Kid Icarus

Kid Icarus is a side-scrolling platformer with role-playing elements. The player controls the protagonist Pit through two-dimensional levels, which contain monsters, obstacles and items. Pit's primary weapon is a bow with an unlimited supply of arrows that can be upgraded with three collectable power items: the Protective Crystal shields Pit from enemies, the Flaming Arrows hit multiple targets, and the Sacred Bow increases the range of the arrows. These upgrades will work only if Pit's health is high enough. The game keeps track of the player's score, and increases Pit's health bar at the end of a level if enough points were collected.

Throughout the stages, the player may enter doors to access seven different types of chambers. Stores and black markets offer items in exchange for hearts, which are left behind by defeated monsters. Treasure chambers contain items, enemy nests give the player an opportunity to earn extra hearts, and hot springs restore Pit's health. In the god's chamber, the strength of Pit's bow and arrow may be increased depending on several factors, such as the number of enemies defeated and the amount of damage taken in battle. In the training chamber, Pit will be awarded with one of the three power items if he passes a test of endurance.

The game is set in Angel Land, which is a fantasy world with a Greek mythology theme. Before the events of the game, Earth was ruled by Palutena (Goddess of Light) and Medusa (Goddess of Darkness). Palutena bestowed the people with light to make them happy. Medusa hated the humans, dried up their crop, and turned them to stone.

Enraged by this, Palutena transformed Medusa into a monster and banished her to the Underworld. Out of revenge, Medusa conspired with the monsters of the Underworld to take over Palutena's residence the Palace in the Sky. She launched a surprise attack, and stole the three sacred treasures — the Mirror Shield, the Light Arrows and the Wings of Pegasus — which deprived Palutena's army of its power. After her soldiers had been turned to stone by Medusa, Palutena was defeated in battle and imprisoned deep inside the Palace in the Sky.

The game was designed at Nintendo's Research and Development 1 (R&D1) division. It was developed for the Family Computer Disk System (FDS) because its floppy disk, called Disk Card, has three times the storage capacity of the Family Computer's cartridges of the time. Combined with the possibility to store the players' progress, the Disk Card format enabled the developers to create a longer game with a more extensive game world. Kid Icarus was the debut of Toru Osawa (credited as Inusawa) as a video game designer, and he was the only staff member working on the game at the beginning of the project.

Originally he wanted to make an action game with role-playing elements, and wrote a story rooted in Greek mythology, which he had always been fond of. He drew the pixel art, and wrote the technical specifications, which were the basis for the playable prototype. After Nintendo's action-adventure Metroid had been finished, more staff members were allotted to the development of Kid Icarus.

Reviewing the release for the Famicom Disk System, Famicom Hisshoubon 's first reviewer complimented the game saying it felt fresh because of its simplicity and that its mysterious atmosphere would appeal to children and adults alike. The second reviewer felt the graphics didn't quite capture the Greek mythology setting of the game and said it felt a bit dated due to the wrap-around effects of moving character to the left off the screen to appear on the right side which they said was best left behind in the era of Pac-Man (1980). In Famicom Tsūshin, two reviewers said it was too similar and a lesser game than Metroid (1986). Two other commented on the games difficulty, with one reviewer saying the game makes players to extremely tense sequences without providing any pleasure for accomplishing them.

76 million copies of Kid Icarus had been sold worldwide, with a cult following. It received mixed reviews from critics over the years. In October 1992, a staff writer of the UK publication Nintendo Magazine System said that it was "pretty good fun", but did not "compare too well" to other platform games, due in part to its "rather dated" graphics. Retro Gamer magazine's Stuart Hunt called it an "unsung hero of the NES" that "looks and sounds pretty".

A Game Boy sequel to Kid Icarus, titled Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, was released in North America in November 1991, and in Europe on May 21, 1992. It was developed by Nintendo and Tose, and largely adopts the gameplay mechanics of its predecessor. Of Myths and Monsters remained the last installment in the series for over 20 years.

In 2008, a 3D Kid Icarus game for the Wii was allegedly in development by the German American studio Factor 5, but was in production without the approval of Nintendo, and Factor 5 canceled multiple projects following the closure of its American branch in early 2009. In a 2010 interview, Yoshio Sakamoto was asked about a Kid Icarus game for the Wii, to which he replied that he was not aware of any plans to revive the franchise. A new series entry for the Nintendo 3DS, Kid Icarus: Uprising, was eventually released in 2012. The game is a third-person shooter, and was developed by Project Sora, the company of Super Smash Bros. designer Masahiro Sakurai.