A playthrough of Nintendo's 1987 NES game, Kid Icarus.

Here's a fantastic Nintendo classic that doesn't get anywhere near its due - my guess would be that its because even in comparison to other games at the time, Kid Icarus is brutally difficult and obtuse in some of its mechanics. It's hard to get to the end, even if only meeting the conditions for the worst ending, but to get the best is a real hardcore test. Loads of precision jumping, difficult enemy patterns, and a stingy life-bar all mean that you REALLY have to invest yourself to get through it.

That investment is well rewarded though - Kid Icarus is one of the best put-together NES platformers, at least in my opinion, with super-tight balancing and a generally fair (though incredibly steep) challenge. For such an early title, it looks pretty nice, and the music is thoroughly awesome - I love the stage 3 tune especially.

Kid Icarus was developed for the Famicom Disk System as a joint effort between Nintendo R&D1 (they handled most of the black box games) and TOSE with Gunpei Yokoi acting as producer. Yes, the same guy who headed up the Game Boy and Metroid, and then was humiliated by Nintendo after blowing the Virtual Boy (and died shortly thereafter in a violent car wreck). Despite the creator's tragic fate and the reprehensible treatment by a hard-nosed Nintendo after all of his massive successes for the company, this game is a true gem. Why has it only had two sequels?! Both of them are great, by the way, and the second game somehow goes even more unnoticed than the original!

For whatever ire this might stir-up, I have to say that I prefer this game a great deal over the original Metroid. I love Metroid, but Kid Icarus (incidentally enough running on the same engine as Metroid, since they were developed at the same time) really hit me much more favorably - it's far more linear and focused, and I appreciated that. I loved the exploration aspect of Metroid, but for me, that itch had already been scratched by Zelda. I really enjoyed the similar play mechanics that had been completely reimagined for this title and it's much lighter atmosphere. I thought that Metroid really managed to hit its full stride in Super Metroid, but Kid Icarus was already there in 1986. Metroid is also super-easy compared to Kid Icarus, and Metroid IS NOT an easy game by any stretch of the imagination.

Finally, for anyone interested in how I got the ending that I did: you have to finish the game with all of the strength upgrades, a maxed-out life gauge, all three of the final weapons for the Medusa fight (duh), and your hearts have to be maxed at 999 when you kill Medusa. I loved this game as a kid in the 80s and beat it a few times, but never managed any ending better than the one where Pit grows huge and flexes his arm. I didn't even realize there were more endings until I went back to the game as a teenager to replay it and finally got the best one.

So, in closing, I hope you enjoy this playthrough! I could play this again and again and never get bored with it.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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