Cave Story (if you don’t know what Cave Story is, click that link, download the game, and play it for several hours with the sound on before reading any more of this) is coming to the Sony PlayStation Portable. This is according to Frank, via Polybius, via the publisher’s message board.
If that doesn’t convince you, the publisher – Variant Interactive – has already put up a Cave Story section, complete with box art. Apparently Variant has recently started up as an independent games publisher, and they’re choosing to kick things off with a bang. And by bang, I mean a really, really good game. Seriously. You shouldn’t even be reading this if you haven’t at least started playing it already.
So my first reaction to this news is “Awesome! I love Cave Story! I love it so much!” My second, more rational reaction, however, is “Oh, wait. I don’t own a PSP. Nor do I ever intend to, no matter how cute Loco Roco is. I am sad now.”
I suppose the good news here is that Variant is not averse to porting the game over to the Nintendo DS; they just haven’t had any green light from Nintendo to do so:
You know, I love the DS as much as the next guy… And Cave Story, I think, fits in pretty well with the feel of Nintendo’s general portfolio of titles. But at the end of the day, it’s Nintendo who decides what does and does not go on their systems. Same as Sony and Microsoft dictate what goes on theirs. I’m not much of a fan of online petitions, I don’t think they do much good, but if you’d like to see Cave Story on the DS, Nintendo suggests writing them or posting it up in their forums. If they know you guys want it, and they know that there’s enough of you that want it, something good might happen!
I guess that’s enough to give me hope for now. I don’t think community outreach alone is going to make it happen, though. I think the gaming press needs to start jumping on this, and making a critical argument for the existence of Cave Story on everyone’s favorite dual-screened portable. A solid, well-thought-out feature on 1UP or IGN could be worth just as much in Nintendo’s eyes as a hundred or so e-mails from fans begging “please?”
…But I’ll send off an e-mail or two to Nintendo, just to be sure. That’s how good Cave Story is.