>>715689317
There's obviously Kero Blaster, which is in some very specific ways better than Cave Story.
But, other than that, it does seem strange that there weren't a big wave of story-driven shoot 'em ups like that.
Braid and Super Meat Boy both spawned a ton of puzzle-platformers and ''sadistic'' platformers, so I don't know what happened there.
Maybe Cave Story was just a bit early to really catch on, despite still being massively popular.