Kid Icarus · NES / Famicom Disk System · 1986 · Nintendo Hard
Most games start easy and get harder. Kid Icarus puts its cruellest stretch at the very beginning, in a vertically scrolling Underworld where falling off the bottom of the screen means death.
Kid Icarus was released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan on 19 December 1986, then on the NES in Europe in February 1987 and in North America in July 1987. It was made by Nintendo R&D1 with Tose, directed by Satoru Okada, designed by Toru Osawa, produced by Gunpei Yokoi and scored by Hirokazu Tanaka — much of the team behind Metroid, released the same year. The player controls Pit, an angel who cannot fly, climbing out of the Underworld toward the sky. That climb is the game's problem. The first world scrolls vertically and the screen follows Pit upward but not back down: miss a jump and fall below the bottom edge, and he is dead. With a weak starting bow, low health and enemies that swoop from every side, the opening levels are often the hardest part of the game, and the player grows stronger — through upgrades such as the Protective Crystal, the Flaming Arrows and the Sacred Bow — only by surviving them. The cartridge version added a password system, then an almost unprecedented feature, which made a long, punishing game at least possible to finish in pieces. Contemporary critics were divided: some found it a lesser Metroid, and one complained that it drove players into extremely tense sequences without giving any pleasure for getting through them. It became a cult classic regardless, and IGN later ranked it the 20th best NES game.
Difficulty curves usually rise. Kid Icarus starts near the top of its curve. Pit begins weak, the first world asks for precise vertical platforming with no second chances, and the rewards that would make the climb easier — health, stronger arrows, protective items — are earned only by climbing. A player who stalls early stays weak, which makes stalling more likely.
That shape is why so many people remember Kid Icarus as a game they never got far in. The later fortresses and the horizontal Overworld are, for a strengthened Pit, often more forgiving than the opening. The game's reputation was decided in its first fifteen minutes.