Nostalgia Ramblings

I know many of us have been playing CS for years and years now and have fond memories of back then. Since I love discussing and preserving nostalgia so much, I thought we could use a thread to reminisce upon times bygone.
(I know we alread have a "first time you played" thread, this isn't the same thing)

Cave Story is probably one of the things I have the strongest nostalgia towards. Back when I first played I was pretty young and had nothing to worry about, all I did was come home from school and work on making and playing games. I was working with a 2D game engine during almost all my free time back then, and CS was my biggest inspiration. When I first played it had such an emotional effect on me, I was thinking about it all day and couldn't wait to get home and get back to it. Reality was a waste of time for that short period, all I wanted to do was get back to my temporary "real" world. Somehow even after playing it so many times the game's music and atmosphere still takes me back to those times.

If I'm in the right mood I can still listen to a few tracks and tear up a little as I sink back into the past, feel the better times, and relive the emotion this game gave me on my first playthough. I try not to play it or listen to the soundtrack terribly often so I can milk that effect for as long as possible.

I'm not sure what compelled me to write this, but I just got back from a major nostalgia trip listening to Balcony and Pulse. Hopefully I'm not the only one and I won't be sitting here like an idiot in a thread full of "COOL STORY, BRO" posts.

 

When I first played cave story, it was one of the first new retro-ish games I had played in a long time. I wasn't expecting too much of it at first, but it turned out to be pretty good. Shortly after I saw some videos of "mods" on youtube and did some research into modding, which led me to mirai gamer.

I can't say I find too much of the game nostalgic, since it's still very recent to me. But playing it did instill nostalgia, like any 2D game seems to do for me these days. More importantly it was a solid, good game.

 

Gir is a robot with no feelings.

I started playing Cave Story during a very emotional time in my life (what it was is not important). I was breezing through it at a decent pace, and I was still just as emotional when I reached The Core battle, where of course Curly dies. I was actually tearing up as I ran through Waterway, it's always been my favorite area. I even felt disgusted to be using the air tank that kept Curly Brace.
But anyway, I was really drawn in to the game, it was my escape for that time period. I still play Cave Story often, and it retains all the emotion I put into it when I first played it.

 

If I'm in the right mood I can still listen to a few tracks and tear up a little as I sink back into the past, feel the better times, and relive the emotion this game gave me on my first playthough. I try not to play it or listen to the soundtrack terribly often so I can milk that effect for as long as possible.

When I'm tired, and thinkin' cold
I hide in my music, forget the day
And dream of a game that I used to play
I close my eyes and I slip awaaaaaaayyyyyyyyy
*GUITARS*
IT'S MORE THAN A FEELING
WHEN I HEAR THAT OLD THEY USED IN CAVE STORY
IT'S MORE THAN A FEELING
I SEE CURLY BRACE DRIFT AWAAAAAY

Aaaaanyway.
Cave Story doesn't really make me nostalgic or emotional. The first time I played it, I was on a freeware games binge, because I was bored of the other games I play. No, wait, I am always on a freeware games binge, all the time. But anyway, I played Cave Story during the dark month of December, and nothing was really going on but boredom and high school. Eleventh grade wasn't much fun. Um... yeah, that's pretty much it. I like the retro style of Cave Story, but it doesn't appeal much to my nostalgia as I was a PC gamer growing up in the 90's. It's just a really good game.
However, I nostalgia all over games with a low polygon count, primitive shading and low-res textures.

 

Ahh. Good old cave story. Its hard for me to describe how I feel about this game. The music, the looks, the challenges (GRRRR!). I almost wonder why it can be played for free with a game of it's potential (Not that I don't mind that it's free).

I could go on and on about my feelings for Cave Story. Hell, I could write poetry and fanfics for this game (And yet I don't for some reason).

and now I drift into daydreams... *sigh*

 

this game is perfect in many many ways of design.

 

I was way more nostalgic two years ago, but I still shed a tear over the music of cavestory and certain cramper locations that give a nice, warm atmosphere.

 

No time for nostalgia, I`m playing it right now. In Spanish. Like 5th time in Spanish. This time all the words and grammar must be understood, and probably will learn the convos by heart unintentionally

 

haha, I remember my first time getting the bad ending, after buying the game on wiiware and it being the only game I played for the next four days afterward--When it said "The End?" and the music started playing, one thought was in my head... WTF?!?!? That can't be the end! I thought this game was going to have a great ending . Then I tried to pres the buttons on my wii-remote, and thought the game had glitched (you have to reset the game after you get the bad ending, to go back to your last save point). Then I searched around for a little bit, hoping that there would be some secret entrance, SOMETHING to save the game with, eventually, I talked to Kazuma again and realized that there is a "no" option... ahh, the good ol' days.

 

I remember thinking the game was gonna just be a happy platformer-ish type game.
When I got to the end of the sand zone I got emotionally bitch-slapped. And so I had the same type of thing that Yakkers had.

 

Played the game, was sad Curly died.

Played the game, was sad Ballos's dog died.

Haven't played the game in over 5 years.

 

Played the game, was sad Ballos's dog died.

I always thought it just teleported away.

 

I remember the background being different, but if you played the game back in '05-'07 or so you probably would have downloaded it from here.

 

I don't actually have too much, which is surprising because I have nostalgia about EVERYTHING. I have nostalgia about having nostalgia. Truthly. MOstly though, I feel nostalgic for the people at the time I I was playing CS. The guy who showed it to me moved to california soon after, and my brother went to college. Too much other nostalgia, I guess.

Maybe it's because I can't smell cave story. Smell is always my greatest linker with the past.

 

i actually have reeeeeeeally cool nostalgia toward playing cave story in the summer of 2006

it was a time between desktop pc's and i was borrowing my mom's laptop regularly
i had actually downloaded cave story on my last pc by this point but it had problems, like it lagged strangely, and the music lagged badly. i dunno why, that was like a 2ghz processor pc with a decent video card for the time etc but who knows.

so i kept playing the living crap out of it and having some great times, great memories--i always kick myself for not having actually looked to see if the cs tribute site had a forum back then, i could've been a part of this community way earlier and enjoyed it-- but anyway, it was still a very cool experience, even if i didn't really talk about it much other than telling people 'hey cave story rulz'

the coolest memory is something i've probably already talked about on here before. i was playing the game and got to the Sacred Grounds for the very first time. i finally, finally got past that dreaded first spike-filled room and into the long horizontal area with the little angels and the blocks falling down. around this time i started to feel a rumbling, as if the quakes from the game itself were permeating into real life, I figured it was some super-low bass thing pixel added to this area for added effect. but as I got further into the sacred grounds it got louder and heavier, like big "waves" of rumbling, sounds like explosions in the distance, I was like "holy fuck am I gonna get sucked into the game like Captain N or something? could there possibly be *less-wanted* time to get sucked into a video game than this? i don't wanna fuckin fight angels and demons and shit in a crumbling ruin while the person who could rescue me already has a robot on his back"

of course it ends up i'd totally forgotten the date was july 4th, and they put on a fireworks show very near my house every year

it was pretty awesome-weird though

 

My grandfather died while I was playing Cave Story for the first time, so whenever I play it I remember him...

 

Back during the summer of 2005, my dad told me about it, surprisingly. He gave me the link to the download for it. I played it, stopped at the Sand Zone. Didn't understand it, but it was very new to me. At first, I thought that Ame in the Orgviewer background thing was Sue or something. I was disturbed. 3 years later, played it again. Loved it, saw that there were mods for it, started making shit mods.

But.. I do recall having this sense of this sort of unforgettable "new car smell" when I started playing the game. It used to happen to me all the time with games, but now it rarely happens.

 

Back during the summer of 2005

You were like 10 years old. That makes me feel old.

 

Yeah. It was around when I was new to computers.

 

You were like 10 years old. That makes me feel old.

Maybe you are.