Portal: Kid Icarus

Kid Icarus
Developer	Nintendo, Project Sora
Games	Kid Icarus, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, Kid Icarus: Uprising
Debut	Kid Icarus (1987)
Gallery	GH Gallery

Kid Icarus is a minor Nintendo franchise that had two installments during the class Nintendo years. It features the adventures of an angel named Pit who works for the goddess Palutena. The series is based on Greek mythology with humorous elements. The classic games were platformers which used a similar engine as the Metroid series. It has recently received a modern revival with new gameplay for the 3DS.

History

The original Kid Icarus was developed for the Famicom Disk System due to its higher memory capacity. Toru Osawa designed the game based on a fondness of Greek myths and created it as an action games with some roleplaying elements. Yoshio Sakamoto joined production near the end to help, and the game was finished only three days before its release in 1987. Kid Icarus was made using the same engine as Metroid and was considered a sister game to it, although it was overshadowed by the other game. The series did receive one obscure sequel, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, for the Game Boy in 1992. It was not released in Japan, which adds to the obscurity.

The Kid Icarus series did not see action for years afterwards, aside from occasional references in other games. Masahiro Sakurai finally revisited the series when he was developing Super Smash Bros. Brawl for release in 2008, and he decided to include Pit as a playable character. Pit received an updated design which Sakurai saw as a "what if" of what Pit would look like if he had been in a long-running, evolving series. This appearance was popular enough to renew general interest in Pit and the Kid Icarus series in general. Following the completion of Brawl, Sakurai's Project Sora secretly began developing a new Kid Icarus game for the 3DS using the new design for Pit. Kid Icarus: Uprising was unveiled at E3 2010 and went through several delays that moved its release date to early 2012. The game features a new gameplay system which includes flying sections, as well as voice acting, a multiplayer mode and new supporting characters.

Other Media

Pit was one of the characters who was included in the Captain N video game crossover cartoon series, and he was part of the made cast. He was erroneously referred to as Kid Icarus and ended most of his sentences with "-icus". He was depicted with a variety of trick arrows. The Eggplant Wizard from the games was also included as a recurring antagonist and one of Mother Brain's main henchman.

In 2011, a trio of Kid Icarus anime features were announced to tie in with the release of Uprising. Each feature focused on a different character and was made by a different animation studio. Production I.G.'s feature is action-oriented and lasts three episodes with Pit as the main character. Shaft's feature is a more comical two-episode story about Palutena. The last feature is only one episode produced by 4℃, which focuses on Medusa and her background.