This is really nice. I get the feeling you were going for a timing-style attack? If so it feels pretty good. I did struggle to understand that to move forward I needed to drop down at first. Once I did that, I collected a few of the power ups, but I don't really know what they did to be honest. Your description mentions 'x' to throw/recall but I couldn't figure out what that actually did.
Very nice presentation, good style, and a nice theme interpretation.