048 · KID ICARUS

• Introductions
• First Impressions
• Objective
• Read the manual
• Kid Icarus is an action platformer meets RPG. You control Pit through 4 worlds of vertical and horizontal platforming obtaining new weapons along the way and upgrading your old ones.
• WHAT A SURPRISE!
• FUNDAMENTALS
• SHOOTING
• JUMPING
• REAPERS
• HEARTS
• ITEMS
• TREASURE CHAMBER - STORE - BLACK MARKET - TRAINING CHAMBER - HOT SPRING CHAMBER
• CREDIT CARD
• ANGELS FEATHER - SAVES YOU FROM FALL FROM DEATH
• WATER OF LIFE AND BARREL
• HAGGLING
• FORTRESSES
• MAP AND PENCIL AND TORCH
• EGGPLANT
• MALLET
• BOSSES
• TWIN BELLOWS - TWO HEADED RED DOG
• HEW DRAW - BLUE SNAKE
• PANDORA - BUBBLE INVISIBLE MONSTER (THE SOURCE OF ALL EVIL)
• STAGE 4
• SHMUP STYLE
• MEDUSA BATTLE
• ENDING
• Hearts: 999
• b. Strength: 5
• c. Endurance: 5
• d. All three Weapons acquired
• If you have them all you get a kiss from Palutena and become like a grown man
• JAPANESE FDS added a specknose WORST ending
• MUSIC
• DEVELOPMENT
• Toru Osawa's debut as a video game designer, and he was the only staff member working on the game at the beginning of the project.
• He programmed most of the game, worked with TOSE on development and only after Metroid’s completion did the rest of the team join.
• Sakamoto apparently canceled Osawa’s wedding vacation to bring him back into finish the game.
• No staff roll could even be added, but it was added in the NA version WITHOUT OSAWA instead they misspelled his name and wrote Inusawa
• “Customers were perfectly willing to play it, and we were perfectly willing to make it that way,” Yoshio Sakamoto recalls.
• The Final Stage was added at JUST THE END of production
• SEQUELS
• Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters was released for the Gameboy in 1991
• Plays very much the same
• Pit joins Smash in Brawl and Palutena in Smash 4
• Kid Icarus Uprising was released in 2012 designed by Sakurai and way more meta and quirky

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Kid Icarus, get ready for the action and adventure of Greek mythology translated to the video age.

00:21 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. And guys, you know, I don't know about you, but I'm still thinking about games like Castlevania and Mario Brothers, but we got a good one today. We got Kid Icarus, a game that Nintendo made and just kind of forgot about for a good decade or two. And then now, Pits and Smash and Politena's in Smash. It's been a Kid Icarus renaissance. Well, I mean, it's not, it hasn't been as good as like a Fire Emblem renaissance.

00:59 But if we remember, like Fire Emblem is also like, it was always big in Japan. It just got big here again. Yeah. But it's just nice to see that, you know, that franchise is still kicking around on like other Nintendo franchises. Like, when is Rob going to get another game? I've been waiting for it. I think soon. This is kind of a spiritual Rob successor. Yeah. I think of it that way a lot, you know, in the way that like, it's almost the same, but Pit doesn't stack blocks or move blocks at all. Or destroy blocks.

01:25 He doesn't do that. So that's my deal breaker on if Kid Icarus is a Rob clone. Not an essential Rob game. Yeah, not an essential Rob game. Thankfully, this isn't part of the Rob series. This is Kid Icarus directed by a bunch of different people. No, no, no. It's true. It's, we'll get into the development later in the game, but it's, it's actually like hard to really like land on who's responsible for this game. But we'll tease that for now and go to that later. For now, I'd like to get some first impressions from you guys. Joe? So I've seen very, very little amounts of like footage of this game being played. And I'll be honest, I didn't have too high of hopes for it from what I remembered.

02:09 But this time, for the first time, I sat down and I was like, I'm going to read the manual before I even touch the game, which I know that's, that's Sam's thing. But I never read the manual before I even touch the game.

02:20 And the manual, first of all, that's my first impression, is like a novel. I mean, there's, I mean, for an NES manual, there's a lot of information. There's a lot of story set up in there. 10 pages. Is it 10 pages? It's a story book. And three or four of them is the background, like the story of what's going on. Oh, no. 10 pages of story. Oh, is it? Yeah. There's more pages of things in general. But yeah, it's like, it starts all the way back with like, let us go back to the distant past. Right. It's like a novel. And I was just looking at a PDF, so I don't remember. I don't remember how many pages are. Right. It's actually, it's interesting enough, it's hosted on Nintendo's website still.

02:55 The original manual. Joe, continue with your first impressions. No, so then when I played the actual game, I was, right away, I was impressed with the movement of it. I was impressed that there is a sort of a save function because it gives you a password when you die. And it, after having read the manual, it kind of felt like a, like the first one that really feels like a full adventure.

03:17 The kind of, this is the kind of thing that I look for in a video game. Like, I want to feel like, like I'm going on this adventure, like there's a story to be told. And I was kind of really excited when I started playing this game. I was hoping it would deliver. And we'll get into whether or not I thought it delivered later. Now, just real quick, you mentioned the password system.

03:35 And obviously, that's kind of new for us as we're playing these games chronologically. But they're going to come about for many NES games. So I'm just curious, what do you think about the length of the passwords? I thought, I mean, I assume that there's a very detailed level of what it's remembering in there. Oh, yeah. It's got like items. Because, yeah. What is it? There's four lines of like, what, eight digits? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

03:59 So I think you could even spell things out. You know, I don't know the exact cheats, but you can spell things out in the passwords for something where it's like, you know, kid, kid, Icarus, kid, kid, Icarus. Yeah, I use that cheat. Yeah. And like, those cheats will like, do stuff for you in the game. So I think like, you know, it's a neat password system. It's kind of cool to see this, you know, early on in the NES.

04:20 Sean, what are your first impressions? My first impression is that this is the most complex adventure game I've seen so far. I like where things are headed with how much like RPG elements they've introduced in this game between like a currency system and leveling up your like your max HP and all these side quest things you can go on and actual like vendors and merchants. Like, I really like all of that. Um, it's got some good music. There's some parts that are way too like Byzantine for me, but I'll go into that as well. Um, but yeah, overall I was excited by, um, what I was signing up for. Very cool. I like that word Byzantine.

05:05 Well, I don't know. Uh, Kid Icarus is a, we'll get into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's fine. And I think, you know, just my, for a point of reference here, I think I stand with a lot of players where, you know, we first even found out about Kid Icarus maybe in like Super Smash Brothers Melee when he was just a trophy and you're like, oh, who's that guy? And you like read a little bio about him and like, oh, Nintendo made this game on the NES that they've never like talked about.

05:29 And then, you know, he came to Brawl and I wasn't like too psyched about it or anything, but we started to see a lot of games based off of those. And we were waiting for like, when's the Kid Icarus game going to come around? And funny enough, Sakurai actually wound up making the Kid Icarus Uprising game for the 3DS. He's also the developer for the, not the developer, the director for Super Smash Bros. series in general. So he makes the Uprising game. And I gave that a try first before I ever touched this NES game. I actually went to this NES game cold. I had never heard anything positive or negative about it.

06:02 So with all of that in mind, I'm blown away by this game. Like, it's such a surprise to just like see this game and to not hear it more often when it's talked about on lists and stuff like that, because this comes out really close to Legend of Zelda and Metroid time. But it seems like those two just left this one in the dust. But similar to what you guys were both saying, you know, when I started the game, I just thought like, oh, it's a platform game, you know, with some shooting mechanics and stuff like that.

06:30 And then you go into a room and you can buy stuff. And then you go into another room and you upgrade yourself. It's like, and then you realize like, oh, you're only on World 1-1 and you can continue, you know, and it's a long, long game. It's like it continued to change what it is. And that was very exciting for me. So honestly, really nice surprise at this one, but not without its flaws. Yes. So let's break it down then. Let's talk a little bit about Kid Icarus from an objective standpoint.

07:39 In case you didn't know, Kid Icarus is an action platformer with some RPG elements. You control Pit through four worlds of vertical and horizontal platforming, obtaining new weapons along the way and upgrading your old ones. So that's kind of like the copy-paste formula for these action platformer RPG games, I guess. But more exciting is the actual plot of the game. Do either one of you want to tackle that plot? Joe? Yeah, I'll take a shot of that because I really was— You don't have to be perfect because it is ten pages of memorization. Trust me, I will give you the CliffsNotes version of the plot. But the manual leads you into the fact that this kingdom has existed forever.

08:23 So what's the goddess's name? Palutena? Palutena. I think it's Palutena, yeah. Palutena, whatever. Palutena and Medusa, who we know Medusa already from Castlevania. Or mythology. Or mythology, but I'm talking about in the context of Neskong. Did you make that connection that this is the same Medusa after she was done with Castlevania? Yeah, that was just Medusa's head in the prior game. Also, but no, I imagine that this game is a prequel to Castlevania.

08:49 It takes place about a thousand or two thousand years before it. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, you're in Angel Land. Angel Land, yeah. Angel Land is the name of the land. There's no Greek euphemism there. It's just Angel Land. Palutena used her light to help crops grow for the men and the gods that lived in Angel Land. And Medusa, who hated mankind, used to dry out the crops and turn people into statues. So Palutena banished Medusa.

09:18 I feel like I'm reading a story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're pretty much giving us a story time here. Also, I like how every time you say Palutena, it changes. Palutena, Palutena, Chubby Cherub, Chubby Cherub. You might as well cover all your bases here, right? Yeah, yeah. You shouldn't make those names that hard. Any pronunciation, yeah. But yeah, so Medusa's kind of like, she's doing all this crazy stuff. And Medusa looks nothing like how I remember a Medusa. Why don't we just call her Lil P?

09:38 Lil P? Lil P. That's how I have it in my notes. Well, she's Big P. Pit could be, yeah. Pit's Lil P. Yep. All right. So Medusa joins up with the monsters, builds an army. She's banished to the underworld at the time. So she builds an army. She arises from the underworld, takes over the main world and the earth. Yeah, the main world. The main world. That's what I call it. That's what I call where we live here. We live on the main world. And then there's where Palutena lives. Palutena lives, which is like the heaven of it. I don't remember what they call it particularly.

10:10 It's not like Olympus or anything. Yeah, not yet. Sky world or something. She's like imprisoned. Yeah, so she imprisons Palutena in a place where Pit already is. And Palutena apparently has the magic to give Pit an end of a bow. No, no, I think she was like projecting her will from the Sky prison. Oh, I thought she... To Pit's prison in the underworld. Gotcha. That makes sense. Yeah, and so Pit is like, you know, he's the last surviving person in Palutena's army. So it's like, it's funny because it's like, he'll have to do. So there's always this joke about how he's not really that competent. Like how to get captured. He's this little guy.

10:50 And it's like, well, he'll have to do. And I think the game kind of makes fun of that a lot. But I mean, he got captured, but everyone else got dead. Yeah. So I mean... Well, it got dead or similar to like Super Mario 64 where the toads are actually just chained to the walls. Oh, God. You know, it's like maybe, you know, they just turned to stone. They got petified. That's true, yeah.

11:08 Because you can save some of them. We'll get into the stone guys though later. Yeah. So that's, you know, that's pretty much the story in a nutshell. Sorry to confuse you guys out there. Long story short, Medusa's the villain. Yeah. And you're this little scrawny guy, Pit, and you really start off scrawny. I mean, your arrows are getting, you're not even shooting them throughout the entirety of the screen.

11:27 They just fall right in front of your feet. Yeah. I don't know how they're killing anything. Yeah. You got to work on those biceps. Yeah. Like that's really bad. So let's get into the fundamentals of the game. You know, first the shooting, which we talked about, it's kind of awful at first, but there's ways to upgrade. Sure. And I like that you can shoot up, but I didn't. Only straight up. Yeah. Only straight up. And I also just didn't appreciate though, that like you're kind of locked when you have to do that. Yeah. You can't, you can't move or anything.

11:57 Yeah. But it doesn't make sense because he can shoot in the air, like other directions and be moving, but he up, he has to be like a fixed position. It's an interesting design decision, I guess. That's also true when you crouch.

12:08 You crouch and you, like at least in like Mario, you crouch, you slide a little bit. Oh, Pit doesn't slide? Maybe he, maybe he does a little bit. I don't think you can slide under things. It might've been even the surface he was on with sliding. Cause there are surfaces in this game, like ice and stuff like that, that will cause you to slide. But you know, I guess the long story short is that you are a flawed hero. Like you can't do everything. Right. But you're on your way, uh, because you're gonna, along the way, there's plenty of different like shops and there's even a black market, uh, to go to and stuff like that.

12:40 So real quick, maybe we just start right at the beginning. We're on, uh, you know, in world one, it's a vertical platformer, which I thought was interesting. Similar to like super Mario brothers two style. Yeah. Um, the thing that's wrong with this though, and this is one of the things that irked me for most of like the vertical portions was, um, it, you can't go backward. And if you fall into like a previous area, you die. It doesn't matter if there was a platform below you at some point, like the screen kills you. And I, I thought we got past this. I see what you mean by like the, the logic of it bothering you, but the actual gameplay of it didn't bother me. Cause it felt like that was very frustrating.

13:21 I'm not going to give this a pass either. And here's why, because of what Sean just said. I thought we got past this, you know, like from a, from a programming standpoint, we've seen like Castlevania, you can go back to, you know, obviously you can't reopen the old doors, but anywhere in that level that you're currently on, you can walk back to.

13:37 Yeah. It doesn't really make sense here that like the platform I was just on because I've jumped to the next one. Now there's just a, you know, a pit. It's not like that world is constantly being devoured. I completely agree. It doesn't make sense on like a story or like a story standpoint, but I didn't mind it in the gameplay. I don't know. The only reason I didn't mind in the gameplay is I feel like at least in the first world where it wasn't too difficult yet, I didn't get to, I didn't really get to the third world where it's another vertical. It wasn't too difficult yet in the first world.

14:01 At least that presented more of a challenge. Like that's how I died the most. This game is not lacking in challenge. Yeah. This game is certainly not lacking in challenge. And I do think this is one of the more difficult mechanics early on, uh, because you're not really dealing with tough enemies yet. They're mostly just like these little snake guys and those one-eyed like flying monsters. But then there's the reapers. Yeah. And they call in their little reapers.

14:23 What'd you call them? They do suck. Oh, okay. I thought you were making like a Medusa. No. Oh, they're called repets. Yeah. Repets? Yeah. Okay. Which makes sense because, I mean, we can't have the grim reaper from Castlevania in this game as well. And not so many of them. So, yeah, there was repets going around.

14:41 They're a really cool mechanic, though, of playing like hide and seek in a vertical level. Yeah, it's a little bit of a stealth portion, I guess. Yeah, you have to. Yeah, because, I mean, you know, in this vertical level, thankfully, you can wrap around the Which is another strange thing, yeah. Well, the game even designs itself a little bit around that. Oh, I know. In certain portions. Yeah, yeah. Which I thought was a nice touch in terms of design. Here's something I'll say about the design of just all the levels is that, you know, there's a lot of thought put into like where enemies should be.

15:09 Not as perfect, again, as Super Mario Brothers. Yeah. But in the sense that like you're not overwhelmed at any particular point. And when you are overwhelmed, you're supposed to be. You know, like you've been spotted by a repet. Now those flying snake guys come around and you've got to deal with the flying eye guys. And there's not much space and you've got a black hole below you. So it's like, you know, you've put yourself in that situation.

15:33 I wouldn't. You know what? No, that's victim blaming. I think like this game, you're not putting yourself. The game is doing this to you. I don't know. Yeah. No, I definitely agree that the game is hard. And I think that might be something that's holding it back. But Legend of Zelda and Metroid are both very hard games too. So I can't imagine that being a reason for this game falling. Yeah. Trust me. I think this game is very hard. And I didn't beat it. And I do want to at some point try and beat it because I had that much fun. But yeah, it got to the point where I was like, wow, I'm going to need to practice in order to get any further. But I do think for me, at least as far as I got, it was easier than Castlevania.

16:10 Okay. Yeah. I don't know if you guys agree. And I feel, no, I like this because it's also like there, you know, because of the password system, you're even able to keep your progress as a character. Yeah. Which I like, you know? So it's not like, you know, in Castlevania, if you start over on the same level, it's like, well, now you don't have the whip. And, you know, you don't have the full powerful whip. And you don't have your secondary weapon.

16:31 Here it's like any strength upgrades you got, any mallets you had, any potions you were holding on to, all that stuff stays. So I think that's a nice touch. Yeah, you're able to hone your craft over a couple weeks and stay on the same save file instead of like, all right, I guess I'm done trying to beat Castlevania today. I'll try again from the beginning tomorrow. Yeah. And that's another thing that I kind of talked about in the beginning. Game's long. Yeah.

16:57 Kid Icarus is a pretty long game. Even if you're just kind of flying by everything, if you're not like tackling every enemy and just trying to get from point A to point B, there's still fairly long stages. Yeah. And there's four levels on each of the three worlds. Right. Which I thought was, you know, like there was enough there that I didn't get like, I don't know, I didn't get tired of the levels. But I do think that like by the time I got to the boss dungeon, what do we call that? Fortress, right? Fortress, yeah. Yeah. By the time we got to the fortress, I was happy to be done with that section.

17:30 Oh, yeah. Yeah. I did think that the way the worlds are laid out, at least like in the manual, the way that you see them on like a map, makes it more so than other games where you can kind of tell where you are in the world based on the game. Like you start out going vertically to try and get up out of the underworld. Then you're going horizontally to move towards the sky, you know, the sky is center area. And then you're going vertically again and then you're going horizontally again. It adds a little like context to your gameplay. Exactly. I like that. I think a lot of those more ambiguous things, this game does very well.

18:09 Me and you are in agreement on like the more like hard like gameplay design decisions, I think. Like I think they made a lot more mistakes than I think you did. You mean? Than I think you think of. Right. You mean, oh, I mean like referencing the falling and the. Yeah, like stuff like that. Yeah. And I can see your guys' side of that too. I guess I just plain devil's advocate. But let me ask you, what would happen in your version if you fell?

18:35 If scrolls. And you just keep scrolling. Like you're at the top, you fall off and you don't hit anything. You just keep falling and never. Well, so I'll give you an example here from a game that we'll be playing shortly that I have played before. Metroid. In that game, you can fall and you won't die. You'll just continue to fall. But more than likely, as you're falling, you'll see a platform that you can fall to. You know, it's not like you fall in a hard straight line.

18:59 Sure, sure. You have like the will to move to the left and right. But I think like even going back, you know, the difficulty thing, there's not really a lot of ways to recover your health. No. Throughout the level. I think early on, they tease this idea because it happened so early in the very first stage. The spas? Not even the spa, but just like those potions, you know, like the chalice. The water. But before you even get the bottles, just the chalice alone. And you drink that and you get most of your health back. It happened so early on in stage one, it's right after the first two Reaper fights, that you think like, oh, I'm going to see these like pretty often. Yeah. I rarely get into those things. You had to like buy them most often.

19:38 Yeah, most of them you had to buy them. And my strategy was just to buy the bottles instead of the chalices because I was like, I ain't got time to waste, you know, my hearts. So what is our currency? The hearts. Yeah, let's talk about the currency because I think that's an interesting scenario here because I would think that the enemies would be a perfect opportunity to give you a little bit of health. But instead, they give you hearts just like Castlevania gave us hearts. Now we got another game giving us hearts, but they're currency. currency and small little enemies will give you just one heart. Then there's like big half hearts that from medium enemies that will give you five. And then the big full heart is 10.

20:15 And somehow you have to collect like enough of these to be able to afford like 500 heart things. Yeah. In the store. The stores have like ridiculous prices and they don't shy away from that ever. Like the very first stage. Can anyone afford anything by the time they get to that first stage? I mean, if they have like a hammer for 20 or something like that. That's true. Yeah. The hammer. Everything else is outside of my price range. And you get so many hammers throughout. That's like the one thing I don't ever feel like I want to buy.

20:42 Like you get hammers throughout organically. I mean, they're cheap enough that it's just like, okay, I could buy a couple. Yeah. But do you really want to be wasting your hearts when you could get something like a barrel?

20:51 True. Can you explain what a barrel does? Because that sounds really stupid. Well, yeah. Pitt just picks up the barrel and he throws it at the end. No. It's like a donkey. We haven't even explained what hammers do. Yeah. We'll get into all of that. I think this is actually a perfect time to transition over to items. And we can kind of just start right away in the store.

21:11 So you get to the store and there's usually three items for sale. I think it's random. I don't think that there's a way to determine beforehand which ones you're going to get. Yeah, I'm not sure they have changed from playthrough to playthrough, I think. But yeah, so you have, you know, you have the chalice, which gives you like a little bit of life back. And that's usually pretty cheap. I recommend not buying that.

21:29 Then you have the bottle, which is great because if you lose all of your health, you won't get a game over screen. You remember you have the bottle. Yeah, you'll have the bottle. You'll drink out of it and you'll get like a quarter of your health back. I thought I was going to get my entire health bar. I thought it was like a full, like, you know how like energy meters in Metroid? Like I thought we were going to get one of those where it's like, oh, I got my whole life back. But it was like, no, I get a quarter of it. So the barrel is really good because the barrel will give you this way you can hold up to eight bottles. I thought that was pretty cool.

22:02 I mean that definitely extends the amount of time you're staying alive significantly because at a certain point – Unless you fall into a pit. No, no, no. The pit has a – there's a solution to the pit. There is, yes. That's the feather. That's the feather, yes. Yeah, but you only get one use of like this, right? Well, yeah, you can only hold on to, I think, one. But like you fall and you come right back up off the screen. And that's kind of cool because it's like pit is an angel who can't fly.

22:31 But now this feather gives him the ability to fly only when in perilous danger. Yeah. And then on like a weird note, there's a credit card that you can buy. Which is – that doesn't work for like the aesthetic of this game. But you know what? Doesn't it though? This game has already shown off how like it's kind of a little weird and it's kind of funny. And like think about like some of the enemies in this game, like those guys that look like the Rolling Stone tongues.

22:59 I think they're in stage three, world three. You know, you got guys like that. You got the speck nose guys. Yeah, the mustache. But none of that puts it in a time period. Like we – I've come to conclude that this game is in times of myth or at the very least ancient Greece. Yeah, the back of the box even tells us so. And then there's a credit card. There's nothing else. And the sprite is just a credit card. It's a plastic credit card. Why do you guys think so poorly of like Greek mythology that they couldn't have conceived the concept of credit cards? Because they didn't, Mike. It's the magnetic strip that seems like it might be a challenge.

23:36 Well, we never see Pitt use the magnetic strip in the game. But guys, what does the credit card do? It allows you to buy on credit like a credit card does. But you can buy on credit and then like immediately afterwards, now you just have the total that you owe on the credit card up in the corner. And as you collect hearts in the game, you don't get those hearts. It just goes down on credit. This is a game about paying off your student loans.

24:02 This is the original Animal Crossing. So I never used the credit card. Is there a credit limit? Well, there is a credit limit. It's your first purchase. Okay, your first purchase. So you buy a hammer, you can't buy anything else. You better buy the best thing because, yeah, you only get one use out of the credit card too. It's not like pay it down and then, you know. You can't put payments.

24:23 Spipe again. But yeah, I don't really know. I don't know if there was like interest. I wasn't really checking in on that regard. But that would have been another cool thing. If there was interest, that would be impressive. Interest on each world. You know, like so once you get to like one, two, it's like, hey, you at all last stage to get me back my money. Yeah, but I think the actual interest is just like, oh, God, I'm in debt. I'm already in a new world. I need items, but I can't buy any. Like you, it's a really good. You're in a foreign land and you don't have any money. It's a good debt anxiety simulator.

24:52 Thank you. so so one thing that I don't I don't think a lot of people know this but I'll share it which you guys uh in the store when you go in there and you see the prices and you're like this is outrageous did you guys know that you can haggle with the store somehow I knew you were about to say that I had no idea that that was no way to interact with the guys for shooting arrows so

26:07 first off I'm not gonna try to give too much backstory right here but basically the Famicom version of this game is just a little different but most notably the difference on the Famicom controllers is that they had a microphone built into them so using the microphone in on the Famicom you could shout into it and by shouting into it when you're in the stores you will get a

26:30 reaction out of the store owner you know to like basically like you're bartering with him and he will either lower the prices or get pissed off and raise them even further but this just picks up that you've shouted it just decides randomly it's outrageous yeah it's not even just talking you have to shout but you can do it on the NES version as well by exploiting uh taking the second controller plugging that into port two and then hitting a and b at the same time and then that will do the same

26:59 result as the shouting did and the things will either go down or up in the store and I found for the most part they go down but man when they go up he really shoots up the prices I saw something selling for 900 you know 900 hearts you can only carry like 999 yes exactly that does that carry over like the next time you find that item it'll still be that price no no no it's just for that specific you know because you're imagining each one of them being a different dealer right right it's not like it's a traveling sale or they talk to each other you know because if he was traveling around doing all

27:32 this stuff it's like he might as well defeat Medusa I mean they might have cell phones to talk to usually they have credit cards no he's part of like he's he's part of the Medusa uh uh regime yeah I was gonna say who are these scummy guys that have all this equipment and the world is in peril and they're like well this is a chance for me to make a quick buck off the kid no it's great it's just uh you know profit off of uh profit out of crisis yeah nice so that's the store I can't believe that we talked about the store for that long uh do you guys want to talk about the

28:05 treasure chamber that's the one with the pots yeah it's basically uh you're gambling every time you walk in there um so there's gambling in the game there too there's criticars there's gambling so basically you got um was it like nine platforms in there yeah I think it's nine there well you know four on each side and then one in the middle yeah so you can go and break all those treasure chests and usually they have full heart or a hammer or you know yeah never anything that good that's always

28:35 stuff you want to collect and then if you're unlucky or just you have average luck you'll probably come across the god of poverty the god of poverty yeah that's what it's called the god of poverty lives in treasure chests and like if you get really greedy and try to open too many or again if you're unlucky your first one may be the god of poverty uh he just takes everything away from you um but only everything that you opened in that everything that you opened yes because when I read the manual I thought he was gonna take all my items yeah I was terrified of that yeah it was uh yeah it was a

29:10 little anxiety inducing but if you get to the last one and you open it it's usually something a little bit more valuable like a feather yeah it's funny I never I mean like I never was risky enough to try to do them all anyway like I usually I would just like open up one see a heart and be like that's good enough yeah I'll try I'll try one more and then like it'd be the god of poverty and I'd be like wow I'm really bad at this because the it's as often as it seems like you might get the god of poverty it's you only have a one in nine chance of summoning him like you should play the game a little bit but

29:39 then it's like isn't then you get like one in eight and then one yeah yeah I'm not saying take it all the way okay that's it's like deal or no deal mentality yeah where it's not good to open up all the briefcases but it's certainly good to open up at least half of them so that you can get a better deal with the dealer or no deal that's yeah I mean that's some yeah that's some late game deal or no deal strategies right there that was free deal or no deal is that even a thing anymore I don't think it's a thing anymore but there's definitely an arcade machine now one time in college I was very sick for like a week and I just stayed in my bed and watched deal or no deal for a week and I honestly feel like there was a

30:16 point where I lost control of my body and just knew I couldn't change the channel you were that big a fan of Howie huh it's just like well I grew up on Howie actually but we're not gonna get to that story that was back when Howie had hair and he played a cartoon bear on pc games wow here we go we'll never get to pc-stalgia though because there's way too many games to cover so all right that's um that's the treasure chamber in a nutshell we don't really need to talk a lot of holly mandel going on in there so uh then let's talk about the hot spring chamber this is the best room in the whole game this is a nice relaxing spa you go into the gold water yeah it's weird that it's gold uh it

30:52 could be yeah the first time I went in there I didn't even go in the water because I thought it was gonna hurt me right and then the next time I went in there I was kicking myself like the next one I found which is like two hours later because they're so infrequent it's an interesting mechanic that I don't know why they did it like this but it's like time-based you you go in there and you slowly recover your health instead of it just going all the way up to to full yeah yeah it's like well I'm not patient so I've had enough yeah I don't want the whole health I feel like it was more of like the effect yeah like oh you can feel it rejuvenating you yeah you're probably right because

31:27 they made a lot of uh like decisions like that in this game kid icarus is not a game you can rush there I want to stress that that like yeah you can try and dodge stuff for a long time but then you're going to be without items and you're just going to be a really weak pit in the later stages which isn't going to help you so I think like you know similar to how we were talking about like Castlevania being a game that requires patience you know and even like to an extent Super Mario Brothers like unless you know those levels like back and forth through your head like if you're just

31:52 running through those stages you're bound to like accidentally hit into a Goomba or you know that's kind of like what this is is like you've used to do this thing too much you might just bump into enemy bump you might bump into enemies like too frequently and then you're all of a sudden only have like one hit left yeah this uh I I think that with with Castlevania though you could just rush through it and you would more or less be the same strength as you were um if you if you took your time

32:21 this one like you said like will actually punish you in the long term which is interesting yeah and I think that yeah that's interesting because they both had health meters they just worked kind of differently yeah like this one grows yeah it's it's yeah it's different all right so that's the hot spring chamber just a nice reminder to like slow down you don't have to rush through the game we got plenty of game it's a resting station you you rest while pit rests yes I like that uh and then the last one the training chamber so the training chamber yes the training chamber is a place where uh I guess there's a rogue uh sky world I actually for some reason I don't know if I read this in the manual

33:05 or on game facts but I'm inclined to believe that that's Zeus that's just Zeus that's just Zeus he doesn't feel like he needs to do anything about this like maybe instead of throwing doors at me or whatever those are okay they're not doors what are they I think they they definitely doctor strange levels yeah I mean they definitely have a name and there is a real description of what they are but I thought they're just mirrors yeah mirrors make sense but I really just thought it was like you know abstract projectiles that he's just like summoning into existence that's why I thought he was

33:35 Zeus it's just like the platonic ideal of a rectangle like and just to back up so he says Zeus apparently says like are you ready for some intense training or something like that and then all of a sudden all these rectangles start falling down at you or some of them start to fall but then they swoop to the side and try and clip you from the side um and it's kind of a mess yeah they even like they they spun up at the top and some will like you know hook left yeah hook right and there's like no telling and there's got to be at least five or six on the stage at a time I think there's more than six I think yeah there's it's like the whole screen yeah maybe maybe you just

34:13 got overwhelmed and I'm I'm overestimating but it felt like there was a lot like too much yeah and then I I didn't even realize at first that you can shoot them so I was like dead every time and I were just waiting it out you were just trying to dodge I was trying I was just leaving I wasn't even trying to beat it I was like this is it kills me every time and when you leave Zeus says oh he doesn't call you a coward he calls you oh he says you weakling oh wow but then I realized you could shoot them and it was still really really hard yeah so both so that's how you get um

34:45 the he he will um give you a choice of power up and the power ups are great yeah so these are this is the thing okay if you can endure these levels which I will say it takes a lot and you'll probably be worse off leaving this room because you have really low health but if you can then survive it the the rewards are great because basically you have a choice between two bubbles like floating

35:09 around you similar to like gradius style you know where it's like you have like this protection at all times that's the wand right or the uh no that's not the wand um oh yeah that is the wand sorry that's the wand then you can have the bow which will uh upgrade your bows this way you shoot further and faster and I think it's on the third upgrade of the bow that you can actually shoot

35:31 across the screen every time yeah fail so that's great and then the last option which I also think is pretty cool but usually is the one I default to last like you know out of all the strength this one lasts is the fire because all it does is like when you shoot an enemy it just keeps them on fire so they keep doing more damage to them but I found that as as I continue to like upgrade my strength most things were getting killed in one or two hits anyway but doesn't it also sort of extend the amount of like it makes it a wider hit spread is that what it does I think it does because every time you shoot a a fire arrow there's a flame that sort of spirals around it oh yeah okay okay

36:12 sorry I thought you meant like it was shooting in like different angles no no no no that is true yeah so it does do that which is nice because sometimes you think you're lined up with an enemy but you're like slightly off I experienced this a lot in the overworld uh section what Joe would call the mainland the main no the main world the main world um in the overworld section those like rocks those rock characters that kept falling oh yeah I would be like oh gotcha and point upwards and shoot them and it would just go just right past them yeah just a little bit so it would be nice to have the fire in that situation that is another thing that took me a while to like just dawn on me like wait I can

36:50 shoot those things instead of trying to like get out of the way of them all the time yeah shooting up was so frustrating for me that I rarely even used it and then I forgot about it and then I'd remember and be like oh I'm a badass I can shoot whatever I want except at an angle uh I just want to clear something up so looking into the manual they never specifically call this guy Zeus but they do call him a friendly god oh okay he should be helping he should not make you endorse like strength tests if he wants to like save Palutena but maybe he doesn't give a you know crap about yeah he's he's old and washed up doesn't matter yeah

37:23 so all right uh I think we are good to move on to fortresses yeah so so fortresses are sort of the uh the bowser's castle of this game I would say they're more like Zelda dungeon I would say that too I would I meant more in like the the grand structure of the game design of like level to level yeah but yes they are structured in such a way that you're actually navigating a labyrinth with which are different rooms um where there can be three exits or two exits or one yeah and you and you actually exit whether it's stage right stage left or yeah you know down or up it's like you're actually on a new part of the map and if you go back through those doors you'll go back to those other rooms and so you know playing this game on the NES

39:05 first it's like wow this is this is like and you know Legend of Zelda before Legend of Zelda even happened there were a lot of things in this game where I thought I didn't think we would get this until Legend of Zelda yeah it's the first time that we've seen really like a non-linear uh level design I mean just even talking about the map the pencil and the torch yes like those three things are crazy items that you can only find in the fortress level but the map will then like when

39:31 you go to the start screen it will have a map in the top right that just shows right the labyrinth completely useless without the torch completely useless but you can't use the other two things right you haven't found the map the pencil will mark uh where you've been as you go through so it'll kind of like outline them in green but you won't know where you are and then the torch will tell you where you are in the in the current like space so it's a good way of getting around but unfortunately

39:58 none none of those three things help you get any closer to figuring out where the boss is yeah but I did think that they were necessary at least for me because after a while I was retracing my steps so much accidentally I just needed to know at least the pencil I need to know where I've already been so I can know what other room to check well a lot of hoops to jump through just to get like that

40:17 basic functionality out of it though I went I went old school on it guys and I I brought I broke out these spreadsheets you know and started you know mapping it out myself that's old school is that the old way of playing this game well not like specifically kid icarus but just like yeah those old games you would draw the map yourself you know like you would just feel like okay I'm in this box now and if I go right I'm in this box and I would just mark off like what was in that room just way I

40:41 would know if I wanted to go through it again because there are certain rooms that have eggplant wizards those are the worst okay this is one of the weirdest features of this game Sean I can't believe that earlier in this podcast you tried to convince people this wasn't a weird game no but the credit card was the strangest thing I okay I never said that was the strangest thing I maybe I did

41:02 but I mean I know I'm only teething you here but why like why eggplant like I mean I get the whole um it's gonna transform you into something like useless but why eggplant so the manual has this to offer as in terms of a device use the hospital in all exclamation marks and then watch out for the eggplant wizard spells they'll turn you into an eggplant in parentheses a fate worse than death

41:33 go to a hospital to find a cure and I just love that like the hospital room is completely useless to you if you're in if you have low health that you know like that doesn't matter yeah they won't see there's nobody at the hospital kid you're just bruised they specialize in one thing and that's people who have been turned into eggplants I do need to do some uh I need to look back at myself in the mirror real quick and you're right I don't know why I found this that strange like everything about early Nintendo or just Nintendo in general is strange I've been conditioned to understand that

42:05 mushrooms make me big because it's been so big but but this kind of this uh like Kid Icarus the whole franchise is so foreign to me that I should just take that for granted right allegedly uh Toru Osawa who was the uh like guy who originally started the development and idea of Kid Icarus allegedly he like came up with the idea of putting the eggplants in the game you know and when Sakamoto and team like saw it like apparently nobody questioned it they're like yeah yeah of course like we should have these eggplants we should we should turn Pit into an eggplant uh there's no verification on that but that is the

42:43 story Osawa tells and I think that's funny so thankfully like you avoid those eggplant guys at all costs because it is a pain in the neck if you get turned into an eggplant especially if you don't have the map making tools yet yeah because you have to try and find that hospital on your own and you don't know if you're reverse tracking or something so uh basically getting the eggplant is a fate were a fate worse than death because you basically have to kill yourself if you don't want to try and find the hospital wait would it I never actually did this but if you die as the eggplant do you respawn as the eggplant I I honestly don't know code yeah I don't know I doubt it I don't think you respawn but I

43:23 wonder if you were to put the code with the code in I feel like if you put the code in no I feel like it would just start you back at the beginning of the fortress I gotcha okay because that would be yeah that would be even outside the context of the game like that's a soft lock yeah it's like it's like for the unwilling to go to the hospital that's a soft lock can we talk about uh one of my favorite features of the fortresses yes please which is so throughout your journey to get to the fortress you've collected all these hammers but you've not been able to use them

43:52 now in the fortress you can find all these centurion uh statues that are apparently your your friends that have been turned to stone by medusa and if you use the hammers on them you just release them and they fly off and my first the first time I went through a fortress I was like I didn't even pay any attention to those statues the second time there's an icon for the centurion yeah there was an icon at the bottom but I didn't connect them to the statues they're like a different color and I just I don't know I just didn't pick up on it second time I noticed them and I was like oh start smashing these these I guess I'm releasing them there's I've got five I didn't know what they were

44:27 about to do yet either they were just gone and I was like oh okay I released them I thought it was just points or something yeah then when you get to the boss at the end of the stage which we haven't talked about yet you suddenly have the amount of centurions you released fighting by your side every time you shoot an arrow they shoot an arrow they fly around and and it's fun but is it are they really useful I think they're useful on certain enemies I don't I think they were useful on well I don't want to get into the that's fine that's fine but I just I guess what I mean is is like

44:58 you know they weren't the smartest AI in the batch and they take one hit and they're dead and it's and it's like yeah what else am I going to use my mallets for so I get it it's fun don't get me wrong I think it's a neat concept but the damage they're dealing and the like and the length that they stay on the battle for it's like this is just more of like a neat concept like another nice little touch rewards rewards exploration I mean it's better to have but it's not like game changing yeah right yeah they definitely could have had something more to them that made them more essential but but I I still thought they helped a little bit maybe maybe I was like really wanting them to have yeah I was gonna

45:37 say like don't get me wrong I mean like it's cool but yeah I just think it's cool that you have you know like mallets at your ability to you know release people and have them fight for you but I don't know it just didn't do it for me one thing that uh I want to talk about in the fortresses but also just happens in later stages is that those little harmless snake guys have now become the most annoying thing in the world because apparently there are these pots that suspend themselves from the ceiling that just spawn an unlimited amount of the snakes when you get close to them

46:08 and at first I thought like oh it'll just drop like four or five and we'll be done with it right but it's like no they just keep dropping them and it's like Pitt why not just shoot the freaking pot okay the pots are indestructible clearly um they're actually from kung fu oh yeah those pots wait there are pots in that game that shatter open and reveal snakes yes yeah that's right yeah but they shatter open well I mean in the olden days they used to not break they didn't break they were

46:37 after Pitt defeats Medusa now all pots are vulnerable Medusa the god of pots that's really what she was uh I don't know that just annoyed me that like yeah you know this mechanic of just like this enemy that's just going to continuously drop because you know any little thing that does damage to you does damage to you and you will have to like pay that price like you're not just going to find another chalice anytime soon it's it's all stuff that's just weakening you for the boss fight it's

47:04 like I got enough to deal with with my own gods throwing mirrors at my face to test my endurance you're arguing for like a finite amount of of snakes out of the pot which is a very you know it's a controversial opinion finite amount of snakes like you could run you could run a campaign on that I am arguing for a finite amount of snakes I think like yeah like five snakes out of a pot makes sense an unlimited amount well that sounds like Medusa witchcraft they do they will stop throwing snakes

47:34 out if you haven't killed any so luckily they don't just keep they can't just be like 30 snakes on the screen once you kill them they'll just replace them and there are some stages where it's like you know you're kind of going up like a donkey kong looking level where it's like zigzagging and the snakes will fall from the top and kind of like swarm their way down to a few swarm it works it works it's like

47:55 yeah it's like we all knew what you meant yeah like it was okay so that's that that's the fortress find the boss and then uh you know we can talk about the bosses if you guys want anybody anybody interested in well I don't want to be the one to go through the boss no that's fine I'll even give you the names okay so up first in world one uh world one's underworld boss is twin bellows and that

48:20 is the two-headed dog yes um and he's he's red and I don't know it's very fast projectiles for is there a reason though why they went with two instead of three like isn't cerebus like part of part of greek mythology yeah but like I I actually think maybe it just would look like a mess of pixels if they tried to make them three-headed and as far as I know there could be some other there's so many monsters in greek mythology maybe there is some other maybe there is a twin bellows

48:50 yeah uh anyway I think what's cool about these boss battles though is yeah the centuries show up to fight but you also like have a boss health meter in the in the corner that says like 150 and you have to try and get that down so you have like an idea of what you have to do but the bosses do take a ton of shots to to get rid of but they also have a pattern that you know is fairly readable like I didn't find twin bellows to be like you know oh there's a really tough boss like what am I gonna do

49:18 it was just like oh he jumps I go the other way I shoot him now would you say that they telegraph anything or you just have to learn the no I think you have to learn the pattern yeah we're still not at that stage yet where things are being telegraphed yeah uh in any of these boss fights by the way for that's what I'm looking for well yeah the second one I guess it's not really there's not like specific attacks but the second one is a very distinct pattern you're talking about hugh draw

49:41 yes yeah hugh draw uh the blue snake yes yeah he there is like a um like a what is it like a zigzag like yeah sort of like a like a zigzaggy pattern yeah making like endless w's yeah exactly and uh you know or m's I found this one to be the toughest of the three because I I'm pretty sure only the head can take damage and you don't really want to get in the way of something that's constantly making diagonals across the stage so you really have to just wait for that opportune time to do damage to it it takes forever and it takes forever yeah it's a forever fight my strategy was yeah just

50:19 I know exactly where where to jump and where to jump when to jump away I can hit him maybe once or twice jump away hit him once or twice unfortunately he takes like four damage every hit and he has like 200 yeah he has the most health I think actually I never got to another boss okay uh I don't know if he has exactly the most health but he has a ton of health given what he does what's 50 hits and then yeah like seriously but when you're jumping around and you gotta dot you gotta you gotta hide for a while you know when you're used to when you're used to four hits at max killing any enemy

50:49 what's 50 for a boss uh so you have you have those and then the last guy pandora which uh the manual says is the source of all evil okay maybe that should be the wow yeah yeah so I guess we're opening pandora's box here with this villain but pandora is this bubble character that also switches between being tangible and then going to be visible invisible but you can still like I don't know if it was meant

51:18 to be on purpose but you can see the outline of him if you like look hard enough at your screen so this way you know where he'll like pop back in oh okay that might have been on purpose yeah like it was nice and I I don't know I just felt like he was really easy and I'm not even so sure that his bubble himself can attack you all right it's just the balls that fly around the screen that can hurt you so I think pandora uh while she may be the source of all evil doesn't mean that she's particularly

51:45 like powerful it's it's much like you know in spongebob the dirty bubble like that's what this is like where you're fighting the dirty bubble like this at least there wasn't a jimmy neutron to tie it to nickelodeon though I thought of the dirty bubble but when you said that you can sort of see the outline I thought of dotted line girl if that's oh yeah deep of a cut no it's a pretty actress and each one of them is kind of guarding a treasure that is is that paul lieutenant we haven't even touched on the three treasures right yeah we I don't know you don't get to use them until

52:25 later yeah but that is the driving force of the story yeah the whole idea is that you have to collect these um the what is it the mirror shield the light arrows and the wings of pegasus I think it's the arrows of light okay nobody nobody knew what you meant yeah when I said light arrows people were like well who's this guy I'm turning off this podcast yeah like he has no credibility uh but interestingly enough okay so you've collected the mirror shield you've collected the arrows of light

52:54 and the wings of pegasus and then all of a sudden in stage four you get like this nice little cut scene where you transform using that equipment like you weren't able to use it at any other point in the game but now that you have all three you have the mirror shield to repel enemy bullets you have the arrows of light to shoot lasers and then you have the wings of pegasus to finally be able to fly and that's right in stage four you're flying a total game changer I I think I think so I I agree and I

53:26 didn't I do plan on beating this game but I didn't get to it so I watched some footage of it just to see what it was all about and it looks like it is a total game all of a sudden all of a sudden it's a shmup yeah yeah so I I you I've used a lot of the passwords um because I couldn't beat any of these things really they're there Sean um I was able to get into the first fortress but not beat it but anyway I so I used the password to get to the uh the shmup levels and um there's only one level

53:57 with you know sub levels yes but um I mean it's it's serviceable it's passable I think it's just a fun change yeah I think it's very flawed oh yeah we're not playing like gradiest level gameplay here we're we're playing a game that was supposed to be an action platformer and is now uh a shmup you know it's like now all of a sudden you have to like learn how to like yeah play that kind of style of a game and it's slow and it's there's a thing this is a thing that uh that Nintendo seems to do a lot it's like all right we got a perfectly good system right now of uh of like an action platformer and now here's a water level or no now here's the uh the flying level and it's it's telling like

54:39 they're gonna keep doing this but only Nintendo would do this you don't see in like Castlevania all of a sudden Simon gets on a motorcycle drives through the courtyard you know it's like you don't have to do any of like that kind of on rails thing and in those other platforms and just for Nintendo but maybe that's just because they like to spice it up I will say that another thing uh that was like something Sakamoto wanted to do with this game was like stage four was just added at the very end like of development like it was just like a cool way to surprise players and do like something different with it did they just want to end the game at I think it was just gonna end with a Medusa

55:16 fight but they didn't plan on it being like on rails and have it you know so this is on rails like you're the screen it's a scroll automatic scrolling yep automatic scrolling I didn't realize that from watching yeah and that that's a bit of a bummer because uh you know your lasers is as awesome as they are they're not perfect and a lot of times you'll aim to shoot an enemy and you won't be able to actually land a hit on them and then they'll come charging at you and for some reason your mirror shield isn't good at blocking like physical charges yeah it breaks the mirror yeah so uh so you take damage for that but stage four also doesn't have like a finite end to it you have

55:56 to collect a certain amount of hearts to get to the Medusa fight then and only then can you get to the Medusa fight I guess I just assumed that when I played that that level I just you didn't notice you were looping no I thought it was just that like that was just the the pattern yeah no you you keep looping uh and I think you have to collect a certain amount of hearts I'm pretty sure that's the case I'll double check myself of course uh but then you get to the Medusa fight and it's kind of lackluster yeah I found it easier easy yeah yeah I'm wrong but does Medusa not have hp displayed

56:31 Medusa does not have hp displayed as far as I remember yeah I thought that was kind of actually even though I didn't play it so maybe I would have a different idea if I was if I was going through that but I thought it was kind of cool it is cool she has less health than some of the bosses in the fortress which is weird but I think it's like kind of like final fantasy yeah you don't know yeah you don't know like how much you have to how long you have to fight this uh you know this villain

56:53 yeah and you know there there's some interesting things going on like she's summoning the snakes out of her hair but like also she's like attached to a wall yeah it's like she's really big yeah doesn't have a body like inside of that thing too after you after you beat her didn't like something open up and you see like the yeah it was like you're standing there yeah it was like she was projecting herself onto the wall it was all very strange it feels like a fever dream um and she's shooting like these projectiles at you but as long as you just block them with the mirror shield granted she's always spamming them

57:26 yeah but unfortunately like and you know I understand this game was a little bit rushed to the market but there's a spot where you can just perfectly stand and hit her in the eye and not have to like worry about taking damage and that's just disappointing because like you know in gradius there we talked about sweet spots but there was never like a spot where it's like oh just stay right here and you'll just be able to defeat it it's kind of like cheap that that's like a final boss exploit

57:52 so I know that you mentioned that they that they just threw the final level in at the end but like this is the first time hearing that this was like a rushed game I didn't yeah yeah uh well we can get into that in a second but yeah the development for this game is uh is something that nintendo probably didn't want known uh but osawa i guess like departed with the company and kind of did like a tell-all eventually okay and uh yeah he says some crazy things uh during during that

58:19 uh but that's the game and uh you after that you get to the ending screen where you meet palo tenna again and you get one of five endings yeah that blew my mind what the idea that there's multiple endings I used to always think about one of my favorite games chrono trigger I used to think like wow it's amazing that a super a late super nintendo game had multiple endings and now I'm seeing that like I mean they're obviously they're these endings aren't the complexities are different yeah no I

58:50 agree still just the fact that they have it is is pretty amazing to me unfortunately joe you weren't on our mighty bomb jack episode but mighty bomb jack has alternate endings as well there's a best ending where the entire family is saved yeah that everything else is suboptimal where like you have dead dead brothers and shit I've yet to play this game but I will have to play it uh so that's that

59:14 but the the interesting thing is how you get the endings because I I was expecting a pretty good ending for my for myself I thought like oh I played this game pretty well so what did you get um I think I got like the second worst ending like so you were like a guard a helmet and a weapon yeah yeah exactly I got the helmet and the thing um and so just so that you guys know it's it's determined by how you

59:36 maxed out your stats so hearts at 999 strength at five endurance at five and all three weapons acquired if you have all those you'll get the perfect ending and then for each one that you don't have you'll go down a step in the endings so the the the best ending the best ending is great yeah you uh you become a a big boy uh you become big boy you you grow you grow to about the height of tina and about she's very tall yeah and then um yeah you get a little peck on the cheek

1:00:08 and it's a modest game yeah and then like the the the background opens up and they're just cherubs everywhere and like it's a celebration they're throwing hearts on you and stuff yeah but I mean that's kind of a slap in the face to anybody who didn't choose to max out the heart something that's clearly like the hardest thing if you yeah if you do something that is like I can't do it if you just beat the game in any way you you're just a lowly farmer yeah and that's not a that's not a smack against farmers for me and also you you have saved the world saved the world the

1:00:37 cherubs can't be bothered to come out and throw some flower petals on you like oh thanks thanks a lot you don't have it wasn't that impressive you don't have 999 hearts yeah do you guys think chubby cherub is in that batch I think yeah I think he's one of them they're they're like immortal right like he's because chubby cherub takes place in like the 1970s so I was just wondering if you think he was a you you don't you don't credit cards everywhere chubby cherub why is it the 70s uh for those of you

1:01:06 who are listening to a more important episode like kid icarus chubby cherub was a game that came out last year uh 1986 uh last year and uh you play as uh chubby cherub who has to save his friends he's afraid of dogs yeah it's just the whole thing um but those of you who listened to that episode you guys the real mvp anyway I will I will humor you with this though sean so you thought that the farmer was the worst ending I thought that was the worst ending is the worst ending in the polite north american version however in the japanese famicom disk system version there is a worse ending

1:01:45 where you will actually just turn into a spec nose those guys with the giant noses and the mustaches and the eyes saved the world and you're punished you're punished you turn into a spec nose like you suck at this game wait so are there is that an additional are there five endings plus that worst one or does that replace the worst i actually think it might replace the farmer because i can't imagine like yeah what else could you do wrong scenario where you don't have all three weapons acquired

1:02:10 like maybe the spec nose is only acquired if you did cheats like to use a password to get there and you just didn't do anything like you know your password didn't include any of the things yeah yeah for power-ups but man what a ride and i know like we haven't really talked about the rpg elements of this too much in terms of like leveling up strength and leveling up endurance and it's like well because those things don't really like happen in the same way like an rpg does and the effects are like barely

1:02:36 noticeable like they're they're needed there is progression yeah but it's like to the sense where when you start world two the enemies that um that you were fighting in the previous thing are no longer around it's these new enemies and they take more hits so naturally you need your strength to grow in order to get them back to that similar level it's not a it's not like oh you can sort of customize how you want to play it's like no you need to be like this if you're going to continue

1:03:02 and now for the for the cool moment when the game ends and you've gotten your ending and everything like that uh i think it says press start to continue and you press start and the game starts right back from the beginning and you're like huh what's going on it's a new game plus you keep your you keep your progression which is the other thing that the other thing that i always i'm like wow i can't believe chrono trigger did this a game that comes out years later yeah and i'm amazed that yeah also i can't wait to see how many more examples there are than just this game when it comes to those things

1:03:39 like new game plus i mean like if if kid icarus was able to think about it other games i mean i don't i never thought with chrono trigger that like it was the first game i just thought that the other games that did it were around the super nintendo time and not on the nes but hey remember in stage 1-1 the very first door you come across and it's empty yeah not in new game plus it's a party right no it's

1:04:03 that'd be so cool it's actually just a medusa fight right away no um it's actually a chance to uh level up your strength if you haven't already maxed it out it's a it's a way to get your strength up again so you would you could still become big boy pit well i think yeah i think like maybe i think that's might be what the whole point of new game plus is though is that like a lot of people on their first playthrough won't get big boy pit and just stupid canonically what he's called yeah i i actually don't yeah he's just a grown man i guess uh can i also ask too did mike you beat the game

1:04:40 right yes did you and you say you got the second ending or the second best second worst ending second worst ending yeah did you get like a a story at the end saying like medusa has been defeated and yada yada yada like a whole screen of a paragraph yeah okay i wasn't sure if that was only the video i watched because then i watched the video of all the endings the video i watched only showed that on the last one but probably just because it was gonna be the same i'm pretty sure i remember that yeah okay yeah it happens like immediately after the medusa fight yeah well no it happens after you meet palatina and right right that's what i mean okay um because also i just remember noticing

1:05:14 that it says the new game plus might explain this but it says whatever you've beaten medusa yada yada yada but in order to maintain peace pitt's struggle continues and that's it it doesn't tell you like what they mean oh maybe they're teasing the game boy game oh yeah you know uh yeah there was a game boy game kid icarus of myths and monsters which was released in 1991 so there's some time for that but it plays very much the same exact way as this one and it's just a little just a little like clunkier you know uh but i i think it's a it's a pretty impressive game for the game boy in the sense that it's doing all the same things that kid icarus was doing very cool um and another thing

1:05:59 that we didn't really talk about at the top is uh how great the like movement feels in this game i don't know if you guys agree with that but yeah this is another game uh very rarely i mean you know i wasn't feeling it in castlevania but this game gets the jump right yeah i think next to super mario brothers this is you know this is the best game this is the best movement other than super mario brothers yeah i think that jump is fantastic uh another thing we didn't talk about though the music right the music in this game i don't know about you guys but when i booted up this game

1:06:28 and you know like the title screen comes down and you hear that like whistle like all of a sudden that just commands my attention like usually i'm like hit press start just to get through the game's opening but here i'm like huh what's going on and then some like little synths come in next thing you know we got like a bass drop and there's like you know like there's all these things going on yeah and then there's a laser light show like dj callan in the background no i mean this is the most complex uh like intro we've seen so far there's like scrolling and stuff it commanded my attention and

1:06:59 i had to listen to the whole song and then you go right into world one one and you have that little like march song and i'm like oh i'm i'm gonna go up through the underworld and i'm gonna tackle this uh this business this business the point where the music really grabbed me the most was where the tipping point for me was the first fortress and all the fortresses yeah the fortresses like the way the music builds on itself there is super cool and it is like um can you play it here well i probably

1:07:26 already played it oh okay uh when we were talking about the fortresses who are you joe yeah i only really ever play when sean asked me last week you didn't everybody go back and listen to the castlevania episode mike refused to play a song sean asked for you'll never hear the game over music in castlevania thank god i never want to hear it again uh do do do do no that's not it that's um said mario brothers 2 yeah that that sounded to me like when you were about to fight a boss in super mario brothers 3 oh yeah sorry yeah that's right right but i think uh in kid icarus in kid

1:07:58 icarus uh the music is sort of a mixed bag there are some some bangers in here yeah i actually think some of them are on now that's what i call nes music but uh uh i guess this sort of is attributed to the fact that it was a rushed uh uh ending but the the music that plays during the last uh the last episode like where you're you've got the scroll yeah you're on rails like it's pretty basic and it's just a loop or maybe they just intended it that way no i i agree with you i think it has to do with the rush there uh because we have some good tracks i really like even the credit track at the end it

1:08:35 like has like a nice little like movement or everything uh you know so i'm a fan of the game's music but i do think it's time we get into some development talk since i've been teasing this for so long now uh i know some fans of the game like it when i do that right off the bat because then you can just tune out of the rest of the episode but i'll put a chapter marker right here so this way you guys can jump right to it smash that chapter marker that is right we put chapter markers in the episodes and i think by the time this episode's come out ios 12 is now like public so if you listen

1:09:05 on apple podcast it's now a standard feature but most apps uh most good podcast apps have chapter support already so that was a criticism of your podcast yeah so uh development for this game is crazy because uh we know like we know who directed it and we know who uh was like involved in in producing it and stuff but we don't know like who exactly was the programming team on this game and who was directly responsible for the ideas and concepts so here's here's like the the little rundown for you okay uh toru or toru osawa debuted the um as a video game designer for nintendo and like

1:09:47 within months they had asked him like hey make your own game and it's like that's crazy but they're following like that whole miyamoto storyline where it's like hey look at this guy like he used to just design art and then one day he made donkey kong like let's give everyone a shot like anyone can make it here at this company so he was the only staff member working on the game at the beginning of the project imagine being one guy so he's programming most of the game and then he either went on to work with tos uh who we've talked about in the past they make uh games yeah they make games secretly as like yeah a secret organization that base game it's an ancient organization so he either

1:10:25 makes it with them or weirdly enough intelligent systems which is like a nintendo second party thing like they've had a very long relationship with them intelligent systems one of sean's favorite games on the nes soccer uh was made not my favorite no one of your favorites uh you put it in your best of 85 yeah uh that was like 10 games okay uh there were 17 games yeah whatever mike anyway uh so it was either one of the two or neither who knows because the story gets so complex but he worked with them on development and it's only after metroid's completion uh that the rest of the team joins

1:11:03 and the rest of the team of course being like sakamoto and crew who of course now we know about sakamoto we talk about him like on all these different episodes wrecking crew uh and the like and soon on our metroid episode we're gonna be talking a bunch about him but sakamoto was very cruel during the uh direction of this game because i feel like he had just finished metroid which was kind of like his baby and then he comes over to this sees where it's at and says oh we're in trouble here like

1:11:29 like this is not like this game needs a lot of work and it's like well yeah you let one guy try to program like miyamoto by himself like and with some programming guys worked on donkey kong you know you asking one guy to make a game like kid icarus that's a different story in 1986 but isn't this sort of osawa's own fault because it has told him to make a game yeah yeah and he does off more than he can chew he designed this incredibly elaborate game that was supposed to be incredibly serious

1:11:57 at the start but then eventually became a funny game but sakamoto went as far as like you know everybody was they were like tearing up cardboard boxes and using them to make beds to sleep in the office like this is these are like confirmed stories apparently and then osawa uh you know he couldn't get away from the office but he eventually um got married during the development of this game uh instead of taking a honeymoon he just takes off two uh two or three days and this is all

1:12:28 from osawa's point of view i have to mention by the way sakamoto has never like said whether this is true or not but he's at home with his wife and sakamoto calls on the second day and says yeah this isn't working you have to come back and he drags him out of his own like short honeymoon to bring him back into the office and work on kid icarus just to show you how you know tough nintendo is over there and there's you know there's japanese work pride there you know in at play but of course osawa did go back and uh help finish the game

1:12:59 so then the game comes out for it's for the famicom disk system in japan uh which has the ability to save that's really cool no passwords you just save your file and there's no staff roll uh like no credits at the end of the game they couldn't be added in time uh they were really rushing the development of the game and uh in the north american version it was added uh there was a staff roll added but without osawa's name that okay i guess i just didn't notice because this osawa is a new

1:13:32 name to me because when i watch i did watch the credits and i did not notice that name well here's why sean they misspelled his name and wrote it as inusawa inusawa i-n-u-s-a-w-a which is adding like a different sound even not even yeah not even just adding a letter that could be in his name no his name can't be pronounced the way it's right we don't know if like you know it's like a translation error who like we don't know that the jazz you know that like sakamoto and crew were like

1:14:01 actively sabotaging this like i don't think that way of sakamoto for the record but uh even sakamoto himself recalls you know that the way that they rushed out the game was just customers were perfectly willing to play it and we were perfectly willing to make it that way that's a direct quote from sakamoto on this game that he probably feels wasn't finished uh so i don't think he looked at this game very fondly and maybe that's why nintendo really like never continued with it because there isn't like a you know a great feel about about the about the game in general brings back bad memories i guess yeah

1:14:37 so and so we already talked about the game boy release uh of myths and monsters and uh the 3ds uh kid icarus uprising which i i would actually highly recommend everybody at least try because it's a incredibly hard to play game like it's not fun controls at all and and you either love it or you hate it but okay it's really hard to do because it's all on rails the entire game uh the game actually starts with pit you know essentially like it picks up right where the nes game left off and even like makes a nod that he just defeated medusa now he has his wings and politena's like yes this is my gift

1:15:44 to you pit like but the game is so like so meta and so like funny and and weird and quirky and if it's um sakurai style especially but like yeah yeah but i think it's just like it's just so weird where where they went with it but also like you know if you look at the original game the original game was weird you know so it makes sense to take it in that route it's honestly it's just fun to watch that game on like youtube like watch a long play of it because the entire game since it's on rails is basically like

1:16:13 you just watching like a like an hour long like a nine hour long movie you know like you're just watching this constant conversations between people interesting uh and you know of course that's how we get dark pit and stuff like that and you know there's just there's just a lot of a lot of funny commentary going on in that game so i highly recommend it that game came out in 2012 and of course now pit and politena both are in smash ultimate so there's plenty of kid icarus to go around but i'd like to see another more traditional kid icarus game i don't think the rails thing was a bad idea but i'd like to see

1:16:49 something maybe more in in line with the exploration rpg elements so was it in any way like was the rails portion just like nine hours of the final uh level yes in a sense but think more like starfox 64 okay yeah i got you or starfox in general i just like to call out starfox 64 whenever i can but enough about uh other video games and enough about kid icarus it's time to get right down to the bottom of it let's bring it into our essential games list all right guys the essential games list

1:17:24 we've had fun talking about this game but now we got to get real with it okay there's only three of us so you need two all right unfortunately people would like to think that they just need one vote to get in you're gonna need at least a majority of years that's gonna be two two votes to get in sean start us off i'm gonna handicap you guys um i because i'm not gonna put it in the essential games list i think this introduces a lot of cool elements uh it shows the complexity of games are going to grow uh they're gonna mix a bunch of new ideas as time goes on uh this is a very encouraging game

1:18:05 uh just in general of console game design um i didn't have too much fun with it though i was i was impressed around a bunch of corners uh just looking at those different mechanics um and how they they sort of squished them together um but i i didn't have too much fun playing it so it's a no for me dog all right that is one no joe are you gonna keep the game alive all right so this has a lot of the elements that i would personally like in a game especially a retro game and i mean it makes it feel like it's a coherent like quest or adventure it's got a maybe one of the maybe the deepest plot

1:18:49 we've had so far the plot though is mostly just me you're right it is in the manual but it is there for me to like it's there don't forget it there for me when i was super mario brothers had a plot right but i think this might have been deeper okay i don't know man i can't remember anybody turned into blocks um but yeah so when i was reading the manual before i played i was thinking this is the kind of manual that like i would have loved reading when i was in you know in the car ride home and couldn't play my game yet or like yeah i know what you mean and then i would have all this

1:19:24 context to the story so granted it's a little little bit of cheating because essential manuals list right it's a little bit cheating because the story is not in the game but with the context that that makes it better for me but also just the fact that you can you can sort of save it with the password system i mean that makes it more of like a like a quest to me too because i would never beat this game in one sitting um and then beyond that like adventure element element of it the fact that the movement is so good the fact that you you have items and like rpg elements i really liked this game

1:19:59 uh and i think i liked it better than castlevania which i put on the essential games list so i vote this essential all right there she blows here i go dog it's my it's my turn um for those of you that might be a little confused let me just say that we look at these games if they're essential today we don't like look at them in terms of the context of that time because you know certainly if we did it that way games would just progressively become more essential because things would just

1:20:28 get better all of 89 is essential right um so here's where i'm at with this game and this is going to be this is going to be controversial i'm sure uh to both the listeners and to the people in the room but as of right now this game to me is essential okay and i guess what i mean is is that when we do our recaps for the end of years and stuff like that we have a chance to either like put new

1:20:55 things on the essential games list or take them off but it requires like everyone in the group to either vote it on or vote it off it can't be like one person still says nay or yay but right now i'm feeling pretty good about kid icarus being an essential game don't get me wrong there are certainly flaws it's a very difficult game uh but i'd actually think like you know especially the fact that i was able to beat it and i couldn't even beat castlevania a game that is like much shorter

1:21:21 and yet like you know probably in my opinion like controls a little bit better other than the jump uh i think like for me what's what's so exciting about kid icarus is all these like new things that i'm seeing for the first time on an nes game that i'm sure we'll see in certain other nes games but there's no doubt that i'll probably make those ones essential as well i think it's just really cool

1:21:45 that in 2018 i can be surprised by what an nes game has to offer and i think like that's why this should go on the essential games list i'm not saying it's perfect i'm not even saying it's close to a 10 out of 10 i'm saying this is a really uh unique game to me that uh that stood with me as i was playing it and made me like want to go back each day and progress a little further type in my password load up my

1:22:07 game give it another go uh it did get a 3ds classics release as well which had like some fake 3d looks to it so maybe try that version if you're looking for a way to get a hold of it but yeah i i'm not like too concerned with my option of like one day maybe i'll remove this if i if i feel like it but for right now i feel pretty good about putting it on the essential games list and there it is

1:22:33 and uh that is all the time we have for this episode of nostalgia if you are happy or angry with uh kid icarus being on the essential games list write in and let us know or write in to us about anything seriously it doesn't have to be nes related but um just ask us about our day yeah yeah just please no one looks at me anymore they only listen and you can listen on any podcast app

1:23:00 and hit that subscribe button uh because every friday we're bringing you new episodes and you know there's just no telling where i'll stop with uh with nostalgia because there's 700 games and i'd like to do 700 weeks of this of this podcast uh speaking of this podcast it wouldn't be possible without your support so be sure to go on to nostalgiacast.com that's n-e-s-t-a-l-g-i-a-cast.com

1:23:28 to check out all the articles that we have on there all the uh we have like detailed sections for show notes for each episode as well as like cool images and uh personal thoughts and reviews you just really never know what you're gonna get on that website so that's why i recommend doing it you just listed everything on that website speaking of you never know you never know what you're gonna

1:23:50 see on our twitter feed which uh updates daily with some really cool nes stuff and i'm not talking about like some garbage like screenshot of a game like does anyone else remember kid icarus like nobody remembers kid icarus until this episode but but that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about like we're posting like really cool stuff like the n8 the nes m8 demo uh which is really cool to

1:24:15 see and a lot of avs stuff that i feel like people haven't seen so certainly like even if you don't want to follow us on twitter just check us out there because it's a really cool place for us to kind of like make an archive of all nintendo stuff i feel like what when you do these really drawn out like uh closeouts yeah i feel like i need a hype button hype because like you you do you do our best advertisement once most of our listeners have stopped yeah yeah we got to figure something out about that maybe maybe we since we don't have ads yeah another great thing about our podcast uh since we don't have ads maybe we should put ads in the middle of the show for the podcast that they're

1:24:57 listening to yeah like hey feeling down we have nostalgacast.com where you can listen to all your episodes all your favorite episodes all over again you can even listen to the first half of this episode again and you can download it too because we have high-res episodes a feature i did not mention so they didn't know everything before but now they sort of know because the essential games list is also on the website that's all uh i'm michael esposito you can find me on at esposito film on twitter and i'll talk to you soon see you next week uh