SGDK VS cave-story-md

It might have needed two at one point. I see both mentioned in a few places, but the wiki appears to say you need the full path. https://github.com/Stephane-D/SGDK/wiki/SGDK-Usage

P.S. The plan down the line is to at some point add sprites to it and port it to the Sega Genesis using SGDK so it would no longer be a text adventure game. However for now I'm having fun practicing my C skills with this and hopefully will have a cool project for my portfolio.

Examples: - Someone I know created machine-optimized library in c and asm to accelerate compression, erasure coding, and encryption on Intel Xeon CPUs (https://github.com/intel/isa-l) which runs those ops WAY faster than the standard linux libraries. - My friend is making a retro SEGA genesis game using a C and asm dev kit (https://github.com/Stephane-D/SGDK)

If you are specifically looking into the Genesis you should look into SGDK, the sega development toolkit https://github.com/Stephane-D/SGDK.

SGDK may be one reason. Nothing comparable on the SNES side.

or the MD version to avoid loading screens

There's a Genesis port of Cave Story, in case you've missed it.

There is a Genesis port also: https://github.com/andwn/cave-story-md

Link to the port here: Cave Story MD

It's also highly accessible and available on an insane amount of platforms. You could play it on emulator handhelds from 2008 that could barely handle SNES. You could play it on a Dreamcast or a PSP or an Amiga PC. There's even a port in progress for the freaking Sega Genesis of all things.

Cave Story for Mega Drive

Very cool. I've been playing the Megadrive version recently. It makes some concessions that I imagine the PSX port wouldn't have to.