Cave Story/YMMV

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• Alas, Poor Scrappy: If you thought Toroko was annoying at the beginning of the game, you'll feel like crap when she gets kidnapped, and like a major Jerkass when you have to kill her yourself. Sue as well for taunting a gigantic frenzied Mimiga and then promptly getting pummeled into submission. But much less so.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: Cave Story is getting a remake on the Nintendo 3DS? And it's being released by Nippon Ichi as a retail game? And Pixel's finally considering a sequel?!
• Anvilicious/Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: The game's "don't abuse animals" message.
• Ass Pull: Arguably the relationship between the penultimate boss and the last boss: killing the Load-Bearing Boss causes the island to fall, but killing the next boss causes the island to stop falling.
  • Somewhat justified in the novelization. The Core was created to cancel out Ballos' magic. When the Undead Core was destroyed by Quote, Ballos' magic ran wild again, forcing the island towards the earth. When Quote and Curly kill Ballos, his magic dissipates and the island's magic allows it to fly again. Still doesn't make perfect sense, but it's better than nothing.
• Awesome Music: See Crowning Music of Awesome.
• Bizarro Episode: The Outer Wall is by far the weirdest place in the game. The gravity is odd, treating the left side of the screen as 'down' for everything except you. The enemies don't seem bizarre at first, but then you encounter the giant cat ghosts that shoot yarn balls at you. And living at the bottom is a group of people that are five inches high.
• Breather Level: Plantation is rather easy compared to Outer Wall and what's to come... and what came before. Most of the enemies in this area are rather weak or easily avoidable, save points are plentiful and there are no bosses.
• Broken Base: The developer's forums for the WiiWare version were ablaze with people complaining about the music, the graphics, the gameplay ... it's descended to the point where "devoted fans" were refusing to buy the game when it comes out because it was delayed. The newly released update should fix all of those complaints.
• Complete Monster: The Doctor. This is a guy who kidnaps and performs Psycho Serum experiments on the local tribe of Ridiculously Cute Critters in the hopes of transforming them into mindless monsters for his army and as Quote finds out in the endgame, is working on a project to do the same thing to humans. He's killed more than a few of the Mimigas as well and forces you to personally kill Toroko. He threw Sue's mother Momorin off the edge of the floating island (she got better) and even slaughters an entire corridor of baby dragons, some of which hadn't even hatched yet, and turns a good number of the baby dragons into his undead servants. And to dash any last chance of redeemability? The Artifact of Doom sealed on the island is the only reason he came to the island in the first place! Sue's letter states that he knew about it all along... and wormed his way into the group just to get his hands on it!
• Crowning Music of Awesome: Where to start...
  • Scorching Back.
  • The Grasstown music, which starts off like Jazz Jackrabbit and builds into something like classic Sega Genesis. Pure, distilled awesome.
  • Moonsong is also really great.
    • Try it when mashed up to the Wii remix of the song.
  • Running Hell.
    • The 3DS ("Remastered" for Steam version) version of it isn't too bad.
• Ear Worm: Good luck getting Balrog's Leitmotif out of your head.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The green birds in the Sand Zone, and Butes in Sacred Grounds.
  • And the actual bats in the game, which can swarm around you if you don't kill them while sleeping, and are particularly obnoxious when summon spammed by bosses.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Playing in Holiday Mode in the Wii version somehow turns Curly's sprite into Quote's. Not only is the now-male "Curly" referred to as "she" and "her", you still meet Quote in the Sand Zone. For the rest of the game two copies of the main character are running around the island. And Curly's panties are still referred to as "Your Panties". Yeah.
  • Cave Story 3D has a huge glitch where the game saves flags between save files when you quit the game with the inventory open. This can be used to return from the Point of No Return, get huge amounts of HP, and numerous other wacky things.
  • Ballos' fourth form too... which, through a random glitch, allows you to jump into his eye and fire off enough super missiles to blow up the whole freakin' island.
• Hell Is That Noise: Quiet, the tune that plays in Mimiga Village after you come out of the Waterway. *shudder*
• Hype Backlash: Let's just say that many of the indie games that this one ultimately led to the existence of have easily removed its former "best indie game ever" status from it in quite a few ways.
  • Hollow Knight is an especially notable "same genre" example of a Cave Story de-throner, due to the fact that basically everything about it is colossally better than Cave Story (including its, well, story).
• Memetic Mutation: Say it with me: HUZZAH! OH YEAH!
• Memetic Sex God: Everyone is robosexual for Curly.
• Moe: Quote, Curly, and the Mimigas.
• Most Annoying Sound: The sound of experience points bouncing on the ground is barely noticeable in the original PC version, but drowns out everything else on the Wii Ware port. This has been fixed with the recently released update.
• Nausea Fuel: Ballos' "blood-red-soul-dripping face" form.
• Nightmare Fuel: Sacred Grounds and the absolutely massive Darker and Edgier tonal shift that the game undergoes after its Sand Zone segment.
• Paranoia Fuel: One of earliest doors you'll have to enter is literally a monster. However, this monster never appears ever again after this initial trap.
• Player Punch: Pretty much everything The Doctor does.
• Porting Disaster: Cave Story 3D (due to its immensely garish and primitive-looking 3D graphics and the fact that it is/was ludicrously over-priced and absolutely did not need to exist on the 3DS).
  • Also, the WiiWare version of the original Cave Story (originally) became this in its North American release (due to its music being horribly butchered and getting its percussion cut/glitched out of itself).
• Port Overdosed: Easily one of gaming's ultimate examples of this; like many of gaming's other examples (cough, such as Earthworm Jim, cough), it also requires you to track down very specific versions of itself in order to get all of its content.
• Ruined FOREVER: There is news that a Nintendo eShop specific version of this game will be released, with the features from the Wii Ware and Steam versions of the game. Due to the existence of a retail 3DS version, not to mention that the DSiWare version is on the eShop already, some are not amused that people will get a superior version for less money
• That One Boss: Monster X and the Core are the main offenders.
  • Monster X is a mine car that drives from one side of the room to the other, forcing you to climb on it to avoid being crushed, and can only be damaged when it stops to unleash a torrent of bullets or homing missiles.
  • The Core has five mini-cores that together create an impressive volume of fire, and severely hampers the player's mobility by frequently flooding the room. It Turns Red by adding a current to the water and starting to use an attack which takes off 20 HP (of a maximum attainable 41 at that point).
  • To drive the point home? Most bosses are doable without getting hit. When fighting Monster X and the Core, it is barely possible to not get hit. In the Wii/Mac/Steam version's Hard Mode, you MUST beat them without getting hit because their weakest attacks do 3 points of damage, which is pretty much all the HP you're allowed to have in Hard Mode. Oh, and no missiles, either!
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Balrog's quirky Catch Phrase ("Huzzah!") became an "Oh Yeaahhh!" for the Wii Ware release. Fans were not pleased. Also, some of the music sounded worse, although in this case the consensus was nearly unanimous, with the real debate being how big a problem it was. Nicalis heard the complaints, and eventually released an update that fixed the sound, music, and a few grammar/spelling quirks.
• What Do You Mean It's Not for Kids?: The game is known for his accessible and engaging gameplay and cutesy visuals. It also features slavery and war themes, nightmarish final bosses and most of the cast dying before your eyes at regular intervals.