Kid Icarus (1986)

Beat using slow motion mode. At first I found the controls too floaty and had numerous falls to death in the underworld, but by the later levels I was used to the controls. I never got used to being unable to jump while pressing up though. The underworld was brutally difficult due to the lack of healing and fast flying enemies. It took a lot of save state scumming to scrape by when I was on 1hp. I missed 1 healing pickup by going into a door. The difficult enemies encouraged me to progress upward to avoid combat, and there was an element of stealth to sneaking past the grim reapers to avoid the nasty flood of little minions they spawned. When I beat a training room and got a new weapon I could not figure out how to use it, and had no idea what the little hammers were for. So I checked a walkthrough and got the low down for the game. Ok I need to kill enemies and collect hearts to get score to raise max hp before I can use the bonus weapons. I chose the rod for its circling orbs that would allow me to do contact damage to enemies but did not get to use it until the overworld. The dungeon at the end of the underworld was an interesting mix up to the gameplay style. I spent all my hearts on healing only to later find a healing room. Stuff was ridiculously expensive. I liked how there was a map but rather than farm enemies to get enough hearts to buy the pencil and torch, I used online maps. It would have been far better to have those map effects as baseline and add in map and compass pickups to show the entire layout and location of the boss and other useful rooms. The hammers freed little angels from stone to help against the boss. I freed 3 and they destroyed cerebus like nothing.

On to the overworld and this was a standard side scrolling platformer instead of the more unusual vertical scrolling before. The 2 orbs made it very easy to kill enemies and I found myself finally collecting enough hearts to buy stuff. I got a potion, later a barrel and then added another potion each time I found a shop and could afford it. Never bought any feathers because I had save states to fix any platforming fails. I also never had to use any of those potions. Soon I got the bow upgrade and was kicking ass with long range shots. I randomly found my way through the dungeon without looking at the map but this dragon boss destroyed my little helpers this time. It was not difficult but the fight dragged on so long as I had to whittle its around 200hp down with 3 damage per shot. After it died the lava turned yellow like the healing waters so I jumped in. Nope it was still lava. Then heaven was back to vertical platforming. It was a little trickier than the underworld with moving platforms and tighter jumps but the enemies were much easier with the power weapons. I soon got the fireball too and towards the end got max hp but never did progress past 3 str. The final dungeon was much larger than the others. Blindly I went around in a circle finding a healing fountain. Then I looked at the online map and worked out the route to the boss. Again my little minions did not last long. I don't know what the boss was supposed to be, some kind of floating ooze head or something. It was not difficult, easier than the dragon actually. The final stage was a very simple side scrolling shoot em up. He could only shoot 1 projectile at a time but it passed through enemies and killed in 1 hit so this was very easy. The final boss medusa was a classic shoot em up boss; a wall with 1 weak point to shoot at. It took a long time to win but it was almost silly easy. I got the middle ending because I missed max str and hearts.

I may have played this back in the day, hard to tell. I enjoyed it more than Castlevania 1 and Metroid but the early difficulty prevents it from being great. It should have had a chance for enemies to drop health and/or drastically reduced shop prices.

7.5/10

Preliminary: Welp, on a little playtest I got to Stage 2. I'm not in love with it so far, the controls seem a bit delayed or clunky, but I know how I am with platformers, let alone ones with action-adventure/RPG elements... we shall see. I already got the controls and basic concepts of the enemies down pretty good. Just something sort of meh about it so far compared to something like Wing of Madoola. The Sound is good so far though

Welp on the third stage I still just wasn't having fun. It's missing something. And the jingle I liked is already getting old... I wanted to at least get through a boss fight though... but that seems like ages away.

This has all the components of a game I should like--platforming, shops, character progression, the ability to fight back/shoot enemies, cute concept... But it's not fun. I dunno if it's the bad collision masks, the clunky feel to the controls, the annoying enemy mechanics early in the game that didn't allow for me to get into it first before they onslaught me with frustrating mechanics, or that I came straight from Wing of Madoola, but I'm just not enjoying it. Moving on. (I got near the end of the third stage, had about 200 Hearts, hadn't bought anything...). Too bad cuz I wanted to like this one.

Kinda messed up/telling/sad that this game has such a cult following and I had heard of it, yet had never heard anything about Wing of Madoola. That's likely more so due to the release locations but still. Interesting.

It's been a long time since I played something that rewards both patience and repetition (farming) as much as Kid Icarus. It is a game where you start very weak, the enemies seem unfair and the apparently empty rooms that you find are quite confusing.

Upon reaching the first dungeon, I stopped playing to read the manual and check out a Wiki. Then I started the game from scratch to take advantage of the upgrades that you can get in the early levels, which require killing a lot of enemies. While the increased HP and attack strength are very useful, the "Crystal Rod" item really makes the game a lot easier.

Once I got all three "Enchanted Weapons" I started to actually have fun with the game, as it was satisfying to finally become powerful after being so weak in the beginning.

Completed in 5 hours on emulator, using fastforward for early farming. Not for everyone, but I liked it.

In 1986, Nintendo released three games for their "Adventure Series": The Legend of Zelda, Metroid and Kid Icarus. These three games were unlike anything home console gaming had ever seen before. They involved complex worlds, full of secrets, and players need to utilize maps and strategy guides to get far ahead. While Super Mario Bros. showed that the NES could play games of arcade-level quality, these three games showed the NES also played games that would never be possible in an arcade. These were games people expected for the PC, but never a home console. It was an historic moment for home console gaming.

While Zelda and Metroid are held up as two of the best video game franchises in history, Kid Icarus tends to be forgotten. Out of these three games, it is the black sheep. Is that a fair assessment? Why did it get overlooked and ignored, while Zelda and Metroid continue to win praise to this day?

In this game, you play Pit, a young soldier in what appears to be a world modeled after Greek mythology. You go through four different worlds, using a bow and arrow to fight off wards of monsters. Throughout the world, you will find shops, enemy lairs, tests of endurance, hot springs for healing and mysterious rooms that sometimes are empty and sometimes offer you weapons/items/upgrades for your journey. At the end of each level, you will get a score based on how you did (how many enemies did you kill? How many times did you get hit? How many arrows did you use, etc.) Depending on how many points you achieve, you can expand your life bar or strength of your weapons, making Kid Icarus one of the earliest examples of an RPG-like experience system. Each world (except world 4) has four levels, with the fourth level being a maze-like fortress, where you need to solve puzzles and figure out the correct path to a boss that you must defeat to get the treasure. The same repeats for worlds 2 and 3. World 4 is a completely different style, where you use the treasures you found in the three worlds to help you through.

My opinion of the game is this: modern day quality of life improvements make this game much more tolerable. Save states and rewind are a life saver. I could see if you played this on the original NES how you could get fed up. Many of the challenges are more cheap and artificially frustrating than they are fair. Also, this game is an "inverted" difficulty curve, in that game gets EASIER the further along you go. By the end, the final boss is so easy that you feel a little cheated.

Overall, I had fun with this game, but it doesn't have the same "gravatas" as Zelda or Metroid. If Nintendo gave it more TLC as a franchise, maybe it wouldn't be such a black sheep.