Long before Kid Icarus: Uprising hit the Nintendo 3DS (and we’re talking 25 years, give or take), the little warrior Pit went on his first adventure across Angel Land in Kid Icarus for the NES. Given the release of Kid Icarus: Uprising, Nintendo thought it’d be prudent to give the younger generation the chance to download Pit’s original 1986 outing from the 3DS eShop.
Kid Icarus is an important piece of gaming history, but be forewarned: when people talk about games that are “Nintendo hard,” this game inevitably pops up in the conversation sooner than later. And even though the 3D Classics version of Kid Icarus supplies Pit with some gameplay tweaks to make life easier, it’s still no walk through Elysium.
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Action/Platforming
ESRB Rating: E
Compatible With: Nintendo 3DS
Kid Icarus is an important piece of gaming history, but be forewarned: when people talk about games that are “Nintendo hard,” this game inevitably pops up in the conversation sooner than later. And even though the 3D Classics version of Kid Icarus supplies Pit with some gameplay tweaks to make life easier, it’s still no walk through Elysium.
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Action/Platforming
ESRB Rating: E
Compatible With: Nintendo 3DS
THE BASICS: Fallen Angel
As is the case with Kid Icarus: Uprising, the story for the original Kid Icarus plays fast and loose with Greek mythology. The game takes place in a peaceful realm called Angel Land, which is ruled over by the Goddess of Light, Palutena, and the Goddess of Darkness, Medusa. When Medusa starts making trouble for the human inhabitants of Angel Land, Palutena banishes her to the Underworld. Medusa retaliates by launching a surprise attack on Palutena’s heavenly palace, and takes her prisoner. Pit, the little angel in charge of Palutena’s royal guard, manages to break free of his Underworld prison and begins to make his way up, up, and up to the Overworld and Sky World in hopes of rescuing his mistress.
Kid Icarus is Nintendo action in its oldest, truest form. Pit jumps, shoots at enemies, and piles on points in hopes of leveling up and increasing his life bar. He can also buy items to help him on his quest, and if he’s especially skillful, he’ll be gifted with special treasures courtesy of Zeus himself.
Most of the levels in Kid Icarus scroll from bottom to top, or from left to right. Every fourth level is a “Fortress,” which takes special finesse and skill to navigate (they’re essentially mazes!), and have only one exit that’s guarded by one of three Underworld bosses.
With some luck and a whole lot of skill, Pit will eventually make his way up to Sky World and challenge Medusa to a final show down.
Kid Icarus is Nintendo action in its oldest, truest form. Pit jumps, shoots at enemies, and piles on points in hopes of leveling up and increasing his life bar. He can also buy items to help him on his quest, and if he’s especially skillful, he’ll be gifted with special treasures courtesy of Zeus himself.
Most of the levels in Kid Icarus scroll from bottom to top, or from left to right. Every fourth level is a “Fortress,” which takes special finesse and skill to navigate (they’re essentially mazes!), and have only one exit that’s guarded by one of three Underworld bosses.
With some luck and a whole lot of skill, Pit will eventually make his way up to Sky World and challenge Medusa to a final show down.
THE GOOD
It’s challenging -- If you’re looking for a game that won’t hold your hand or bog you down with tutorials, then oh boy, is Kid Icarus ever for you. The path to eventual victory is only accessible through repeated failure, and netting those coveted power-ups can be tricky. Kid Icarus: Uprising lets you alter the game’s difficulty to your liking, but Kid Icarus gives you one option: keep on going, or give it up.
The game grants you a sense of progress -- One of the interesting things about Kid Icarus is that the terrain (and therefore, the nature of the game’s challenge) changes considerably from world to world. You begin the game with a long climb out of the Underworld, and you keep climbing until you reach the sky. It’s impressive, as the graphics in NES games during that era didn’t often change to indicate how close you were to your goal.
Great soundtrack -- Kid Icarus has some of the catchiest chiptunes ever devised for an NES game. The music for the first level is epic—if you’re a connoisseur of Nintendo music, of course.
New 3D Classics options -- If you download Kid Icarus from the Nintendo 3DS eShop, you’ll gain a few extras that will make your playing experience a little more pleasant. The game does a nice job implementing 3D graphics courtesy of new background imagery, and the restoration of save files is nice (save files were absent from the initial North American release of the game: we had to fuddle around with a password system). Moreover, Pit’s footing is a little more sure in the 3D Classics version of the game, which means less spills. And if Pit falls, you can slow his descent by holding onto the jump button.
The game grants you a sense of progress -- One of the interesting things about Kid Icarus is that the terrain (and therefore, the nature of the game’s challenge) changes considerably from world to world. You begin the game with a long climb out of the Underworld, and you keep climbing until you reach the sky. It’s impressive, as the graphics in NES games during that era didn’t often change to indicate how close you were to your goal.
Great soundtrack -- Kid Icarus has some of the catchiest chiptunes ever devised for an NES game. The music for the first level is epic—if you’re a connoisseur of Nintendo music, of course.
New 3D Classics options -- If you download Kid Icarus from the Nintendo 3DS eShop, you’ll gain a few extras that will make your playing experience a little more pleasant. The game does a nice job implementing 3D graphics courtesy of new background imagery, and the restoration of save files is nice (save files were absent from the initial North American release of the game: we had to fuddle around with a password system). Moreover, Pit’s footing is a little more sure in the 3D Classics version of the game, which means less spills. And if Pit falls, you can slow his descent by holding onto the jump button.
THE BAD
The game might be a bit too archaic for some -- Kid Icarus is about as oldschool as Nintendo gets, and it’s less forgiving than other NES classics, like the Super Mario Bros series. This might turn some players off the game, especially since:
The game can be extremely frustrating -- Kid Icarus is a pretty brutal game. Interestingly, it starts off difficult and gets far easier as you go along, but the question is whether or not you’ll be able to tough it out until you rack up the points that are necessary to qualify for coveted power-ups. For instance, the very first level throws a whole lot of Reapers against you, arguably one of the roughest enemies to deal with in the game. They’re quick, they take off a whole lot of life if they hit you, they can summon underlings, and they take about eight to ten shots of Pit’s original-strength bow to defeat.
There’s also the matter of Pit’s long vertical climb out of the underworld. Unlike similarly-styled NES games (Metroid, for example), Pit will die if he falls off a ledge: the screen does not scroll down with him. Given the game’s many instances of tricky jumps, poor Pit will probably plunge to his death over and over.
Worst of all, when you die, Pit starts the level over and loses whatever score and power-ups he managed to accumulate. Be forewarned: levels are long!
The game can be extremely frustrating -- Kid Icarus is a pretty brutal game. Interestingly, it starts off difficult and gets far easier as you go along, but the question is whether or not you’ll be able to tough it out until you rack up the points that are necessary to qualify for coveted power-ups. For instance, the very first level throws a whole lot of Reapers against you, arguably one of the roughest enemies to deal with in the game. They’re quick, they take off a whole lot of life if they hit you, they can summon underlings, and they take about eight to ten shots of Pit’s original-strength bow to defeat.
There’s also the matter of Pit’s long vertical climb out of the underworld. Unlike similarly-styled NES games (Metroid, for example), Pit will die if he falls off a ledge: the screen does not scroll down with him. Given the game’s many instances of tricky jumps, poor Pit will probably plunge to his death over and over.
Worst of all, when you die, Pit starts the level over and loses whatever score and power-ups he managed to accumulate. Be forewarned: levels are long!
CONCLUSION: Hell’s Angel
3D Classics additions or not, Kid Icarus is still a rough game to play. If you’re a hardcore fan of Nintendo’s history and you’re craving something that is really worthy of your hardened skillz, then you’ll absolutely want to have Pit on your team. If, however, you’re simply interested in seeing where Pit got his start, then you might want to have Kid Icarus on your 3DS as a showpiece, but don’t expect to get far without an infinite store of patience and time to memorize enemy attack patterns.
Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.
