Kid Icarus
Nintendo Entertainment System
Nostalgia Factor:
Kid Icarus is a game that I’ve wanted to play for years and years now, but for whatever reason I never seemed to get around to it. I never had the game as a kid, nor did I know anyone who owned it growing up. I didn’t even try it out until I bought a used copy of this game for the NES in the early 2000s. I am going to say this was ’03 or ’04. I popped it in to see if it worked, played it a little bit, died a bunch of times on the first level, and then turned it off. I told myself I would come back to the game later, but I never did. Years and years passed. About 15 years, if I had to offer a guess.
Why play it now? The reason I played it is because I had been making a list of every game I have ever played. If you have been paying attention to this blog, you probably saw me post it a few days ago. If you didn’t, well, here it is:
https://dangeeksout.blogspot.com/2019/04/every-single-video-game-i-have-ever.html
Kid Icarus is a game that I counted as “played” since technically I did play it for a few minutes back in ’03 or ’04. But that seemed cheap to me. If I do ever make a ranking of every game I have ever played in my life (as I plan to do when I hit 1000 games), how on earth am I going to rank something I only played for a couple of minutes? That settled it for me. Time to play Kid Icarus.
Story:
This game has a plot, I know that much. The game itself doesn't say much, but when you open the instruction manual you are greeted with a wall of text explaining the storyline of Kid Icarus. What that storyline is, I don’t freaking know. Greek mythology has never been my strong suit. I read all the words, but my mind just went “errrrr….” All I know is that Medusa is the game’s big baddie. Playing as Pit (before playing this, I always just assumed the character’s name was Kid Icarus), you must progress through the game’s stages, gathering three ancient artifacts, kind of like the Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter. Once you have all the artifacts, you take to the sky and face off against Medusa once and for all. Beat Medusa, and you beat the game.
I know there is more content there as far as the game’s plot, but let’s be real. This is a 2D side-scrolling NES game from 1986. Its storyline doesn’t freaking matter.
Gameplay:
This game is very easy to just pick up and play. You jump, you duck, you move left and right, and you shoot your bow and arrow at enemies. Killing enemies will give you hearts that you can use as currency to buy health items and weapon upgrades. I wish I knew how important it was to upgrade yourself when I played this game. I kept losing my money because I would die so many times, and as a result I would then skip over the game’s shops because I didn’t have any money to buy anything. It would have saved me so many headaches later on in the game if I’d upgraded properly, because WOW this game gets difficult fast.
Kid Icarus is unique in that most of its levels are vertical-scrolling as opposed to horizontal. This isn’t your typical “start on the left side of the screen and work your way to the right” platforming title. Instead, you start at the bottom of the screen and have to make your way to the top. The exceptions to this are the maze-like levels where you fight the game’s boss characters. I can only compare these stages to the dungeons in The Legend of Zelda, although that game is from a top-down perspective and this one is from the side. But how they operate is very similar. Basically, you move from screen to screen, with exits typically on the top, the bottom, or the left or right sides of the screen. These levels are giant mazes filled with dead ends. You have to find the right way to progress in order to make it to the stage’s boss. These stages are pretty freaking hard, and require LOTS of trial and error. But really you could say that about this entire game.
Kid Icarus is freaking HARD. And when I say hard, I mean hard. From this point forward, when I hear people say that NES games like Contra and Ninja Gaiden are difficult, I am just going to sit there and chuckle. Those games have absolutely nothing on Kid Icarus. I consider myself a pretty good video game player, especially when it comes to retro classics like this. But man, this game had me ready to chuck my controller off a 100 story building. It took me almost an hour to make it through level 1-1 of this game. Level 1-1! Things only get tougher as you go along. Sure, there were a few random fluke stages that I passed on my first attempt, but those were few and far between. Most stages took me at least a half hour to struggle through. Some of the maze stages took me several hours. There’s nothing more disheartening than having a great run interrupted by getting turned into an eggplant. Ugh. Play this game and you will see exactly what I mean.
One of the things that makes the game so hard is the fact that if you fall off the bottom of the screen, you die instantly. Most levels scroll vertically, so if you are on a platform and you jump to a higher platform, the screen moves with you. But the screen doesn’t scroll back down. So if you try to jump back to that lower platform, you will hit the bottom edge of the screen and die, even if the platform is just a centimeter off the bottom of the screen. It sucks, but it is just something you have to deal with. As this is a platform game that requires a lot of precision jumping, be prepared to fall and die A LOT. Not only do you have to worry about falling, but your character can’t take much damage either, and health power-ups in this game are nonexistent, unless you buy them. So yes, this game is tough, especially if you aren’t upgrading your character like I failed to do on my last playthrough. Expect to die dozens and dozens of times on pretty much every stage you play. That is not an exaggeration.
Graphics:
Several reviews that I have read have bashed the game’s graphics, which surprises me. I can see why people would have a problem with the plain black backgrounds in many levels, but the bricks and pillars and all the crumbling paths and ledges look really good. Pit looks good. The enemies are uniquely designed and add a lot of personality to the world of the game. I think it looks very nice and charming. Simplistic, but nice and charming.
Sound:
Kid Icarus does not have an iconic, memorable soundtrack like many NES games of its time. Its music has absolutely nothing on other classics such as The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, or Super Mario Bros. Don’t get me wrong, the music is decent and passable, but it is nothing special. Sound effects are your typical NES bleeps and bloops. Nothing memorable there either. I do have to say that the music and the sound effects of the game work in tandem with its graphics to give it its own unique, undeniably “Kid Icarus” feel.
Overall:
I have a love/hate relationship with this game. I hate it because it is SO ridiculously hard, unfairly so at times. I hate it because the game frustrated me and made me want to quit on multiple occasions. I hate it because I had to repeat the same areas time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time after time before I would be able to pass them. My most memorable moment from this game? Facing off against a boss with 200 HP when my weapon only did 1 HP of damage at a time. This was in a dungeon that took me 30 attempts to pass, after playing for hours and hours on end. Imagine my frustration when the boss killed me with less than 10 HP left. And then imagine me replaying the level and having it happen to me again! I haven’t been this frustrated by a video game in a long time. There are times when Kid Icarus felt like an absolute chore to play.
At the same time, the game just oozes classic 8-bit charm. The music, sound effects, and graphics are nothing special by today’s standards. Even by 1980’s standards, Kid Icarus isn’t as cool as other games like Metroid or Zelda. But still, I can’t help but take one look at the game and immediately want to like it. Yes, the game is hard. But for adrenaline junkies this may not necessarily be a bad thing. That feeling of accomplishment that you get when passing a particularly difficult segment or stage is a thing of beauty. As hard as the game is, it has lots of replay value. When I found out that I was playing the game all wrong by not stocking up on cash and buying upgrades, I wanted to play the whole thing from the beginning again and see if I could do better on my second chance.
Kid Icarus gives you bang for the buck as well. I wish I had grown up playing this game. Most NES games you can complete in an hour or two. This game kept me going for days on end, and that is with me using online maps and strategies. I bet it would have taken me months to beat this as a kid, if I were to even beat it at all.
I can safely say that Kid Icarus is a good game. It probably deserves its place in history as a “B” title for the NES. Not quite an all-time classic, but certainly better than something like Wizards and Warriors or The Adventures of Bayou Billy. If you are sick of easy platforming games and are looking for a real challenge, you need to play this. If you are a masochist and you want to see just how difficult NES games can get, you need to play this. But remember, this game isn’t for everyone. Just look at how long it took me, a veteran who has been playing games like this for over 30 years, to beat stage 1-1. If you are easily frustrated, avoid this game like the plague.
Overall:
B
UP NEXT:
Golden Axe Warrior for the Sega Master System!
No comments:
Post a Comment