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Kid Icarus Game Review

Kid Icarus is a 1986 platform video game developed and published by Nintendo for the NES. It’s an overly difficult, but rather admirable early Nintendo platformer.

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“You weakling!“

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This game remains one of the biggest 1986 releases, one that isn’t quite up to the level of the other greats released that year, but is still often regarded as a classic. I personally find it to be a commendable effort, one that was only hurt by that staggering difficulty.

Kid Icarus is a side-scrolling platformer with some RPG elements. You control Pit through levels that contain obstacles and monsters. The primary weapon at your disposal is a bow with an unlimited supply of weapons. Though there are upgrades that you can take for this weapon, they are difficult to obtain, so I ended up just using the plain bow for the most time.

The bow and arrow loop made for a game that resembled a scrolling shooter, but there is also the last level where the game literally abandoned its platforming roots and became a shooter set in the sky. This level really worked, but it came way too late in the game. It would have been better to sporadically include those levels earlier as well.

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The role-playing elements worked for me. There are doors throughout all levels that contain hidden chambers. These chambers resembled those from the first Zelda game as the two games were developed in the same year. Stores and black markets give you the option to buy power-ups, but they were way too expensive for me personally. Treasure chambers were excellent additions, especially those that fully recovered your health. And those endurance chambers give you one of the three power items if you successfully beat that endurance test, which was ridiculously hard, so I mostly ended up skipping them. When you go back and refuse that challenge, the game mocks you in a hilarious fashion.

Kid Icarus’s world is divided into three stages: the Underworld, the Overworld and the Skyworld. Of the three stages, the second one was the most plain one visually, but the easiest one to play. The first was quite atmospheric while the third stage was the most difficult and the most visually authentic. The second stage is a typical side-scroller, but the other two have you go from the down to the top of the screen, which mad the game quite unique.

The main issue here is that immense difficulty level that made the game quite unforgiving at times. I ended up beating it, but only while cheating with save states on an emulator. Otherwise, I don’t think this game is possible to finish at all. The end of each stage contains a fortress that is so labyrinthine that it’s almost impossible to find the exit yourself without outside help. While I admired the level design present there, I still found it infuriating to play.

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The bosses were also extremely tough and needlessly prolonged as most required literally dozens and dozens of hits to kill. That made for battles that would simply never end. It’s not a particularly long game, but it feels lengthy due to that daunting difficulty. It controls well and is so well designed, but it has some unfortunate enemy placements and that eggplant enemy was just so annoying. I hated that guy. The sound and score here are rather forgettable, but the graphical presentation is mostly pretty good for the time with a nice color palette and a solid utilization of its Ancient Greek setting. The plot is simple of course, but it made use of Greek mythology quite solidly.