4/5 ★ – isolate_connect's review of Kid Icarus.

I bought the 3D classics: Kid Icarus version of Kid Icarus in 2012, and I tried to play it a few times over the course of a couple years until I finally scrapped my efforts. I chalked the game up to a poorly designed misstep from Nintendo’s R&D 1 department, headed by Gunpei Yokoi- the lead producer of Metroid and the Gameboy. Fast forward to 2022. I’m going through a a bunch of NES games this year and I’ve learned a lot about the design principles of games from that era. One of the first rules of the NES, outside of the Super Mario Bros series, Tetris, Bubble Bobble, and a few others is that a copy of the correlating Nintendo Power and the manual were a near necessity for maximizing the enjoyment out of these games. This game needs some explainers up front. The first two levels are by far the hardest in the game. This makes sense when you read the story. Pitt is trying to escape from his prison in the underworld from Medusa’s minions. And the underworld is both full of Medusa’s monsters and Icarus is armed only with a magic bow gifted to him by Paulina. Pitt’s mission is to make it to the sky world, kill Medusa, and rescue Paulina. Along the way, Pitt can upgrade his bow to shoot fire, produce a shield, and shoot long distance across the whole screen. Every few thousand points can net Pitt a health upgrade that does two things: increases health (obviously) and allows you to use another one of the three bow upgrades. You can also increase the bows strength up to five times from standard, bronze, silver, gold, and sacred. Finally, there are some really cool item ideas. Like a credit card to buy things even when you don’t have any hearts. And afterward every heart you collect goes to your debt. Without the knowledge of all of this the first world seems absurdly difficult, and everything in the shops in the first level is unattainable due to the very high prices. It’s not until you start to understand how the systems work and you get your first couple of upgrades that the game clicks into place. That happened for me around 2-1. World 1 takes place in the underworld, and because Pitt is trying to escape it, the game cleverly starts out with vertical scrolling levels. World 2 takes place in the over world and features more traditional side scrolling levels. World 3 is Pitts ascension to the sky world and is vertical scrolling once again. And the last level features a fully armed Pitt with all three sacred gifts. Pit can fly and the game’s last level is a side scrolling shooter that culminates in a boss fight with Medusa. It’s very smart level design that helps create a story. A lot of the game helps to tell the story set up in the manual. Kid Icarus starts out super tough, but there is no denying the game has a tight control. By the end of the 3rd world Pitt feels unstoppable and that is a rewarding feeling. Even the last Gradius inspired stage is a blast to play through and that super powered feeling doesn’t go away. After a decade of feeling like this game was an over rated mess, I now see Kid Icarus as an under rated and misunderstood classic. It’s full of fun and clever ideas that are executed very well. It’s just simply too hard in the early stages. If you can get past the underworld stages, the rest of the game will give you no problems.