Just played through and managed to beat it!

Great entry; that was a lot of fun! I do have a couple nitpicks:
You already know the coins being uncollectable is a bit off-putting at first, but no big deal especially where you mention it first thing. also made my way to one of the floating disk things. (Also not collectible) and got a little discouraged when that wasn't the goal either. I eventually found the right things though. One thought: Could you have just set the image for those sprites to be empty in your chr file to hide them in a quick-and-dirty way? I tend to let a lot of hacks like that slide when I do things like Ludum Dare - it's a short coding contest; I'm not gonna be maintaining my code for years to come.
the other thing - I was kinda sad there was no music or sound. I'll be the first to admit I'm awful at both of those things - I've yet to make a song I've truly liked and my sfx aren't much better. That said, in playing games by others over time I've found any music/sound at all really adds to the game. It's something I'm really sad I didn't get in the Gameboy game I did a while back.
That aside, I really enjoyed playing it.
I really liked the direction mechanic. The controls took a moment to get used to (my up is now the character's left? What is this madness!? .. then my brain broke) but it made sense and worked. I also really liked the art (esp the main character) - it's really hard to make anything with a 2-3 day limit. My frog looks like a paint blob got in an unfortunate accident, so I have to respect that.
Always a pleasure to see more retro games made during these things; thanks for a fun little diversion!