When is Cave Story?

2163

 

@Andy, Ahh, that slipped my mind, BUT, it does make sense that all this takes place in the Middle-East, because soldiers were deployed there, and the island has to be at the equator for assumption #3 to work, and Middle Eastern lands are currently the scapegoat, so I wouldn't say that it's set back that far.

Assuming no fall in society and no pseudo-earth or alternate dimension "in our past" nonsense it can only be Saudi Arabia. None of the others use the term "King" to describe a monarch.

 

half-life213 had some good theorizing going on there, but I have some different ideas as to when Cave Story may have taken place.

One of the things he didn't do was find anything that exist in the real world that also exist in the game to find a refrence to a year. I don't blame him though, it is difficult, but I did find one. One thing that stuck out just enough to get an idea of when it took place, and in a place where you may or may not have seen it. I am, of course, talking about the computers.

Spoiler

You're probably wondering how I manage to find that out even though the game doesn't give you any information on how the computer really works. Belive it or not, the info is right in the computer's sprite. White text on a blue background. And it only used text. I know about many computers, enough to know that there were (at least) two extremely popular computers that used this color configuration:

The Atari 8-bit home computer line (400/800/XL/XE) [1979-1989]
and the Commodore 64 [1982-1994]

So now we know that the computers that could have been used were produced from 1979 to 1994. Now another question get's raised: "How do you know that the computers aren't just ancient and the game takes place hundreds of years after these computers were produced?" The answer to that is actually another question: "How did they get there in the first place?"

The only logical answer is that they were brought during the war. It would make sense that humans would need to establish a base on the island, especially because they would need to activate and monitor the robots (That might include Quote and Curly, but that's what I'm here to prove).

And clearly, the only way they would be able to monitor the robots is with those computers. So we can assume that the war took place between the years 1979 and 1999 (We'll generously add five years just in case the robots took a really long time to make *cough*quoteandcurly*cough*.)

But that's when the war took place. Cave Story takes place ten years AFTER that war. So we have to add ten to the earliest and latest years that the war could have taken place, and we're left with Cave Story taking place around 1989 to 2009.

If the war took place any later than that, they would probably would have used newer computers.

Remember, it's just a theory based on the type of computers used in the game. There is no definite answer as to when Cave Story takes place.

 

what about the helicopter and the laser guns and the rocket and the teleporters
can you give me a rough time period for those too?

 

Helicopters have been around for decades. The rocket launcher is, well, a rocket launcher, what do you expect? They've also been around for a long time. As for the Polar Star/Machine Gun/Spur, that's another theory altogether (Which I plan on writing about after I finish this), and the teleporters, well, I'm pretty sure this takes place in a universe both similar and parallel to ours where teleporters exist. Don't believe me? Think of it like this:

Spoiler

Does our world have a giant, floating island inhabited by bipedal bunnies who can speak on it? Because I would love to know about it.

Any more questions?

(Oh yeah, here's that link: http://www.cavestory.org/forums/threads/5660/

 

From what I can tell, CS is supposed to take place in the 21st century that was predicted by my dad's generation(the tomorrow that never came). Where levitating motor vehicles, adults in white coats, and very human androids were supposed to exist.

 

The thing about alternate histories is that technology can develop at different rates and in different ways. Portable computing may have never taken off. IBM computers may have never become popular, or this might be a completely different OS that never emerged or became popular in our timeline. Hell, command line might still be popular.

You say it is an alternate timeline, but seem to expect a few things to change while everything else stays the same. You have obviously never heard of the butterfly effect (or chaos theory if you prefer). Even the smallest change in a point of a timeline (the divergence point) can create massive ripples across that point's future. This is why alternate timelines are so unpredictable, and is also why even if Cave Story was canonically an alternate timeline Earth rather than a future Earth, or a pseudo-Earth there is nothing to suggest the year from the computers in any case, as their history of technological advancement could be thoroughly diverse from ours.

 

andwhyisit made a really good point: I'm smart AND stupid. I dunno how that works, it could just depend on the time of day or something.

The other (better) point he made was that whatever other parallel universe it takes place in, things could (and more likely than not, will) drastically change if even one thing is changed (yes, I've heard of the Butterfly/Chaos theory). But if we assume that it actually does take place in an alternate universe, I'd be more concerned as to what the surface is like as opposed to what year/s Cave Story takes place in. I really have no idea as to why that didn't occur to me earlier.

Think about it though... What would it be like on the surface? Skyscrapers? Huts? People? Androids? Sports? Video Games? BBS? Internet? 42 being the answer to life, the Universe and everything? Me? You? Anyone?

How about this: I'm not even going to try on this assumption:

Whatever parallel universe it takes place in, it probably happened before the year 2084.
Why, you may ask? Robotron 2084! (Read the story and you'll figure out what I'm talking about.)
...
If you really think about it, the Green Robotrons and Balrog look kinda similar. And yes, 42 is a refrence, but to something completely different.

 

The war obviously happened late December of 1994

 

in an alternate universe where Bush Sr won his second term

 

The war obviously happened late December of 1994

If the war happened in December 20th, 1994, and I was born in December 21st, 1994, who ended the war? I did. Quote and Curly (in a way).

 

Quote and Curly failed if I recall. Someone else ended the war.

Actually we only have confirmation that Curly failed when I think about it. However given that the pair were struggling against Miakid while together I can only imagine that Quote would do even worse by himself.

 

Quote and Curly failed if I recall. Someone else ended the war.

Actually we only have confirmation that Curly failed when I think about it. However given that the pair were struggling against Miakid while together I can only imagine that Quote would do even worse by himself.

Maybe Quote had some sort of dark secret that was revealed when Curly failed. He ended the war and controlled himself from being an evil overlord himself. Or maybe he didn't and its been lurking inside him, waiting for the right moment to strike...

 

That doesn't explain Quote's state by the end of it. If he won, then why was he out of operation for 10 years?

 

That doesn't explain Quote's state by the end of it. If he won, then why was he out of operation for 10 years?

Maybe he furfilled his mission and went into stasis?

 

First off: Why did Quote go into statis? Clearly, he's not Y2K compatible.

Second: Dunc2403 says it took place in the December of 1994. 1994 < 2084, so yes, that's a possibility.

And Noxid said... Uh... Um... I can't even... No. Just... No. If that happened, I would have probably moved to Canada. Imagine if Bush Sr was Y2K incompatible. And while we're on the subject, imagine if politics were Y2K incompatible.

 

My post is more plausible than you think, because, as TLincoln clearly noticed, December 20th, 1994 is exactly ten years before the release of Cave Story.

 

I always figured it just took place on an alternate Earth where chunks of earth float, humans have green hair, and the crazy shit in Cave Story can actually happen.

 

As many before have stated, who says that it is even on earth? There could be a planet that has an extremely thick atmosphere, so much that the island could float up to the top to a much less dense layer? The surface could be protected by this steel like alloy that has recently been developed, which can handle extreme pressure. They could have been one of the first planets, or the very last. Heck, it could be even real right now, in some alternate multi-verse.

 

Well, according to string theory, everything you could possibly imagine is real in some alternate universe.