Destructoid recently conducted an interview with Tyrone Rodriguez, the President of Nicalis, discussing a multitude of topics such as the new Cave Story+ Halloween update on Steam. Also, more importantly, Rodriguez revealed a bunch of info regarding upcoming Nicalis projects and releases. Most notable is the mention of a new project by Daisuke “Pixel” Amaya for the iOS, which the Nicalis president describes as a “Metroid-like” platformer. iOS or no, this is pretty sweet news indeed. Also coming to iOS with optional touch and tilt control, as confirmed by the publisher, is Nifflas’ beautiful Night Sky.
Other news includes the squid swimmer game Ikachan coming to the 3DS eShop at the same time as the DSiWare version (hopefully) sometime in December. These will feature new content in the form of enemies, areas and more. The 3DS version will have a change in aspect ratio, much like Cave Story which is already available on the Nintendo eShop.
Speaking of the eShop version of Cave Story, Nicalis is thinking of releasing the Christmas re-skin of Steam’s Cave Story+ in a free update for the eShop. Nothing is written in stone as of yet, but should the update come it would be before this year’s Christmas.
The insanely hard platformer Aban Hawkins and the 1,001 Spikes has been confirmed to feature over 12 playable characters in the game’s multiplayer versus mode, including cameos from characters like Commander Video (Bit.Trip series) and some of the Tempura of the Dead cast. Another multiplayer mode, where players compete by climbing a tower to reach a damsel in distress, was also revealed. The game is now looking at a 2013 release on the 3DS and Wii U, but Nicalis is also seeing if they can publish it on the PS Vita and Steam Greenlight as well.
The 2D fighting game, Yatagarasu, also coming to the 3DS eShop was apparently being developed by 3 former SNK employees. Nicalis joined to help optimize the game to take full advantage of the 3DS’ hardware capabilities. The possibility of an online multiplayer component for the game was also discussed in the interview, though it will only be concluded if it can run with minimal loss of performance.
To finish off this large slew of news: Cave Story has received an ESRB rating for the PS3, Xbox 360 and PS Vita – though no plans exist currently for porting the game to these systems.
