Ikachan coming to both 3DS eShop and DSiWare

Ikachan, a retro platformer from Cave Story developer Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya is coming to the 3DS eShop, in addition to its initially planned DSiWare release, publisher Nicalis revealed today.

The title sees you navigating a squid through a series of underwater caves, collecting items and leveling up as you go. It's a simple, yet charming little game that's available for free through Pixel's official site, and the two versions coming to Nintendo's handhelds won't be too drastically different from the original — or each other. They'll be identical, save for a tweaking of their respective display resolutions.

"When the eShop was launched, players could (and still can) purchase DSiWare games on their 3DS," a Nicalis blog post reads. "This is pretty cool, but there's a big issue for me, personally. The DSi has a resolution of 256×192 (top screen) while the 3DS has a resolution of 400×240 (let's say 320×240 for this discussion). If you divide 320 by 256, you get 1.25 — basically, the length is about 25 percent more on the 3DS (talking QVGA resolution here). What that means is that if we want DSi games to run full-screen on a 3DS, they need to be stretched by an additional 25 percent over the maximum."

Cave Story was recently ported to the 3DS eShop to avoid the blowing-up of its DSiWare version — Ikachan, when it launches, will follow the same model. Check out the trailer below to see the pixelated squid adventure in action.