Kid Icarus (universe): Difference between revisions

After Nintendo's commercially successful releases of platforming games such as ''Super Mario Bros.'' and adventure games such as ''The Legend of Zelda'' during the "golden age" of the [[nwiki:NES|Famicom/NES]] in the late 1980s, the company was interested in entering a different genre. This resulted in the development of the action game ''Metroid'' for the Family Computer Disk System and Nintendo Entertainment System. ''Kid Icarus'' was developed alongside ''Metroid'' as its sister game, as both were co-developed by Nintendo's Research and Development 1 (R&D1) division and Intelligent Systems, and both games shared various programmers and elements. ''Kid Icarus'' was developed for the Famicom Disk System because its Disk Card format had more storage capacity than the Famicom's cartridges, allowing the developers to create a longer game with a larger setting and the ability to store players' progress. The game was also the debut of Nintendo video game designer Toru Osawa; originally the project's only staff member, Osawa wanted to make an action game with role-playing elements based on Greek mythology and drew the game's pixel art. After development of ''Metroid'' was complete, more staff members were allotted to the development of ''Kid Icarus'', such as director Satoru Okada, producer Gunpei Yokoi, musical composer Hirokazu Tanaka, and co-designer Yoshio Sakamoto. Osawa originally wanted to make the game completely serious, but opted for something more humorous after objections from the rest of the development team. Development was stressed by time constraints, as staff had to work overtime and stay in an unheated development office at night to meet the game's projected release date, and several stages had to be dropped because of scheduling conflicts; ultimately, however, the game was finished and entered production only three days before its Famicom release date on December 19, 1986. A cartridge-based version was released on the NES in February and July 1987 in Europe and North America, respectively; among other minor changes, this version used the rare password-based system of restoring player progress. Upon release, ''Kid Icarus'' was met with mixed reception, with criticism focused on its frustratingly high difficulty and some odd design choices, but the game has nonetheless been regarded as a cult classic for the console. Various characters, including the protagonist [[Pit]] and antagonists Medusa and Eggplant Wizard, were featured in the American animated television series ''Captain N: The Game Master'', which aired from 1989 to 1991 and featured many video game characters popularized by the NES. Meanwhile, a sequel for the Game Boy, ''Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters'', was co-developed between Nintendo and Tose Co., Ltd. and released in North America in November 1991 and in Europe in May 1992. Reception for the sequel was decidedly more favorable than that of the original, as critics cited significant gameplay improvements, but the game never reached the original's level of public attention. Additionally, despite being developed in Japan, ''Kid Icarus: Of Myth and Monsters'' was not released there until 2012, originally making it one of the few first-party Nintendo games not published in Japan.

Following the release of ''Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters'', the series received no new installments for twenty years and little in the way of return appearances outside of a [[trophy]] of Pit in 2001's ''[[Super Smash Bros. Melee]]'' and the first game's 2004 re-release in the ''Famicom Mini Disk System Selection'' for the Game Boy Advance and 2007 release on the Wii's Virtual Console. During this hiatus were unconfirmed, rumored projects for a third installment, including possible entries on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Nintendo 64. In the early 2000s, Capcom moved their resources to redo their ''Dead Phoenix'' project into a new, untitled ''Kid Icarus'' game for the GameCube, and a series revival developed by Factor 5 was planned for the Wii; however, both projects were ultimately canceled. However, in 2006, ''{{b|Super Smash Bros.|series}}'' series director [[Masahiro Sakurai]] began an ambitious series revival for the ''Kid Icarus'' franchise, first by announcing through a trailer the inclusion of {{SSBB|Pit}} as a new playable fighter in his highly-anticipated fighting game ''[[Super Smash Bros. Brawl]]'' for the Wii. Sakurai, who had previously brought another obscure NES title from the same era, {{uv|Ice Climber}}, back into the public eye through [[Ice Climbers|its player-characters]]' inclusions as playable fighters in ''Super Smash Bros. Melee'', debuted a radical, anime-style redesign for Pit and a more detailed reimagining of the ''Kid Icarus'' in-game setting. Following ''Brawl''{{'}}s release in 2008, Sakurai was asked by then-Nintendo president Satoru Iwata to direct a new game for the then-unknown Nintendo 3DS to show off its capabilities, giving him the choice to revitalize a dormant property for the title. Deciding to use an existing Nintendo IP for the project, Sakurai was inspired by ''Brawl'' players' feedback that many fighters on its roster had not been featured in an original game for some time, and ultimately chose ''Kid Icarus'' for this series reboot. Sakurai's choice of ''Kid Icarus'' was both due to its long absence from the gaming market, its continued Western popularity, and his own involvement with the character and setting's reimaginings in ''Brawl''. Sakurai had also decided to create a third-person shooter game, a genre unpopular in Japan but seemingly suited to the 3DS's 3D effects.

Sakurai, wanting a balance between story-based gameplay hindrances and the plot-required triumph of good over evil, wrote the story and script for the game, entitled ''Kid Icarus: Uprising'', by himself. As a result, characters' roles and personalities were shaped by their role in the game's structure, dialogue was able to be perfectly meshed with the story and music, and while the game retained influence from Greek mythology, Sakurai did not base the story on anything specific and avoided portraying a simple "good versus evil" storyline. Several outside illustrators were hired to help design characters and locations in a manga-inspired art style, and in 2009, the development studio Project Sora was established for the game's development. The first game developed for the 3DS, ''Uprising'' was intended to be distinct from previous ''Kid Icarus'' games, being a 3D shooter divided between airborne rail shooter segments and ground-based third-person shooter segments as opposed to previous games' side-scrolling 2D platforming gameplay, and contrasting the original game's notorious difficulty with adjustable difficulty settings and a relatively simple control scheme, including more responsive touchscreen controls than previous first-person shooter games on the DS. Music was composed by a team consisting of Japanese composers who had prominently contributed to ''Super Smash Bros. Brawl''; the team was directed by Takahiro Nishi and orchestration was handled by Yasunori Mitsuda. The game was officially announced at Nintendo's E3 2010 conference immediately following the announcement of the Nintendo 3DS. To promote the game, Nintendo collaborated with three Japanese animation studios to create a series of animated shorts based on the ''Kid Icarus'' characters and setting, consisting of Studio 4°C's ''Medusa's Revenge'', Shaft's two-part ''Palutena's Revolting Dinner'', and Production I.G's three-part ''Thanatos Rising'', all supervised by Sakurai and streamed in Japan, Europe, and North America through the 3DS's Nintendo Video service one week before the game's respective release in each region. ''Kid Icarus: Uprising'' was released in March 2012, featuring similar character designs to the ones introduced in ''Brawl'', a fully voiced cast, story-driven cutscenes, and a more whimsical tone to the story and dialogue. It was met with critical acclaim, critics praised the attention to detail, mechanical flexibility, general gameplay balance, and voiced dialogue, but criticized the difficult control scheme and linear structure. The game was also a financial success, selling over 200,000 units in the first month and boosting the sales of the 3DS by the thousands; Nintendo even cited ''Uprising'' among other games like ''Fire Emblem: Awakening'' for suddenly increased profits. By April 2013, ''Uprising'' had sold 1.18 million units, making it the tenth best-selling 3DS title at the time.

Despite the game's critical and commercial success, Sakurai confirmed that there were no plans for a sequel. Nevertheless, many elements from ''Kid Icarus: Uprising'' were introduced into [[Super Smash Bros. 4|the next ''Super Smash Bros.'' game]] on the [[Super Smash Bros. for Wii U|Wii U]] and [[Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS|3DS]] in 2014 — whose development was unable to start until Sakurai was finished with ''Uprising'' — including stages, items, music, trophies, and playable fighters in the form of Pit, [[Palutena]], and [[Dark Pit]], all based on their appearances in ''Uprising''. Pit, Palutena, and Dark Pit returned as playable fighters in 2018's ''[[Super Smash Bros. Ultimate]]'' for the Nintendo Switch, which also includes stages, music, [[spirit]]s, and other elements from the ''Kid Icarus'' games. Meanwhile, the return of the ''Kid Icarus'' franchise saw the first two games being ported to modern consoles, as ''Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters'' was released on the 3DS Virtual Console in 2012 — including in Japan for the first time — one month before the release of ''Uprising'', and the original ''Kid Icarus'' was released on the Wii U's Virtual Console in 2013 and Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) in 2019, and was included with the North American and PAL region releases of the NES Classic Edition.

The ''Kid Icarus'' games are set in a multi-plane Grecian fantasy world called Angel Land, where a plane hanging above the mortal Overworld is the light realm of [[Skyworld]], ruled by the Goddess of Light, Palutena. In the original game, Medusa, the Goddess of Darkness banished to the hellish plane of the Underworld, conquers Angel Land and imprisons Palutena. Captured by Medusa's army, the young angel Pit — who is comedically described by the game's title as a child equivalent of the Greek myth of the winged man Icarus — escapes the Underworld and sets out on a quest to defeat Medusa by gathering Palutena's Three Sacred Treasures. In ''Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters'', Pit battles the demon Orcos, who has invaded Angel Land, to prove that he is worthy of wielding the Three Sacred Treasures. Many years later in ''Kid Icarus: Uprising'', Pit must battle the resurrected Medusa and her minions but ends up thrust into a much stranger, multi-sided conflict involving an expanded cast of allies and enemies, several of which are drawn from other figures and monsters in Greek mythology. New characters introduced in ''Uprising'' include [[Magnus]], a human mercenary who teams up with Pit on multiple occasions; Dark Pit, a brooding copy of Pit created from Pandora's Mirror of Truth; Hades, the true ruler of the Underworld and the main villain behind Medusa's resurrection; and [[Viridi]], the Goddess of Nature who commands the Forces of Nature and attempts to wipe out humanity with her Reset Bombs. Pit's fights take him through human cities under siege, temples and caverns in the Underworld, Palutena's residence in the Skyworld, and even outer space.