Daisuke "Pixel" Amaya is one of just a few Japanese names in the indie gaming pantheon, after developing 2004's Cave Story entirely on his own as a labor of love. This year, he came to the Game Developers Conference to present a long-overdue postmortem about the development of Cave Story and to promote the upcoming 3DS remake, which he's working on with developer Nicalis and publisher NIS America. During this presentation, Amaya showed never-before-seen footage of a beta version of Cave Story, including locations, characters, and enemies that didn't make it into the beloved indie game.

Soon after the presentation, we sat down with the game designer, and found out that despite the popularity of Cave Story, he still has a day job. For now. " I still work full time as a salaryman," Amaya told Joystiq, "but from April I'm going to be a full time developer." He explained that he planned to leave his job as a programmer for large-scale printing equipment a year ago, but "everybody was like 'are you really okay with developing games?' They weren't really sure if I could support myself." As he also had to train his replacement, his transition to full-time game designer was delayed. " I have a wife, I have kids, so [his co-workers] were a bit worried. It's not like they doubt my skill."