Cave Story Creator's Next Project: Games for 3DS and iOS

That will change this summer, when the game finally sees release as a 3DS retail title courtesy of Nippon Ichi Software. This is no straight port, however, but a full remake of the game with polygonal 2.5D graphics and new content. While fans are already sputtering in disappointment about these changes, Amaya doesn't see the shift in visual style as a compromise.

Amaya admits that the original game was built to satisfy his specific tastes. "I designed Cave Story because I loved video games, and I wanted a way to bring together my art and music, and making a game seemed like a perfect way to do both. I was inspired by all the games I loved, especially Metroid, Metal Slug, and [Falcom's PC action RPG] Romancia. I think you can tell how I was inspired if you play the game. I wasn't trying to create a new style of game, but a collection of different ideas.

"I realize that most people look at Cave Story and think it looks too simple," he continues. "Adding 3D graphics will make it more appealing to more people. But there's still room for games with classic, pixel-style art. I used to think only older people like pixel art, but Cave Story has helped me realize that some younger gamers like it too."

To prove his point, his next game -- currently code-named Rockfish, a winking reference to Rockman, the Japanese name for Mega Man -- is a 2D iPhone game with a strong visual resemblance to Cave Story, though much simpler in style. It hearkens back to an older Pixel production, a simple action game called Ika-chan.

"When I made Ika-chan on PC, I wanted to give people the ability to move left and right and swim, but back then keyboards couldn't read that many keystrokes at once. So with this game, I can finally make that possible."

Rockfish seems like a fairly simple game itself: it casts players in the role of a kasago (an ugly, spiny fish, sometimes called a scorpion fish) and lets them move side to side, with a swim button to make the fish move upward, like the water stages of Super Mario Bros. Unlike Mario, though, the game is tough right away, as you begin in a narrow corridor lined with spikes (taken straight from the opening section of Cave Story) that must be avoided. I lasted about 30 seconds before sending the poor kasago to its doom.

"In terms of complexity, it's somewhere between Cave Story and Ika-chan," says Amaya. And, like Cave Story, it's designed very much around his interests: Amaya has recently taken up fishing as a hobby. "I made the character a kasago because it's the kind of fish I always catch, rather than the ones I want to catch," he jokes.

But going back to the 3DS version of Cave Story, this remake is no one-man project. It's being designed and programmed by Nicalis in close cooperation with Pixel. Currently, the 3DS rendition is extremely early -- lighting and shadow effects have yet to be added to the environments, level boundaries need proper defining, and the 3D character models have yet to be implemented. But the work-in-progress is running on the framework of the original game, which means that the most important considerations (namely, its content and controls) are spot-on. Even at this early stage, diminutive hero Quote retains his distinctive floaty jumps, and the weapons and upgrades work exactly as they should.

The 3D overhaul gives the familiar environments of the game a new feel. The Mimiga village from early in the adventure now feels like a rickety jumble of structures in a vast cavern illuminated by skylights in high, natural ceilings. The Egg Corridor zone, in which a dozen dragon eggs incubate, takes on the appearance of a high-tech lab grafted onto a bare rock structure, with dangling wires in the backgrounds and servo motor devices in the foreground. The corridor is now shaped like a half-torus, too, as the egg stations wrap around a central structure. These are ultimately small changes, but they liven up the game world. Nicalis' designers are taking special care to keep the stage layouts consistent with the 2D game but to make sense of the world's structure; you'll find no floating platforms here, only protrusions from the background.

Cave Story's characters are likewise receiving a full 3D overhaul. Their full-size reworkings come off a bit awkward and ungainly to fans, but at his proper display resolution -- two dozen pixels tall on a three-inch screen -- the 3D version of Quote looks exactly like his bitmap counterpart. Nicalis really seems to be going to great lengths to ensure Cave Story 3D will be a fully faithful rendition of the original.

It won't be a complete carbon copy, however, as Nicalis is adding new material to the game for 3DS. Or rather, "new" material; much of the extra content will consist of pieces that Amaya removed in the process of refining Cave Story's beta version into its finished form. Some pieces of music will be replaced with equivalent beta tunes, and a few areas will be reworked to incorporate elements of their prototypical layouts.

"There's all this extra Cave Story material that exists, that fans have never seen," Nicalis' Tyrone Rodriguez told me as he demonstrated a brief playthrough of Cave Story's 2002 beta release. "We want to add some of this content in to give them a fresh experience. I want people to hear music that sounds familiar and say, 'Is this a remix?'"

Currently, Nicalis and NIS are aiming to make Cave Story 3D a summer release, placing it right at the end of Nintendo's "launch window" for the system in the U.S. NIS hasn't formally announced any release plans outside North America, but they'll likely be publishing it in Japan as well.

And if Cave Story 3D is a smash, what then? Amaya talks down possibilities of a sequel. "There's a lot to Cave Story's world, but I tried to create depth of story by offering bits and parts of the full tale, leaving many things a mystery. I don't want to explain these things. I would rather other people imagine the full story -- and honestly, whatever they imagine is probably more satisfying to them than anything I would come up with."