I’ve been playing a lot of Cave Story lately. It’s brilliant. After hearing about it for so long, I finally decided to play it. What I’ve come to discover is the slow unveiling of perfection. It’s subtle and easy to miss, but it’s there. To me it is a game about a bunch of games I really love; almost a parody or a simple homage. I hate it when “journalists” write that something is a “love letter to _____”, so I won’t bother saying that right here. At any rate, a large number of people that I know haven’t played it, and when prompted to do so complain that the controls are “really awful” and “dude hey my computer just exploded” (sup Ayesha and Ryan Butler), but I usually just shrug and toast a bagel or something.

In recent years I’ve been strategically picky about which games are worth sitting through. It’s almost frightening how much research goes in to the purchasing of a single game. I’ve only let my guard down once in my life, and I ended up with Romancing SaGa for the Playstation 2. Woo! Goddamn was that ever the worst game I’ve ever played. I mean, some people have to walk this earth with the knowledge that they intentionally purchased La Pucelle Tactics, and I am truly in mourning for those people (sorry, Ryan Butler). That something can be so imaginative and warm-feeling and not cost a cent is truly something. It is as endearing as it is fun. So just to be an all right guy I went ahead and added a link to the sidebar (Cave Story, not Romancing SaGa lol).

A link to the American Visionary Art Museum has been added also, just because that place is so badass. I happened to be in Baltimore screening for a clinical trial I have no intention of being in (they pay you $50 just for a urine test and a free physical), so after a 60-year-old woman removed slimy ECG electrodes that had been planted all over my barren, boyish chest, I hopped over to AVAM to buy some cheap crap from their gift shop. It’s a strange place. It’s like they collected all the strange little stuff you remember owning when you were a kid and made a store out of it. I’m always amazed to find what I guess an older person would refer to as “memorable knickknacks” every time I’m in there. The museum itself is fairly unconventional; they only accept artwork from untrained artists. For instance on the upper levels there’s a whole section dedicated to people with OCD, and one particular exhibit about some woman with down syndrome who created. . . something out of yawn. Anyway, it’s the prettiest building in Baltimore, which is strange because the exterior is made out of broken pieces of a mirror glued to the wall. In other words it’s not really anything at all.

(Sidenote: A review of something probably foreign has been added to this fine website, so give it a read if you think Oyn truly is the self-proclaimed queen of the chicken coop.)

I won’t be going to the Visionary Art Museum this weekend though, for this is the weekend of Mother 3. Lord help me, I need to beat Cave Story before I ignore the rest of my life and everyone in it for 30 consecutive hours. I’ve played through it 3 times so far, with maybe 3 or 4 incomplete play-throughs here and there. When the English translation is released this weekend (a certain robotic dinosaur-loving friend has calmed my trembling fears on that one), I will play it in my walk-in closet with large headphones and a steadfast determination that would be dangerous to interfere with. When it is finished and done – that is, everything and all things – I will emerge from my refuge a silent man. That’s something that Mother 3 does, I think, and Cave Story is anxious to reanimate in me.