My 10 Most Influential Games: Kid Icarus (NES)

Although a number of its initial releases lured me and my older brother to the NES in the year following its North American release, none had a more powerful pull on us than the pair of Nintendo-made "Adventure Series" games known in the West as Metroid and Kid Icarus.

I was especially drawn to the latter title, which was made by Gunpei Yokoi, Satoru Okada and Yoshio Sakamoto, among others, and which first hit store shelves here in July of 1987. (Just a month before Metroid and The Legend of Zelda, in fact.)

There are all sorts of reasons for that, of course. A rather stupidly superficial one is that, right off the bat, I was a fan of Kid Icarus' magenta logo. (Hey, I've never been shy about my love of the color pink.)

Also catching my eye early on: the cover art's depiction of Pit. I was keenly interested in Greek mythology back when Kid Icarus was released, so a game that allowed me to play as an angel who has to traverse a world full of crumbling stone pillars, fantastic creatures and even goddesses--Medusa among them--quickly commanded my attention. (Speaking of the creatures that populate this game, you can see illustrations of all of them in the Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami GameBoy Advance instruction manual.)

And then there were the write-ups in Nintendo Power and elsewhere that showcased Kid Icarus' colorful locales. Purple bricks and stone, red-checkered floors, pink and green clouds--my younger self thought the game looked like a dream.

I know most folks today don't think Kid Icarus plays like a dream, but I thought it did back in the day. (Hell, I still kind of think it now.) After all, Pit controls pretty darn well, if you ask me. Specifically, he's easy to maneuver--except for when you find yourself on one of the icy ledges that pop up in a number of the game's levels--and he reacts quickly to commands. (I can't imagine anyone describing Kid Icarus as floaty or sluggish.)

Is that why I consider it to be influential? Not really. One aspect of Kid Icarus that did help shape my taste in video games, though, is its difficulty. Admittedly, it's sometimes (some may say often) "cheaply" difficult, but in general I think it just asks a lot of those who decide to play it. In some cases, that means perfectly timing jumps and arrow shots; in others, it means memorizing stage layouts (refer to this site if you need help) and enemy placements.

Regardless, Kid Icarus--along with its silver-box, "Adventure Series" sibling, Metroid--made me realize that while I like my games to be at least somewhat cute (or even simply colorful), I also like for them to be at least somewhat challenging.

Kid Icarus also prompted me to realize and embrace that I prefer action-platformers that dare to be a bit different to those that toe the line. Straightforward efforts that ape Super Mario Bros. are all well and good, but this game took that classic's basic components and built upon them tenfold. Rather than having stages scroll almost exclusively from left to right, Kid Icarus offers up ones that scroll up, down and all over the place. It even features maze-like dungeons that sprawl in all directions and need to be conquered at the end of each four-level world before you can move on to the next one.

Another of Kid Icarus' unique quirks that helped set the tone for my love of platform games that veer from the beaten path: the bow and quiver of unlimited arrows Pit uses to dispatch foes. For whatever reason, that's always struck me as far more interesting and thrilling than, say, Mega Man's "Mega Buster" or Simon Belmont's whip.

Unfortunately, despite all of the above, and despite the fact that Kid Icarus was chiefly responsible for shaping my taste in video games (oddball platformers, in particular), I've barely experienced it and its brilliant Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka soundtrack in the last couple of decades.

Truth be told, that's mostly because I'm now slightly terrified of it. The last time I attempted to work my way through its technicolor worlds, I struggled to complete its third stage.

Still, I've never been one to shrink away from a challenge, so I'll do my best to boot up some version of the game in the coming days and weeks. Here's hoping this playthrough will be more successful than the quickly aborted ones of the not-so-recent past.

See also: previous 'My 10 Most Influential Games' posts about The 7th Guest, Balloon Kid, Bubble Bobble and Final Fantasy V

Manual Stimulation: Hikari Shinwa Parutena no Kagami (GameBoy Advance)

Earlier today, I published a "Great Gaymathon" review of the game that's known to English-speaking audiences as Kid Icarus. (To Japanese-speaking audiences, it's known as Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami, or Light Myth: Palutena's Mirror.)

In that review, I mentioned that one of the main reasons I bought the GameBoy Advance version of this classic platformer is that I liked its packaging. Well, folded up within that packaging is the following, two-piece instruction manual, which is pretty attractive in its own right.

The front of the first page of said manual (as always, click on any of the images below to take a closer look at them) isn't the most exciting thing in the world, but I am quite fond of the illustrations--especially the one that shows what appears to be two of Angel Land's many gay couples--that accompany the story portion of the page.



The back side of the first page isn't much better, but it earns a few extra points for featuring a number of nice drawings of the game's protagonist, Pit, and the bosses he encounters during his journey. (My favorite is the rather portly Medusa, by the way.)



The second page of Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami's fold-out instruction manual is where it's at, if you ask me. True story: As a kid, I was obsessed with drawing many of the items and weapons showcased in the scan below, which is of the front of the manual's second page.

The Great Gaymathon Review #47: Hikari Shinwa Parutena no Kagami (GameBoy Advance)

Game: Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami

Genre: Platformer

Developer: Nintendo

Publisher: Nintendo

System: GameBoy Advance

Release date: 2004

In my humble opinion, anyone who wants to call himself (or herself) a masochist should be forced to play Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami, aka Kid Icarus, on a GameBoy Micro before being allowed to use that moniker, as I can't imagine there are many more painful experiences in life than playing this tough-as-nails adventurer-platformer-shooter on a teeny tiny screen. So, why did I buy it? I actually kind of like playing this challenging title, to tell you the truth--or at least I do when I play it on a console attached to a nice-sized TV. Another reason I bought it: I liked the packaging in general and the yellow cartridge in particular. Unless you're a huge fan of this game or of banana-colored GameBoy Advance carts, though, I'd highly recommend passing on this release and picking up, say, the Wii Virtual Console release instead. That way, you'll be better able to appreciate--and appropriately deal with--the perilous jumps of its unidirectional overworld stages and the similarly onerous travails (Eggplant Wizards, hello!) of its cavernous underworld ones, both of which feature fairly unique-to-the-platformer-genre elements like credit-card-accepting shops, life-restoring springs and chest-filled treasure chambers.

See also: Previous 'Great Gaymathon' posts