Kid Icarus
Introduction
Kid Icarus was developed by Nintendo R&D1 with outside assistance from Tose, directed by Satoru Okada with Yoshio Sakamoto co-directing and streamlining much of the design, and produced by Gunpei Yokoi, arriving on the Famicom Disk System in Japan in December 1986 before an NES cartridge release the following July. The team picked up extra staff, including Okada and Sakamoto themselves, once development on Metroid wrapped up, and the two games share some clear structural DNA even as Kid Icarus heads in its own mythological direction. Players control the winged angel Pit, using a bow to fire arrows at enemies while both climbing vertically through the Underworld, Overworld, and Skyworld and traversing side-scrolling stages, collecting hearts to spend on better weapons and gathering sacred treasures needed to defeat the game’s antagonist, Medusa, and rescue the goddess Palutena. Its mix of vertical platforming challenge, punishing enemy placement, and Greek mythology-inspired setting gave it a distinct identity from Nintendo’s other action games of the era, and though it stayed relatively niche for years, it eventually found a much wider audience through later Super Smash Bros. appearances and a modern 3DS revival.
