1986 · Famicom · Game story
Kid Icarus (1986): An Angel, an Eggplant, and a Very Long Climb
Before Pit became a chatty aerial hero, he was a small archer climbing out of the Underworld—paying for supplies with hearts, risking debt at a suspicious shop, and learning that Greek myth had room for a credit card.
In this story
An angel facing up
Kid Icarus begins beneath the world, which is a wonderfully unfussy way to announce that this will be an ascent. Palutena, the light goddess, has fallen into Medusa's hands; Pit, captain of her guard, must free allies turned to stone, collect three sacred treasures and reach the Sky Temple. Nintendo's current description gives the mission its mythic spine. Then the first screen gives it a nervous pair of feet: Pit is small, the route rises, and a bow is suddenly less a symbol than a survival tool. 1 2
Japan received Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami for the Family Computer Disk System on December 19, 1986. Nintendo's later Virtual Console page, GameFAQs' release record and MobyGames' game record all identify that original release, while the current Classics record preserves the same origin. The date matters as atmosphere as much as calendar trivia: Kid Icarus feels like an early console adventure still willing to let a single screen make a player pause, plan a jump and wonder whether going upward was really such a good idea. 1 3 9 10 11
Trivia Nintendo's Famicom Mini page calls out the sternness of its vertical-scrolling stages and pairs that warning with Pit's game-over line, “Yararechatta.” In a later Nintendo interview, Iwata likewise recalls players seeing the message repeatedly near the beginning. The charm is not that the game pretends the fall was fair; it is that defeat is allowed a small, almost casual punchline. The climb may be perilous, but it has already decided not to behave like a solemn marble monument. 4 6
See it in action
The route keeps changing shape
Nintendo describes two kinds of progress: stages that scroll upward toward a goal and stages that move sideways into the next danger. That alternation is Kid Icarus's best trick. Vertical rooms ask for nerve, because the screen keeps tempting Pit higher before it has finished explaining the ledge below. Horizontal passages turn the same bow into a pacing device. The route does not merely show different scenery; it changes the question from “Can I climb this?” to “Can I cross this without being cornered?” 1 3
The journey is divided into four large stages, from the Underworld through the path toward the Sky Temple. The Nintendo reissue manual breaks each stage into three ordinary areas and a fortress, and treats cleared areas as checkpoints. That structure makes the adventure feel less like one uninterrupted pilgrimage than a set of small expeditions. A new area is permission to breathe, but it is also a quiet reminder that the previous stretch is now part of the route Pit has genuinely earned. 3 2
Trivia Checkpoints do more than mark geography. Nintendo's manual says the score at them can contribute to Pit's health increasing. It is a peculiarly encouraging arrangement: performance is converted into a little more room to survive the next problem. The manual also says a Continue restores health and resumes from the last checkpoint. That does not erase the sting of a fall, but it changes the rhythm from total exile to a fresh attempt at a place the game has already agreed you reached. 2
Hearts are not merely sentimental
The economy of Kid Icarus begins with a nice piece of visual mischief. Defeated enemies can leave hearts, and those hearts are money. Nintendo's official description says they buy items and power-ups at ordinary shops and at shadier ones; the manual specifies that Pit can hold up to 999. It is easy to read the floating shapes as sentimental decoration until a shop appears. Then each one becomes a decision: spend now on a little security, or keep climbing with a wallet full of possibility. 1 2
Trivia The ordinary shop is only the beginning. Nintendo's manual describes a black-market shop selling rare or stolen goods at high prices, and says its proprietor will accept a credit card. The card permits a purchase without enough hearts, but the debt has consequences: Pit cannot build up more hearts until it is paid. It is an astonishingly modern inconvenience to find in a game of gods and monsters. The joke works because it is a real rule, not merely a decorative gag in the background. 2
Masahiro Sakurai gave that collision a useful retrospective name in Nintendo's Iwata Asks: the original was not overly serious. He and Iwata specifically marvelled at a Greek-myth setting that could contain a credit card and an eggplant. The phrase catches the game's social texture. Kid Icarus sends Pit on a legendary rescue, then makes price tags, debt and a suspicious merchant part of the route. The credit card is not background decoration; it changes what a purchase can mean. One unwise bargain can follow Pit into the next rooms, giving a celestial adventure the tiny, memorable anxiety of an unpaid bill. That everyday pressure makes each pile of hearts feel less like a score flourish and more like a pocketful of choices at the edge of disaster. 5 2
Useful rooms and unhelpful vegetables
The manual's rooms give the climb an unexpectedly domestic texture. A hot spring restores health, except when Pit has been transformed into an eggplant. A hospital inside a fortress can cure that condition. There are training rooms and rooms of the gods, where the manual says an arrow-raising award can be granted according to how play has gone. None of this turns the Underworld into a holiday resort. It does mean the route contains little institutions of help, assessment and recovery instead of only enemies. 2
Trivia The eggplant curse deserves its own pause because Nintendo documents its practical cruelty with complete straightness. An enemy called the eggplant wizard can turn Pit into an eggplant, leaving him unable to attack; the fortress hospital is the cure. The image is absurd, but the rule is not: the player has to carry the consequence forward. This is exactly the sort of collision Iwata and Sakurai later remembered—mythic peril rendered with a vegetable and administered through an actual hospital. 2 5
Other tools are miniature acts of preparedness. The manual says a torch reveals Pit's current location, while a pencil records the rooms he has visited; both benefits vanish on leaving a fortress. A harp temporarily changes the enemies on screen into hammers, and angel wings can prevent falling off the bottom of the screen for a time. The items are memorable because they do not simply make the hero stronger. They make the player see, remember or briefly renegotiate the rules of a dangerous place. 2
Three treasures, then a new kind of hero
Kid Icarus does not hand Pit his full heroic silhouette at the beginning. Nintendo's manual places one sacred treasure in each of the first three fortress finales. Once all three have been recovered, Pit receives the Light Arrow, Mirror Shield and Pegasus Wings. The sequence makes the quest feel like assembly rather than simple accumulation. Each object is part of the stated rescue mission, but together they alter what the hero can be on the road ahead: more capable, more visibly equipped and closer to the image promised by the title. 1 2
Trivia The most deliciously literal part comes last. Nintendo's manual says the Pegasus Wings let Pit fly in the fourth stage. Earlier in the same Nintendo Iwata Asks series, Sakurai describes the old premise as one in which Pit is an angel who cannot fly; that comment concerns the later revival's starting point, not a new rule for 1986. Set beside the original manual, though, it clarifies the joke's shape: flight is a destination, not a costume he arrived wearing. 2 5
The late equipment shift gives the climb a satisfying narrative grammar. The first part of the game teaches scarcity—hearts, rooms, purchases, curses and checkpoints. The treasures convert that lived experience into a formal turning point. The rescue mission has been visibly preparing its rescuer, one hard-won piece at a time, and the new silhouette makes the change immediately legible on the final approach. 2 1
A game that makes room for personality
It would be easy to file Kid Icarus under “Greek myth, therefore grave.” Nintendo's own material resists that filing. The official premise supplies Palutena, Medusa, a sacred rescue and a temple in the sky. Yet the same documented world offers a black market, a credit card, a hot spring that cannot help an eggplant and a failure message with a shrug in it. The tone arrives through systems as much as dialogue. Kid Icarus keeps interrupting its statue garden with a practical little joke. 1 2 5
Trivia That looseness was already vivid enough for Nintendo's later creators to remember. In the Nintendo interview, Sakurai says the original had a teasing, irreverent quality amid a packed 1986 that also included other major games; Iwata answers with the eggplant example. Their retrospective conversation gives a lively way into the original's tone: a fantasy adventure that lets strange everyday objects puncture the grandeur of its mythology. 5
Kid Icarus: Uprising arrived in 2012 as a ground-and-air action shooter with its own design, and Nintendo presents it as a return after 25 years. The connection worth carrying back to the original is temperament. The official Iwata Asks discussion repeatedly reaches for the old game's unserious flavour. That makes the 1986 adventure worth revisiting as a particular voice, rich in its own climb, shops, curses and comic timing. 7 5 6
How to return without making it homework
A good return to Kid Icarus starts by accepting its scale. Do not treat a heart as wallpaper, a shop as a menu or a checkpoint as an invisible courtesy. They are the game talking about risk in its own tiny language. Let the early climb be demanding without treating every loss as a verdict. Nintendo's own retrospective pages acknowledge the vertical difficulty and the conspicuous game-over message; the more interesting response is to notice what each retry has taught about the next room, and which small resource was spent, saved or misunderstood along the way. 4 6 2
Trivia For a small act of period-appropriate preparation, read the official manual's item pages as if they were marginalia from the adventure. The torch and pencil make a fortress legible; the harp can change the crowd on screen; the angel wings offer a temporary answer to the bottomless threat. These are not trivia cards pasted around the game. They are proof that Kid Icarus keeps leaving tools in the world for players who are willing to understand the peculiar terms of its climb. 2
Today, Nintendo of America lists Kid Icarus among the games in Nintendo Entertainment System — Nintendo Classics, while Nintendo's Japanese Classics page preserves the Famicom Disk System identity of this particular record. Services can change, but the contrast is a neat final reminder of what the game carries with it: a very specific 1986 route, still legible through its upward screens, its heart economy and its refusal to choose between celestial rescue and a suspiciously convenient credit arrangement. It is compact enough to feel like a legend told beside an arcade cabinet, yet detailed enough that a torch, a pencil, a bathhouse or an unpaid bill can change the next chapter of the tale, often with more consequence than another grand speech from Olympus ever could. 8 1
Sources & image credits
Facts were checked against the links below. Official media remains the property of Nintendo and the relevant rights holders.
- Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami — Nintendo Classics Nintendo ↗
- 3D Classics: Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami instruction manual Nintendo ↗
- VC Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami Nintendo ↗
- Famicom Mini: Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami Nintendo ↗
- Iwata Asks: Kid Icarus: Uprising, Vol. 1, Part 3 Nintendo ↗
- Iwata Asks: Kid Icarus: Uprising, Vol. 1, Part 4 Nintendo ↗
- Kid Icarus: Uprising — Game overview Nintendo ↗
- Nintendo Entertainment System — Nintendo Classics Nintendo of America ↗
- Iwata Asks: Nintendo 3DS, Vol. 1, Part 3 Nintendo ↗
- Hikari Shinwa: Palutena no Kagami — Release Information for Famicom Disk System GameFAQs ↗
- Kid Icarus (1986) MobyGames ↗
