Kid Icarus tests his manhood ...

Despite lacking blue spikes, basic plumbing skills or a kickass yo-yo and mermaid girlfriend, gamers tend to find a surprising amount in common with the heroes of their favorite games. Perhaps this connection comes from the inherent everyman-nature of the game protagonist, allowing every gamer to say “yes, I too know what it is to fight against the endless swarms of winged eyeballs. I too know that when the time comes I must use whatever tools are at my disposal, be they dodgeballs or boxer shorts, to right the wrongs of the world and rescue my princess.”

Whatever the nature of this connection, as a boy I connected with one protagonist so tightly that I swore off of eggplant until my early twenties. Kid Icarus was a hero for the ages.

The concept behind this game was a hybrid at a time when the established genres were only just being actually established, like God creating horses and Jello on the same day. I imagine the scene went something like this:

Nintendo Designer 1: <I say we make a vertical shooter next!>
Nintendo Designer 2: <No way! Its time for a platformer! There need to be more platformers out there, because platformers aren’t annoying at all!>
ND1: <Hmmm … I think I might have something here. Remember that time we took LSD and saw that eggplant with feet jumping into a hot tub …>

In the early days of Nintendo games, concept and content were purely separate ideas.
Game: Blaster Master
Concept: Pet frog turns into a tank when it falls into a hole in hero’s back yard
Content: Metroid-style shooter action with permanent powerups.

Game: Bionic Commando
Concept: Evil cyborg Hitler clone attacks the future
Content: shooter with “dangling” and near-impossible difficulty level

Game: Gyromite
Concept: Mad scientist … pillars
Content: Actually, that’s the basic content of Gyromite

So for Kid Icarus, the concept would be something like: Icarus fights Medusa, angels.

But the content … wow.

Let’s start with our hero, whose name is Pit despite the game being named Kid Icarus. Pit has wings and a bow, much like any angel. However, Pit’s wings are more for show than flight, perhaps an issue of stunted growth, and his bow shoots paltry distances at best. Also, Pit is an angel, a Judeo-Christian concept of semi-deity, trapped in a world of Greco-Roman names, imagery and gods. I’m not sure that’s every addressed though …

Pit is charged with saving Palutena, who has been kidnapped by Medusa. In addition, Pit must also rescue all of his fellow angel friends, who have been turned to stone by Medusa. Thankfully, Medusa’s spell can be counteracted by beating your stone friends over the head with a hammer. No, seriously.

From the onset, Kid Icarus provides an enjoyable challenge. Old school games involved learning the timing and memorizing the patterns, and Kid Icarus stays true to its course. Pit must jump increasingly difficult platforms to reach the top of each level, all the while attacking the various baddies and flying wombats who both pace the platforms and descend from on high ala Space Invaders. To kill said foes, Pit uses his short-range bow to pick off the baddies and collect their dropped goodies.

Every once in a while, Pit also entered into a labyrinth level of sorts, very similar to the palaces in Zelda 2: The Sidescrolling Link.  In these labyrinths, the game turned sidescrolling and Pit had to navigate the maze to reach a boss. In addition, the Labyrinths provided shops and permanent powerups, such as longer ranged attacks or revolving fireballs which actually gave the arrows more of a hit range (perfect for hitting the low-crawling baddies). Somehow the transition from vertical- to side-scrolling worked, and added a strange level of depth and progress to a game that might otherwise feel like “just another shooter/platformer.” Not that there were any other shooter/platformers at the time.

The labyrinths also had some challenges, like a shell-game type treasure room that might yield a Credit Card (for use at the Black Market shop) or mighty Zeus who MIGHT give you some power ups depending on his arbitrary bitchiness at the time of your arrival. Also, any of the stone friends you freed throughout the levels leading up to the Labyrinth would also show up to help you beat the boss of the level, though even in their armor they died in one hit. It was touches like these that really set Kid Icarus apart form other, more simple games of its day. All of these oddities added up to an actually deep gameplay experience that rewarded patience and attention to detail.

Progressing to the last level, the game turned pure shooter as Pit collected the mirror shield, some crappy helmet, actual man-wings, and a kickass laser-bow to use on the slowly-flying final level of the game. The treat of the game was that the last level, vastly different than any other level of the game, was surprisingly fitting and somehow plot-appropriate to the game on the whole. Of course Pit was flying and kicking ass finally; that’s what he’s been working towards. Like when Rambo finally ties that red hankie around his forehead, and you just know that he’s activated his Brown People Killing Powers, and all hell’s about to be blown to smithereens by some freaking explosive tipped water balloons or some shit like that!

Anyway, that’s basically what the last level is like.

Medusa, in the end, reveals herself to be nothing more than a giant face stuck to a wall, typical boss fodder for a shooter (though hardly an adequate explanation for kidnapping a goddess or even bowel movements). Her lasers are easily dodged using the giant Mirror Shield, and Pit’s kickass laser arsenal blows a hole right through her stupid face to reveal Palutena! Yay! Now for some snuggling.

To drive the point home, if you beat enough of your friends over the head with a hammer throughout the game, Pit transforms in a fully muscled and manly version of an angel. And rumor has it that there’s even an ultimate ending where in addition to being all muscley Pit also sports a kickass mustache! Now that’s a man!

But the lasting impression left by Kid Icarus, at least on this young lad, was the cheapest, dirtiest, and most reset-inducing enemy in the history of all gaming ever; the Eggplant Wizard. The eggplant wizard isn’t much of a wizard at all. He’s more like a man with an eggplant for a head who throws eggplants at his foes in the hopes of turning them into eggplants. These eggplants are less “thrown” than “lobbed like a softball to a 4 year old,” and yet they were somehow impossible to avoid. When transformed into an eggplant with feet, Pit was mostly only able to run around and get into a where he could regain his health but remain an eggplant and remember the good old days of having arms and a head.

There was probably a way to revert to an angel again, but I found the most effective method of dealing with the Eggplant Wizard was to throw my controller on the ground, hit something, and then reset the game with enough force as to possibly break my NES. 2 hours later, when I finally finished inputting the 150,000 character password, I was on my way to killing those eggplanty fucks agian!

Sadly, Kid Icarus appears to have been lost to the ages. A sequel never materialized on either shore other than a less-worthy gameboy title. And yet E3 2006 gave gamers new hope with the appearance of a new playable character in the upcoming Wii title Super Smasbrothers Something Something.

The constant question when going all retro is wondering how games hold up against the test of time. Not only have difficulty levels and expectations of content and plot replaced a willingness to attempt the same level a dozen times before finally beating it, but control schemes and graphics have made leaps and bounds since the days of the NES. Does Kid Icarus really stand the test of time?

I for one will never play it again to find out. And sure, a part of that is not wanting to destroy a wonderful memory of something I consider near-perfect…. But also, I just hate those fucking Eggplant Wizards THAT much.

Coming Soon: Princess Tomato, Wallstreet Kid, Skate or 720fornia Games presented by T&C, and the Power Pad! As always, suggestions welcomed.