One of the highlights of Cave Story is the soundtrack. Written by Pixel using his own OrgMaker, the music is reminiscent of the best of the retro era while exuding its own originality and charm. As is usually the case, the soundtrack grows better once you’ve played the game and can associate tracks with specific events and scenes, but still, at least for me, this is one of those rare game OSTs that pulls you in on first listen.

Download the original Japanese mp3s. As an alternative, I’ve uploaded a translated version with the title screen as album art; grab it here.

Next, we have the Cave Story Remix Project.

The Cave Story Remix Project was a 2006 fan compilation, something along the lines of what you’d see from the OCReMix scene… think original 8-bit tunes with a nice helping of synth and guitar love. While there are highlights in the bunch, it’s a solid album altogether, and all 22 tracks deserve their place in the compilation.

The download links for the full album on the official site are dead, so I’ve gone ahead and mirrored it here. Who knows how long these files will stick around, we’ll see if my server stays happy with both versions of the soundtrack available for download.

And hey, once you’ve got ’em both, if you really want to flaunt your indie gamer cred, fire up that copy of Audiosurf and go nuts.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLktQNvwo_k]