Exactly where are we suppose to click to start the download?

Looks like you can click on the "Guxt" link in the very first sentence, the "Click" link at the end of the review, or on the image itself to initiate the download.

Well, you see, before I posted my question, I'd tried all three suggested above, and none of them got any downloading going, neither the "Guxt" link or the "Click" link or the image itself... But of course, NOW all of them do. :)

Perhaps the server was down when you tried. I'm glad it's working for you now. =)

Yay, another work from Pixel! I have very fond memories of my time spent with Cave Story; it was truly wondrous, so I am pleased to hear this announcement.

Wow, I keep... dying. Oh, wait, now I got further. This is fun! I hope this turns out to give the same quality of enjoyment I got from playing Cave Story.

I just did a little research, and found out a game called Ikachan, Pixel's predecessor to Cave Story. I didn't know of this before. Has anyone played it?

Tayrin - Ikachan is an "undersea adventure" sidescroller with the same metroidvania mechanics and plot-driven gameplay of Doukutsu. Naturally, gravity is lower and inertia is higher--you actually spend very little time resting *on* the platforms, instead mostly floating or coasting. Movement, to my recollection, operates on a novel mechanic: Essentially you propel yourself by holding down and releasing a button, with force proportional to how long you held it. The direction defaults to up, but you can tilt to the left or right. Attacks are closely tied to movement; the first attack you obtain, for instance, allows you to cause damage by hitting things with your head in the course of normal

Mechanically, the game is interesting, but it's overall pretty weak. It's very short, and in the course of the game, your character's abilities barely develop. The story resolves too quickly, and feels unfinished. It shows that this is Pixel's earlier work, and Doukutsu is the better game.

I'd like to see Pixel revisit Ikachan, though, since the mechanics are so unique, and since there's nothing in it as it stands that really detracts from its potential.

Of course, you should take this with a grain of salt, as it's been some time since I played it, and this is only my opinion. :)

Thank you very much for the information, gabrielbenjamin. :) I was not expecting such a comprehensive and helpful response.

I have sought out Ikachan and played it a little now, and I see what you mean. It looks fun enough, and I'm curious, so I'll keep trying and see how far I get. Thanks again!

a couple secrets that may be of interest:

im sure there are more, so post whatever else you find!

This brings me an interesting story about Ikachan and translations.

Long ago, after I first found Doukutsu Monogatari, I stumbled on Ikachan. I played it for a while, but then got stuck, as it was in Japanese that was turned into cavespeak by an English Direct X.

Then, shortly later, I found a "Translation". I use quotes because it was simply horrible. First off, for some insane reason, there were no spaces. Underscores were used instead. Instead of "Yes" and "No" questions, it asked "hai" and "iee" questions. And whoever translated it looked like he just stuck the text in babelfish and stuck the result in the game. But at least it was enough to finish the game.

Much later, I decided I that I would try to do a much better translation, as any translation would be better then babelfish. So, with my Japanese text editor in hand, I set out to translate.

The first difficulty I hit was the opening. It had some weird philosophical musings that were missing in the translation. I could see why. It seemed almost as weird in the original text as it did translated. Also, there was something that could either be a request for bug reports, a warning, or a copyright notice of some sort. I didn't know what it was though. So I translated everything the best I could and moved on to the main text.

There I encountered even more trouble. For one, whitespace was ignored and so I was forced to use underscores. Then I discovered overly long lines were cut off. And when I tried to change the Yes/no graphics, it didn't work! And so, slowly,to my horror, my translation became the horrible one. I abandoned the project in disgust.

Then, more recently, I discovered a new translation. It fixed the underscores, had Yes/No instead of hai/iee, read wonderfully, even translated the credits. It had only one problem. It wasn't faithful to the original text. Here's an example (the /s and +s are control characters for the game.):

Original Japanese:

My (bad) attempted literal translation:

Good non-literal translation:

As you can see, there's quite a difference. Still, if you're looking for a translation to read, the Good non-literal one is by far the best.

I believe I just completed Ikachan... What a crazy ending!

another secret:

P.S.

username: