutal Bonus Level, which has Curly strapped to the player's back.
- The Ghost: If you don't get the Booster 2.0, you only get an optional reference to the Red Demon/Ogre and, consequentially, Ballos.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: In Cave Story+, one of the achievements is called 'Doggy Style', a type of sexual intercourse. The achievement's about beating a certain boss while carrying one of Jenka's puppies.
- Similarly, the name of the achievement for getting the Nemesis is 'Ducking Awesome'.
- Sleeping in Chaco's bed results in a very thinly disguised one-night stand.
- Giant Mook: Giant Pignon, Basu (giant beetle), Power Critter, and Kulala (giant jellyfish).
- Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Puu Black, Monster X, Ironhead, and Heavy Press. Averted with the Red Demon/Ogre, who IS foreshadowed if you talk to a certain NPC at a certain point.
- Glass Cannon: King. He defeats Balrog in a single slash, but gets defeated himself with a single attack from Misery and bleeds out several minutes later. This is reflected in the weapon you get from him, which contains his soul. At level 3, it is very powerful but any hit will immediately drop it back down to level 2.
- Curly Brace, to a degree. In actual gameplay she is invincible, but she has noPlot Armor.
- Graphics-Induced Super-Deformed: Somewhat exacerbated by the color scheme of the protagonist's head, which, to the untrained eye, may appear as a sideburn, an eye, and a nose, rather than two eyes and part of an antenna, since the character appears in semi-profile.
- This is preserved with the 3D models of the 3DS remake.
- Great Offscreen War: Ten years before the events of the game, humans sent an army of lethal military androids to the island to steal the Demon Crown. They killed countless Mimigas on the way in. One human, named Miakid, eventually got his hands on the crown and instigated another huge war between the Humans and the Mimigas by feeding red flowers to the remaining Mimigas and using the crown to make them fight for him in a bid to Take Over the World. The Mimigas lost, and were almostwiped out as a species.
- Green Hill Zone: Grasstown/Bushlands.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Curly accompanies you like an Attack Drone throughout Labyrinth M. If you save her life and restore her memory, she will rejoin you in Sacred Ground.
- Guide Dang It!: You will very likely not get the best ending on your first playthrough.
- Harmless Enemy: The Chinfish (or Egg Fish) is a Unique Enemy in the Mimiga Village fishing hole who never attacks or interacts with the player character but can still be destroyed for XP.
- Hat of Power: The Demon Crown, the source of the Doctor's power.
- Head Pet: The Fetch Quest to collect Jenka's dogs. 'Puppyhat!'
- Heal the Cutie: Curly Brace is a friendly, upbeat girl who takes motherly care of a group of rabbit-creatures, but loses all of them to the Mad Doctor. She then makes a desperate attempt to help the protagonist fight back, and is forced to sacrifice herself to save him. With some Videogame Caring Potential and a good deal of Guide Dang It!, you can change the ending and bring about this trope. When Quote initially saves her, she's left an unresponsive amnesiac, but after her memory is restored, she remembers her and Quote's original mission, and returns to her former self.
- Healing Checkpoint: Most save points are accompanied by life refills or beds.
- Heartbeat Soundtrack: The song 'Pulse'.
- Heart Container: Although could be changed to Energy Tank, considering its appearance and the Metroid-style riff that plays when you pick it up.
- Heel–Face Turn: Balrog, and Misery as well. Balrog reveals that she was the one who sent him to rescue you after you defeat Ballos.
- Heli-Critter: Flying Critters.
- Heroic Albino: Curly Brace and Mister Traveler. Comes with being Ridiculously Human Robots.
- The Nicalis ports of the game Palette Swaps the protagonist if you play a difficulty level other than Original. On the hardest difficulty, he's tan-skinned and blond-haired: implying that he's human instead of robotic as a sort of visual Lampshade Hanging in regards to his low durability.
- Heroic Mime: From context, it can be induced that the protagonist is speaking, but the player isn't privy to most of his lines.
- And in Curly Story mode, in the scene where the two meet, he is STILL a heroic mime, while Curly says what our hero presumably said originally. Except when you force-feed him the Ma Pignon — and it's ONE line.
- Heroic Sacrifice: After the fight with the Core, you drown. Curly gives you her oxygen tank to save you, drowning in your place. You do have a chance to save her, but getting that chance is not in the least intuitive. It's a remarkably sad moment if you fail to save her, and as you leave the room where she lies, the door clangs ominously shut behind while some of the game's saddest music plays.
- He Was Right There All Along: Monster X and the Core are completely inert and harmless until the boss music kicks in.
- Holiday Mode: Playing on Christmas or Halloween in the Wii version will change your sprite.
- The Holiday Mode for the PC versions is frankly insane. Nearly every asset in the game is altered, including the music, sprites, backgrounds, and enemies, though it's a bit less so for Christmas.
- Hub World: Mimiga Village is connected to almost everywhere else by a teleporter.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: 'Humans can be terrible creatures indeed...' Just to make it clear, a human king who was jealous of Ballos' popularity imprisoned him and subjected him a very, very, cruel torture, leaving Ballos insane and unable to control his magic.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Ballos.
- I'll Kill You!: What King vows to the Doctor, just after finding that Toroko has been force-fed red flowers... Also what Ballos says before fighting you.
- Ballos:Long, long have I waited... Waited for the one who would finally subdue my magic's fury. Now, kill me! Or I — shall kill YOU!!
- Impact Silhouette: Balrog tends to leave these wherever he enters.
- Impossible Item Drop: Monsters of all kinds can to drop experience crystals, floating hearts and missiles.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Balrog, again.
- Incoming Ham: Everytime Balrog appe- HUZZAH! (or 'Oh Yeaaah!' on the WiiWare/Steam version)
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: There are treasure chests scattered all over the place, including inside a few monsters. Why they aren't opened already is up to imagination.
- Infant Immortality: Averted: several children can and do die during the course of the game.
- Infinity -1 Sword: The Machinegun is the first weapon you can get in exchange for the Polar Star, and is still quite useful despite the ease of obtaining it. It does damage at a reliable rate and, at maximum level, you can fire down to use it as a makeshift jetpack, giving you extra mobility until you get either version of the Booster.
- Infinity +1 Sword: The Spur. Getting it requires skipping both previous opportunities to replace the Polar Star (trading for Curly's machinegun, combining the Polar Star and Fireball into the Snake), but once you get it, you get a weapon that is EXP-independent and uses charge instead; at zero charge it's a permanent level 3 Polar Star and at full charge it's a Wave Motion Gun.
- Interface Spoiler: Double-subverted. The number of puppies you bring back is one more than the number that would fit between Jenka and the door.
- Invincible Minor Minion: Basil and Rolling.
- It Amused Me: Presumably the reason why Misery also banished Balrog to the Labyrinth.
- Item Amplifier: The machine gun has limited ammo, but automatically replenishes itself. The Turbocharge item increases the rate at which this ammo replenishes.
- Jump Physics: Really weird ones at that, but they're wonderfully intuitive. You more float/glide than jump. This can prevent some new players that are used to NES-style platformers from even leaving the first cave.
Tropes K to O
- Kaizo Trap:
- The Heavy Press boss in the final zone will fall through the floor after it's defeated. Better not be in the way when it does. It's fairly obvious if you've met a similar fate from its smaller brethren.
- Minor example: contact with Puu Black still damages you after it's defeated.
- When going for a normal ending, after defeating The Doctor and surviving a rain of stone blocks from the sky, all you have to do is leap off the side of the screen to trigger the final cutscene. It's still possible to die if you don't jump far enough and fall off the bottom of the screen instead.
- Killer Rabbit: Mimigas become this when they eat the innocuous-looking demon flowers.
- Kill the Cutie: Toroko, after she is fed a red flower. An achievement on the Steam version has Toroko put YOU in the scrap, byweakly flailing a stick.
- Kill 'Em All: By the end of the regular ending, there are more dead supporting characters than live ones, not counting the ones presumed dead after the island crashes.
- King Mook: The Heavy Press.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Mister Traveler doesn't seem to have a problem with stealing things and not returning them. He steals the Polar Star—the first gun he gets at the beginning of the game—from a hermit blacksmith. Later, he can take the Bubbler/Bubbline from Mimiga village, and later on, Curly's panties. The player doesn't have to return any of it.
- Late-Arrival Spoiler: The fact that the main character is a strangely humanlikeheavily armedscout and recon robot named Quote is supposed to be revealed in the course of gameplay. Unfortunately, everything from zealous fans to official advertisements seeks to spoil it for newcomers.
- Leitmotif: Balrog, the Doctor, and Ballos have them.
- Lethal Joke Weapon: The Nemesis. On its lowest power level, it fires devastating bolts at very high speed. But as it gets powered up, it gets weaker! On its highest setting? It shoots rubber duckies. To add insult to injury, to get it you have to trade a powerful weapon that has sentimental value to the player character. On the other hand, it's quite powerful as long as you DON'T power it up. Gets quite tricky when one crystal is enough to take it up a level and you're paying attention to things other than the swarms of little bouncing triangles. Which is all the time.
- The Bubbler/Bubbline. It shoots bubbles, producing four shots at 1 or 2 damage each. At level two, the bubbles act as a machine gun, a bit slower than the one you can get later in game. But on level three, the bubbles float around you to form a shield, and when they burst, they shoot projectiles in the direction you're facing. You can either tap the fire button to spam single shots or hold the button down to create a shield of floating bubbles that will eventually begin to fire automatically at different heights, allowing players to hit enemies on lower or higher levels.
- Let's Meet the Meat: Ma Pignon doesn't want to be eaten. Thankfully, he's a complete prick about it, so most won't feel too bad about feeding him to Curly.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Curly assumes you're there to kill the Mimigas and attacks you before you have a chance to explain yourself.
- Level Drain: Happens twice on the path to 100% Completion: 'You feel a black wind blow through you. All weapons dropped to Level 1!' Though you're almost guaranteed to have at least one weapon — the Spur, the Nemesis, or the Blade — that still deals out good damage at Level 1. Arguably, the de-leveling in Sacred Grounds is an equalizer, so that your chance of success isn't affected by how well you fared in the preceding boss fight.
- Level-Map Display: There's a map item that can be acquired in the Mimiga Village. It can be handy, as it shows all hidden passages in your current room.
- Lift of Doom: Two are present in the Labyrinth: the first requires utilization of the hovering Jump Physics to avoid either death by spikes or death by falling platform; the second, arguably simpler lift comes immediately after, and only needs to be tricked into rising without you in its path.
- Also present when ascending to the Final Cave, though in a much more deadly fashion: watch out for those Presses!
- Living Structure Monster: The exit from the Noob Cave is blocked by a cyclopean door that hurts on contact, but is easily dealt with.
- Load-Bearing Boss: The Core. When it is almost completely defeated, the villains swoop in and inform you that it's the only thing keeping the island airborne; they then zombify the Core to save the island. Near the end of the game, when the Doctor possesses the Undead Core, you're forced to destroy it for good, and the island begins falling. Then Ballos inverts this; since Ballos was the one pulling the island down, defeating him saves the island from destruction.
- Locked Out of the Fight: On two separate occasions, Curly Brace gets knocked out just before a boss fight. (On the second occasion, after a short while she does get up and help you.)
- Long Song, Short Scene: 'White', a scrapped theme for King which can only be unlocked by beating Sacred Grounds in three minutesnote
- Low-Level Advantage:
- The Nemesis actually weakens if you level it up. At Level 1, it's the strongest weapon in the game with massive damage, accuracy, and firing rate. At Level 3, it shoots rubber ducks that have pitiful range and do 1 damage.
- The Blade is a possibly unintentional example. At Level 2, the shots disappear instantly. At Level 3, it can pierce through multiple enemies. Since the only limit to how fast you can use the Blade is that there can be only one shot on-screen, keeping the blade at Level 2 can be preferable since getting right next to an enemy will make the projectile disappear instantly after shooting, meaning it can be fired ridiculously fast and shred most bosses.
- Luck-Based Mission: There's a corridor in the Sacred Grounds/Bloodstained Sanctuary, where blocks, both large and small, rain down upon you completely randomly. Regardless of size, they all do ten damage, which can add up pretty quickly. To make matters worse, the corridor is also filled with angels. If you take five damage from the angels and run/use the Booster 2.0 as fast as possible, it's significantly easier.
- Magikarp Power: Technically, almost every weapon in the game is this, but special mention goes to the very first weapon you get: it's a tiny pistol with a very short range that is quickly outclassed by every weapon in your arsenal, even at Level 3. You have two opportunities to trade or upgrade it into something better; if you refuse both of them, you can get it remodeled into the game's mostusefulgun... hey! Why are you kicking yourself all of a sudden?
- The Bubbler, which at the first level shoots pathetically weak bubbles at short range, and has limited, slowly-auto-reloading ammo to boot. It upgrades to a moderately useful rapid-fire stream of bubbles that reloads faster, and upgrades again into an awesome all-rounder weapon which can hit at long range, shield you from enemies, and charge up for a hail of bullets.
- The Machine gun, one of the possible trades for the Polar Star, is nothing to get excited about when you first take it (although the damage output is better than the Polar Star, given the continuous fire). When fully upgraded, firing it downwards propels you into the air, and you can use it as a limited form of flight; later on, when you get an upgrade that speeds up your ammo recovery, you can stay airborne almost indefinitely. The downside is that if you get used to moving around like this, doing a run with the Snake or the Spur is so much harder.
- MacGuffin: The Demon Crown (before the game starts), and the red flowers.
- Macross Missile Massacre: Balrog uses this in one of the fights with him, and you can get a miniaturized one of your own via the level 3 Missile Launcher.
- Mad Doctor: The Doctor, natch.
- Malevolent Architecture: Chaco's fireplace is a passageway to the deeper parts of Grasstown. And why does Santa have a deathtrap in his house?
- The Man Behind the Man: The way to the best ending of the game reveals that the Tragic Villain Ballos was the one responsible for both the creation of the Demon Crown that The Doctor and his predecessors sought after, and for the curse of Misery and Balrog to serve whomever bears the Demon Crown.
- Marathon Boss: The last five bosses play more like two massive Sequential Bosses. And the last of them is a Marathon Boss on his own.
- Meaningful Name: Misery sure loves making others... well, miserable.
- Throughout the game, Professor Booster provides you with special jetpacks called... Boosters.
- Quote, Curly Brace, and the Colons are all named for keys used commonly in programming.
- Melting-Pot Nomenclature: Kazuma Sakamoto, and his sister, Sue.
- Metroidvania: Definitely influenced by this genre, but it's actually fairly linear with very few sidequests and contains at least four distinct areas that don't obviously interact other than via teleporter. (Start Cave/Mimiga Village/Labyrinth/Waterway, Egg Corridor/Outer Wall/Plantation/Balcony/Final Cave/Sacred Grounds, Grasstown, and the Sand Zone.) So it seems more like an Action/Adventure platformer with Metroidvania elements.
- Missing Secret: In the inventory screen, there are six spaces for weapons, yet the most weapons you can have in the game at one time is five; this could probably be explained by saying that there was supposed to be another weapon originally, but it was Dummied Out.
- Modular Epilogue: During the Normal ending, there's a montage of various places on the island just before it crashes, with one change based on your actions: Curly Brace's body is shown in the underwater chamber if you failed to save her. Both the Normal and the Best ending feature a 'Where Are They Now?' Epilogue over the end credits, with slight changes between them, such as Professor Booster appearing if you saved him, and Puu Black taking Balrog's place at the hospital if the latter leaves with you.
- Mood Whiplash: Towards the end of the Sand Zone, things get a little dark.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: The Doctor.
- Most Gamers Are Male:
- One Easter egg has an implied Optional Sexual Encounter with Chaco. Although this was mostly bowdlerized in the 3DS remake.
- Later on, Mister Traveler can acquire his new female partner's panties. They don't actually do anything; they just sit in your inventory for you to look at. Why a robot would need panties, we may never know... though considering what Quote can do with Chaco, It's pretty easy to infer that both he and Curly completely avert Barbie Doll Anatomy. In the original game, the panties have the same pattern and color as the Iron Bond, which she gives the player as a symbol of connection. The Nicalis releases had this Bowdlerised by changing the look of the panties: See here.
- Multiple Endings: Several characters may die or survive depending on your actions, and the results will be reflected in the cut-scene at the standard ending. It's even possible to get a Bad Ending by accepting one character's offer to run away in the middle of the game. Overall, there are three main endings total, with slight variations depending your actions.
- One variation is beating the game while still wearing the Mimiga Mask. Misery comments about how ridiculous the character looks, and the end credit illustrations are tweaked to reflect the character wearing the mask.
- Mutually Exclusive Powerups: There are three possible upgrades to the Polar Star, your first weapon: the Machine Gun, the Snake, and the Spur. You can only get one of them. Similarly, you can only get the Booster 2.0 if you don't acquire the Booster 0.8.
- If you can locate a certain NPC, he'll offer to exchange your Blade for his Nemesis gun.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Misery, Balrog, and Cthulhu. The former two are an Affably EvilQuirky Miniboss Squad, and the latter ... are a race of harmless, friendly NPCs.
- Nerd Glasses: Jack wears these.
- Nice Hat: The protagonist, who miraculously keeps it on throughout the entire game. According to official art, it has 'Curly Brace' written on it, although it was made at a time when this was going to be the character's name.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: After defeating the Core near the middle of the game, the protagonist discovers that its main purpose was to keep the floating island afloat...Thankfully, Misery and the Doctor swoop in to save the Core and zombify it. However, this can happen a second timewhen the Doctor possesses the core, forcing the player to destroy it. The island crashes, the ending cutscene features a slow pan over the different areas over the island accompanied by slow music, featuring all the creatures who were trying to kill you, as well as Curly's dead body in the Core. Some of the monsters, such as the Hoppers, are even cute. Nice job killing them all, hero.This is, however, avoidable if you go through the Bonus Level of Hell.
- Nintendo Hard: Things are quite bearable until you get to Misery or Last Cave, depending on your booster version in which case it becomes this. And then there's the Brutal Bonus Level, which is Platform Hell at its finest, and the last two bosses, the Heavy Press and Ballos. UGH. Plus the aptly named 'Hard' mode in which your protagonist becomes a One-Hit-Point Wonder.
- Monster X is no walk in the park either.
- Hard Mode in the rereleases is a minimal HP, no Missile run. This actually ends up being a case of Easy Levels, Hard Bosses barring the Sacred Grounds; the levels aren't that bad (except for maybe Labyrinth M in Cave Story 3D), but the bosses are horrifyingly difficult. Especiallythe Core.
- No-Gear Level: Oddly averted. When the protagonist is captured at one point in the Plantation, he gets thrown in jail, but his captors don't bother to take any of his weapons away—nor the letter in his pocket that shows him how to escape from the cell.
- Nonstandard Game Over: A simple 'You were never seen again.' if you fall off the Outer Wall. The worst ending can be considered a Non-Standard Game Over, since rather than a series of scenes followed by credits, there's one scene, narrated with a 'You have died'-like box, followed by nothing.
- Noob Cave: First Cave.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Subverted. The game starts in a typical platform cave with no plot information given, and the author's description of the game (see quote at the top) seems to be written with the purpose of making people believe it has no actual plot. Then the player encounters more and more actual characters and exposition until there's a detailed story.
- Novelization: A fan-made one here.
- Number Two: Jack.
- Offscreen Teleportation: Common in this game, especially with Curly.
- Oh, Crap!: The dying robot tells you and Curly: 'Current forces insufficient. Retreat! RETREAT!' Then the door slams shut, and the boss wakes up.
- One Bullet at a Time: Most weapons have a limit on the maximum amount of shots that can be onscreen — three polar star bullets, four Snake shots, two Nemesis bolts or one high-level Spur laser can exist at once. Only one Blade shot can exist at a time, but each blade deals a great amount of damage and (unless on level 3) the shot disappears when hitting an enemy, making it the deadliest weapon at point blank.
- One-Hit Kill:
- The Blade, which is strong enough to one-shot most enemies, even at its Level 1 strength.
- The Spur's charged shot can kill any non-boss enemy in a single shot.
- On the enemy side of things, the Press kills you by falling on top of you for 100 HP of damage, which is just under double the max HP than you can ever have, though in 3D it's barely above the possible max HP of 98 thanks to the increased Life Capsule count. The Heavy Press in the Sacred Grounds attempts the same after you've depleted its lifebar.
- There's also the Basil that slides around the bottom of the Egg Corridor. Like the Presses, it deals 100 damage.
- Finally, there are the massive Spikes of Doom (not to be confused with the smaller ones that do 5 damage), which deal 127 damage if touched.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Hard mode removes all Heart Containers from the entire game except for the one given by the puppy in the Plantation, which is worth 5 HP, forcing you to survive with only 3 HP. Against enemies and bosses that frequently do much more damage per hit. Monster X and The Core have literally no attacks that do less that 4 HP of damage, meaning getting hit once is death.
- One-Hit Polykill: A charged-up Spur attack can pass through numerous Mooks, though most bosses stop the shot after one hit. The Fireball can hit two targets, and Blade lvl 2 can hit three targets. The Snake can even pass through terrain!
- One-Winged Angel: Happens a hell of a lot, sometimes in multiple phases.
- Optional Sexual Encounter: At one point while you're working through Grasstown, Chaco will step forward and stand next to her bed. If you go to sleep in her bed at that point, then she'll be in the bed next to you when you wake up, and her lipstick will appear in your inventory. The Steam Achievement for getting the lipstick is 'Lady's Man'. And this is in a game that got an E10+ rating. Exactly how a robot is implied to have sex with a rabbit is left as an exercise to the reader. In the 3DS remake, if Mister Traveler sleeps in Chaco's bed, he'll wake up to find her sleeping on the floor instead of next to him. Presumably, she had nowhere else to sleep with him in her bed. However, he still gets her lipstick, so someone was not paying full attention.
- Out of the Frying Pan: The Core attacks you. When you defeat it, Misery and the Doctor show up, having been alerted to your presence by the fight. They take the Core, flood the chamber, and teleport away, leaving you to drown in a locked room.
- Oxygen Meter: Present whenever you go underwater, though it disappears when you get Curly's Air Tank.
- Palette Swap: Puu Black, a recolored form of Balrog's earlier existence in the game's beta as Puu.
- In the WiiWare/Steam version, the protagonist's costume is a different color, depending on what difficulty level you're playing. In Easy mode, the red tones in his outfit are now Yellow and in hard mode, they are now Blue, his skin is Tan and is blonde.
- The enemies you encounter in First Cave reappear in multiple colors throughout the game.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The Mimiga mask which tricks half of the characters, including Professor Booster. Misery and The Doctor even have special dialogue if you manage to get there without trading the mask back to Momorin for your jetpack.
- The Password Is Always 'Swordfish': Averted, partially by accident; see the Blind Idiot Translation example above.
- Path of Most Resistance: If you don't have this in mind, you probably won't get the Good Ending.
- People Puppets: During the Undead Core battle.
- Permanently Missable Content: Aside from the Mutually Exclusive Powerups, there are several items that you only ever get one chance to collect. Most of them (such as the Tow Rope) are necessary only to get the best ending, while others (such as Chaco's lipstick and the Alien Badge) don't do anything and seem to only be there for the sake of 100% Completion. Some of them actually say how they don't do anything.
- Phrase Catcher: 'You're a soldier from the surface, aren't you?'
- Physical God: Jenka and her brother Ballos, are 'far beyond the power of mortals', capable of powerful magical feats and having lived for what seems to be several times longer than normal human lifespans. However, they are never stated to be gods, and Jenka hints that she will eventually have to die if you visit her late in the game.
- Planet Heck: Although its official name is 'Sacred Grounds' (or 'Sanctuary'), a sign hidden near the entrance clearly says 'Welcome to Hell!' And the 'angels' turn into demons when they die and drop the illusion entirely when they surround the True Final Boss.
- Point of No Return:
- There's only one true point of no return: If you save in the shack before the Brutal Bonus Level, you can never return to the caves. There's a book on the shelf that offers to 'rewind time' so you can go for the normal ending instead, but it only takes you back to the moment just after you defeated the Final Bossand started causing the island to plummet.
- There's a temporary one if you save in the Labyrinth after defeating Toroko. There's no way to get to the rest of the caves by going back, but by pressing forward you eventually escape and find a new way to Mimiga Village.
- Poor Communication Kills: Jenka keeps the key to her storehouse so that no one will be able to abuse the Demon Flowers within. She doesn't clue into the fact that Mister Traveler is there to destroy the flowers. Jenka's hesitation buys the villains enough time to accost her for the key before Mister Traveler can plead his case, and everything quickly goes to shit.
- Power Incontinence: This happens to the Doctor after his first form is defeated. This foreshadows Ballos, who became this by being tortured by an unnamed king.
- The Professor: Booster.
- Platform Hell: The Hidden Last Cave. Good luck landing on that single safe spot between dozens of deadly spikes.
- Psycho Serum: The 'red flowers', which turn the delicate Mimigas into hulking homicidal monsters when eaten.
- Public Domain Soundtrack: Jenka's theme is a Finnish dance called 'Letkajenkka'.
- Punny Name: One of the enemies is named BuyoBuyo Base, which kinda sounds like Bouillabaisse.
- Balrog's frog form is given the title of 'Balfrog' in the credits.
- Purposely Overpowered: The Spur, and also the Super Missile Launcher.
- Rainbow Speak: ·Interpuncts· are used to highlight item names in dialogue.
- Really 700 Years Old: Misery and Jenka. And Ballos, Jenka's brother.
- Recoil Boost: The machine gun provides this at level 3.
- Recoiled Across The Room: The level 3 machine gun can propel you into the air (and even lets you hover indefinitely) when you shoot straight down. For some reason, it doesn't recoil that hard when you shoot horizontally.
- Recollection Sidequest: Downplayed: you reconstruct the Amnesiac Hero's backstory as you complete the game — but you're just learning about it through dialogue with various NPCs, and there are no flashbacks or other implications that he's regaining any memories from it.
- Recurring Boss: Balrog.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: Misery, Crazed Mimigas, Muscle Doctor, and Ballos... halfway, anyway. Averted with King.
- The Presses make this into a warning. When they open up their mechanical red eye, they're about to crush you. Make sure you remember this after beating the Heavy Press...
- Also averted with Professor Booster. He wears signal red, opaque glasses and doesn't look too friendly, seemingly putting him in the role of The Mole. Fittingly, he is in fact only a Red Herring Mole. If you meet him in the Labyrinth after he's been wounded, one of his lenses is broken, revealing that his eyes have a regular, dark-shaded iris.
- Red Herring Mole: Professor Booster. Evil Eyebrows? Check. Signal red glassesthat hide the eyes underneath? Check. Potential Mad Scientist acquaintance of The Doctor? Check.
Nonetheless he never switches sides, and even stays loyal until his death in one continuity of the game, giving away the Booster 0.8 to you with his last bit of strength that he could otherwise have used to save himself. - Reduced to Ratburgers: Kazuma says that if he isn't rescued soon he'll have to eat cockroaches. He's kidding. But if he has to, he really will...
- Remixed Level: The 'Egg Corridor (?)'. Yes, the question mark is part of its name.
- Also, Last Cave changes when you're on the path to the good ending.
- Respawning Enemies: Whenever you move between 'rooms', the enemies will respawn. A couple of areas, such as the Egg Corridor, will also periodically throw flying enemies at you.
- Rescued from the Underworld: First you fight your way through Hell/The Sacred Grounds, then once you kill Ballos, Balrog falls/smashes his way into hell to get to you, then flies you and Curly out of there. Honestly, a Deus ex Machina like that was preferable to another escape sequence after fighting Wizard Satan.
- Retraux: Low-res pixel art graphics and a Chiptune soundtrack for a computer game released in 2004. Unlike a lot of Retraux games, Cave Story doesn't just superficially look this way, but is retro-styled to its very core, being structured in the same way that allowed NES and SNES games to fit onto tiny cartridges, and itself weighing in at under 5 Megabytes for a full-length game.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: A lot of the creatures in the game are this. Mimigas stand out the most.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: The robots can drown (which does get an in-game justification), sleep to repair damage, and regain their memories by eating a special mushroom. They can also, well... read Optional Sexual Encounter, above.
- There's an 'Air' counter underwater, and at one point you're informed 'you can breathe' indicating a working and essential respiratory system. The robots can also receive medical care and medicine. It's also possible for a 'drowned' robot to be drained and reactivated.
- Robot Girl: Curly Brace, natch.
- Robot Hair: Both Quote and Curly Brace respectively have black and blonde hair, making them stand out from other, less humanoid robots.
- Robot Soldier: An army of these was sent to the Island during the War to kill the Mimigas. The player character is one of them, though both he and Curly Brace were sent to stop the war.
- Rushmore Refacement: Those statues of the Demon Crown wearers can be revisited right before the fight with the True Final Boss — shooting them turns them into statues of you, King, Toroko, and Curly Brace. And you get powerups for doing so!
- Sacrificial Lamb: Toroko.
- Sacrificial Lion: King.
- Scarf Of Asskicking: You wear one.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: The Doctor.
- Scenery Porn: The 3DS version contains wonderfully detailed backgrounds.
- Scenery Gorn: The Egg Corridor after it gets damaged.
- The room in which you fight Ballos seems to be carpeted in skeletons. During his final form bloodied spikes grow from the floor.
- Schmuck Bait: A sign placed next to some Spikes of Doom clearly warns 'One touch means instant death!' Unfortunately, the swathes of spikes littered throughout the rest of the game do not have a similar warning — neither are they so easy to avoid. When you first see them, ANYTHING kills you instantly.
- Schrödinger's Gun: There's a number of plausible explanations for why your decision to talk to Professor Booster determines whether he lives or dies. For example, if you talk to him, you can take his invention, the Booster v0.8, from him so you can use it. Using it is the only way to get out of the pit he (and now you) have fallen into[[note]]You might not notice this if you carry a Lv 3 Machinegun, and you can't take him with you when you use the Booster v0.8 to escape. However, your decision to talk with Booster also determines whether a tow rope in the very securely locked room adjacent is loose or stuck which affects whether you can get the good ending or not.
- Screen Shake: The whole game after defeating the Undead Core.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: Two-thirds of the way through the game, one of your allies gains a means of escape and encourages you to run away with him rather than staying to fight. You can take him up on this offer; however, doing so gets you the worst ending.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Ballos, although he's not completely evil.
- Self-Destructive Charge: King attempts one of these, but unfortunately fails miserably.
- Sequel Hook:
- The original game ends rather neatly, but it's never fully explained just what the island is, or why the surface tried to attack it (according to Curly, the surface was trying to get a hold of the Demon Crown, but for what purpose isn't clear). Additionally, according to Jenka there is a rumor that the Mimiga who retaliated by ingesting red flowers were unleashed onto the surface.
- In the latest remake (released after Pixel began talking about a potential sequel), it's revealed in a possibly canon sequence that someone or something was making Curly clones in the Wind Fortress.
- Sequential Boss: The Doctor, who is the second of a three-part Boss Rush. Also, the True Final Boss. To a lesser extent, Monster X, who can't even be hurt until its turrets are destroyed.
- Send in the Clones: As you progress through Cave Story+'s Wind Fortress, the only enemies you'll be fighting through the last end of the level are naked clones of Curly.
- Senseless Sacrifice: King's death does not prevent anything.
- Shared Life Meter: The Sisters are of the first variety (characters all getting their health from the same life bar).
- Shield-Bearing Mook: The Gravekeeper is invulnerable from the front unless he's preparing to attack or has just attacked.
- Same deal with the small sword-wielding 'Bute' enemies in the Brutal Bonus Level.
- Shoot the Dog: Toroko is a cute little Mimiga girl. But then the bad guys feed her one of the red flowers, turning her into a rampaging beast. I'm sorry poor Toroko, but you must be put down...
- Shout-Out:
- You get a Fireball weapon of infinite supply which bounces up and down as it moves forward.
- Ballos's Pre-Asskicking One-Liner 'Kill me... or I shall KILL YOU!' presumably references a very similar line in Final Fantasy Tactics.
- Getting the Super Missile Launcher in the Steam version nets you the achievement 'Super, thanks for asking!'
- While we're still talking about Steam achievements, the one for getting the Alien Medal is called 'Here's Johnny!', and the one for getting the Spur is 'Freakin' Laser Beamz'.
- Jenka's theme is actually an old Finnish song, 'Letkajenkka'.
- Most of Balrog's entrances in Nicalis' translation involve him bursting through the wall (or ceiling) and shouting 'Oh Yeaaah!!', not unlike a certain living pitcher of Kool-Aid.
- Cave Story+'s Halloween Mode is filled to the brim with references. Sue dresses as Princess Peach, Kazuma dresses as Jason Voorhees, Curly dresses as Samus Aran, Kanpachi dresses Darth Vader, Misery is dressed like Morrigan, Sue also gets a look based on Felicia during the Undead Core fight, the Doctor is dressed like Dracula, and... King is dressed like V, even though it makes him look utterly silly. Furthermore, the grassland jellies are a dead ringer for Metroids, the ghost-like enemies in the same area look like Cactaurs, the roaches in the Labyrinth are also dead-ringers for Xenomorphs (even the eggs), and the big bugs in the Egg Corridor are dressed like Kamina. Ballos' first form is also pretty much Astaroth.
- Skippable Boss:
- In your first encounter with Balrog, he actually asks you if you're going to fight him. It looks like a But Thou Must! situation at first, but if you say no, he just leaves.
- It's more of a 'Skippable Miniboss' example (considering the miniboss in question has less HP than the first Balrog fight), though considering the game still plays a boss theme, it still counts - There's a house in the Grasslands that has a missile expansion inside. Grabbing it causes a rabid Mimiga to jump out from the fireplace, though the player can just leave through the same way they came in, and if the player enters the house again, the rabid Mimiga is gone.
- The Sisters are a less obvious example. They only show up if you grab a specific missile upgrade, so you can skip the fight just by not touching that chest. (Or, as demonstrated in thisSpeedrun, by grabbing the upgrade anyway and boosting away before the fight can begin.)
- Spam Attack: The Bubbler's Level 3 shot allows you to do this if you hold down the fire button for a few seconds first. Also, the Super Missile Launcher, particularly when used as the definitive way of defeating Heavy Press and Ballos.
- In the boss battle with the Doctor, his second form has an attack which shoots out a huge amount of red bats.
- Spikes of Doom: Present with varying levels of lethality from the very start of the game; the basic variety just causes damage, but Grasstown introduces another version that causes a One-Hit Kill. Last Cave and the Sacred Grounds are filled with them.
- Smashing Hallway Traps of Doom: The Presses, especially later on in the Plantation, both versions of the Last Cave, and a few in the Sacred Grounds, which also has their boss. In the case of the Plantation, you can bypass the trap early by using an exploit (taking damage and using Mercy Invincibility), but the door past them still won't open (claiming it's too early to come here.)
- Speedrun: The Nikumaru Counter, specifically used to time any attempts at the Brutal Bonus Level. World record time is about 2:17.
- The Wind Fortress also features a timer.
- Sprite/Polygon Mix: Classic Mode in the 3DS version does this, retaining the original character, enemy and item sprites but using 3D backgrounds.
- Stalactite Spite: Revisited Egg Corridor. Stalactites hurt enemies too, though.
- Stationary Boss: The Heavy Press and Ballos' last form, though in the latter's room everything you can step on either moves or damages you.
- Stealth Pun:
- To craft a bomb, you need to get coal. You find the coal in the fireplace of a Mimiga named Santa.
- The above-mentioned Fetch Quest.
- Also, Jack is locked in the Number Two jail in the Plantation.
- If you play on Easy Mode, your outfit isyellow.
- Stupidity Is the Only Option: Halfway through the game, you will witness Dr. Booster falling into a chasm. Major spoilers ahead: Going down the chasm to help him will have him reward you with the Booster 0.8 with his last breath. What happens if you do not go down the chasm and ignore him entirely? He is perfectly fine a couple of levels later and will provide you with the vastly improved Booster 2.0. Merely having this version of the Booster triggers the existence of an object required to save Curly, and it's required for reaching the Bonus Dungeon.
- Sugar Apocalypse: Once you reach the end of the Sand Zone, it becomes obvious fairly quickly that this game's not completely sweet and cuddly.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Initially the Traveler sinks like a rock and has roughly 15 seconds to surface before drowning. Once Curly sacrifices herself and gives you her oxygen tank, you can stay underwater indefinitely.
- Superweapon Surprise: The red flowers' effect. They're so secret, Mimigas no longer know the truth about them.
- Sword Beam: The Blade is only used like this. The beam is actually King temporarily coming Back from the Dead with each swing. When it's used at full power, King physically manifests himself, shoots from the sword and slashes every enemy in and around his path to ribbons.
- Talking Is a Free Action: Lampshaded if you talk to Santa during the fight with the doctor.
- Tears of Blood: The zombie dragons in the wrecked Egg Corridor.
- That Makes Me Feel Angry: Misery's 'Heavens, that felt good!' while nobody is around.
- Teleport Spam: When you fight the Doctor's first form, he'll frequently send a double-helix energy ray at you, and by the time you jump over it to get to him, he just teleports again. Yay.
- Theme Naming: 'Curly Brace' and 'Quote' are (computer programmers' terms for) the { and ' symbols, respectively. Also on a keyboard, the curly brace key is directly on top of the quote key. Curly's adopted Mimiga children were given the last name Colon.
- Also, the leader of the Mimigas is named King and the second-in-command is named Jack, as in the cards.
- The two guardians of the Mimiga Village are King and the now-deceased Arthur.
- The angel enemies in Sacred Ground appear to be named for flat-topped hills: Bute (one letter off from Butte) and Mesa.
- Jenka, and Ballos have names taken from dance styles.
- There Was a Door: But it was just too small for Balrog, so he has to bust through the wall, door included. Likely why his catch phrase got changed to a Kool-Aid-Man-style 'Oh Yeaaah!' in the WiiWare/Steam release.
- This Is Gonna Suck: 'You feel a black wind blow through you. All weapons dropped to level 1!'
- This Was His True Form: The defeat of Monster X. Blink and you might miss it. It's a kitty!
- Through a Face Full of Fur: Toroko's absolutely adorableblush stickers.
- Tin-Can Robot: Malco.
- Tomato Surprise: The main character is revealed to be a Ridiculously Human RobotSoldier one-third into the game. The surprise of this revelation depends entirely on whether you noticed the robot ears on his sprite before this point — they are small and easy to miss. At least one of the NPCs didn't notice them either.
- Also, one of the Cthulhu points out 'you will lose all your energy soon enough', hinting at his robot nature early.
- Another one that's mentioned in passing, and later becomes important. Being a game called 'Cave Story', you wouldn't expect the surface to bebelowyou.
- Too Awesome to Use: The Life Pot, to the point you'll forget you have it when you really, really need it. You'll want to save it 'till the Brutal Bonus Level anyway. Played with because, thankfully, you can go back and get another any time you use it up so long as you haven't passed the Point of No Return.
- Too Dumb to Live: Misery in the final fight. Defying and trying to attack the Doctor, even if he is technically dead, is a very bad idea. Unless you're Quote.
- Also, the king who imprisoned Ballos. Torturing an immortal person with powers you cannot comprehend? Bad idea.
- Took a Shortcut: No matter where you go, Curly Brace will get there ahead of you. However, the shortcuts appear rather tough on her, since she's usually heavily injured by the time you get there.
- Tortured Monster: The True Final Boss. He's a Physical God who lost control of his immense magic powers under torture, and had to watch himself kill and destroy everything he loved. Afterwards, he was entombed inside a floating island for god-knows-how-long... and he can't naturally die, no matter how hard he tries.
- Tragic Monster: Every speaking villain except the Doctor, but especially Toroko and Ballos.
- Trailers Always Spoil: The video interview for the WiiWare version has the game playing in the background, showing off several areas. This includes the Sacred Grounds. IGN's one-paragraph description of the game spoils the player character's name, which you only learn on the path to 100% Completion.
- Trauma Inn: Beds just restore health. Computer screens also restore missiles.
- True Companions: Curly and Quote, but only if you get 100% Completion.
- True Final Boss: The Heavy Press and Ballos, found at the end of The Sacred Grounds, constitute five forms in two bosses. In short, a Boss Bonanza.
- Tube Travel: It helps you get out of Plantation's reservoir faster (possibly in case you fall in without the jetpack equipped).
- Turns Red: Virtually all bosses unveil new attacks at lower HP, most notably Omega, who changes his whole attack pattern, and the Undead Core, who, at low health, sticks to a new attack. The elephant-like Behemoths from the Egg Corridor also turn red and stampede if they take enough damage, though this is rarely seen because they're not hard to defeat in the first place.
Tropes U to Z
- Uncanny Family Resemblance: Thanks to Mimigas lacking Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, Jack and Toroko look very much like gender-bent versions of each other.
- Underground City: Mimiga Village. To a degree, the entire island is this, having both shops and homes scattered from the Bushlands to the Labyrinth and everywhere in-between.
- Underground Monkey: The Critters and Bats have variants that work like this.
- Unexpected Shmup Level: The boss fight against Ironhead is one of these, sort of, thanks to the underwater physics.
- Unique Enemy: There's a few of them, like the Chinfish, The Door, Gravekeeper, Giant Pignon, and Basil (which is more of a stage hazard than an enemy, considering it's invincible).
- There's also the Time Bomb that appears in the Egg Corridor?, though 3D adds two more.
- Vent Physics: Most notable in Grasstown, but fans can be found elsewhere too.
- Villain Override: The Doctor with Misery and Sue.
- Villain Teleportation: Misery and the Doctor use this heavily.
- Violation of Common Sense: During the Undead Core battle, Possessed Misery will ignore you if you can avoid damaging Frenzied Sue. The battle is still tough, but in a different way.
- The Voiceless: Your main character has virtually no dialogue of his own. Even when you're playing the game as Curly. In the WiiWare/Steam version, he does talk, but only if you get the mushroom and meet with him in the Plantation, and even then it's only a single line.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Speaking of the Vent Physics, anyone who hasn't mastered them is very likely to get their butt kicked by Balfrog several times on their first playthrough. Other factors play a part, but it's usually the fans that screw one up.
- Frenzied Toroko is also one as well. Her attacks are surprisingly difficult to dodge and do almost-unseen levels of damage at that point in the game, and she's also pretty fast.
- For Hard Mode (or a 3 HP, no Missile run), it's the second fight with Balrog. He can kill you in one to two hits, the Fireball is near useless, and the Polar Star still has to get past his energy balls.
- Walk, Don't Swim: Mister Traveler sinks like a rock in water. Since he is a robot, he is likely too heavy to swim.
- Wall Master: Sand Crocs! And that infamous killer door! The moving, crushing eye blocks known as Presses count as well.
- The Walls Are Closing In: The walls of Ballos' chamber close in when the hero and Curly Brace defeat him for good. They would be crushed if not for Balrog.
- War Is Hell: The War between Humanity and the Mimigas very nearly ended the Mimiga race. If and when the player feeds Curly Brace the Ma Pignon, she remembers the war, and her description is extremely unpleasant:Curly: 'Back then, a huge number of robots were sent to this island from countries on the Earth's surface. Their target was the awesome power kept within this island... the Demon Crown. But you and I, we were different. The two of us were sent in order to destroy that power. When we got here, the island was in a shambles. The robots had torn it all to pieces... and countless Mimigas had been slaughtered... it was... terrible... Finally one man got the Demon Crown in his possession. The robots' work was done and the island fell silent. But that was just the beginning of the tragedy. With the Crown in hand, the man turned the Mimigas into killers and began his assault on the Earth. I tried to stop him. You were there too. ... That's as far as I can remember. I'm pretty sure we were able to wound him. But we seemed far out of our league...'
- Wave Motion Gun: The Spur, if you fire it when its EXP. bar is at maximum, will release a large white beam that will pierce through and completely reduce any non-boss monster in the game into its component atoms. There is no better example of There Is No Kill Like Overkill in this game than this alone.
- Welcome to Corneria: Averted. Most NPCs will say different things depending on how far you've gone through the game.
- Welcome to Hell: A sign reads this, verbatim near the beginning of the end-game Bonus Dungeon, the Sacred Grounds.
- Wham Line: Misery drops one after the Core fight, explaining that you almost pulled a Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!:Misery: Do you even know what this thing is!?!
Curly: Huh?
Misery: This is the reason why I HATE ROBOTS!!! This is the heart of the island! The island will fall if THIS stops!! - With This Herring: You are an elite combat android sent to destroy an artifact that gives its wearer unthinkable power, on an island populated by rampaging monsters. You begin the game unarmed and with threehit points and no weapons. Presumably something bad happened to you beforehand. Once Curly gets her memory back, it's heavily implied that the previous wielder of the Demon Crown beat the robotic crap out of you; also, other robots are found near the Core and are in really bad shape.
- Analysis complete
Current forces insufficient
Retreat
RETREAT!!
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Ballos. Poor, poor Ballos.
- You Bastard!:
- When you defeat most bosses, a block of text comes up on the screen comes up saying 'You defeated [insert boss name]!' along with an accompanying jingle. When you defeat Frenzied Toroko, the exclamation mark is replaced with a period (or in the Nicalis translation, an ellipsis...) and the music cuts out completely.
- The text the game displays in the worst ending also has shades of this.
- You Gotta Have Blue Hair: It seems green hair is a Sakamoto family trait. The Doctor has green hair as well.
- Misery has blue hair, except for her dialogue portrait, where her hair is green. The WiiWare version has her hair consistently blue.
- You Have Failed Me: Misery ultimately decides she's had enough of Balrog, and teleports him into the Labyrinth along with the protagonist.
- You Mean 'Xmas': Parodied in Cave Story+, in which the achievement for playing the game in Christmas Mode is 'Merry Holiday Happy Euphemism' with the description 'For the rest of us!'
- X Marks the Hero: Sue.
- And King... However, he doesn't last long enough to make much of a difference, unless you count the Blade.
- Zigzag Paper Tassel: On the boulder that blocks the entrance to Labyrinth M.