Ah Kid Icarus. No-body really remembers you, do they? Only two of your games game out, the third game for the N64 got canceled, and was a long time since you made your return on Super Smash Bro.s Brawl. People only started to notice you as you were on Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I didn't even know who this guy was until I played that game. He's sort of like a forgotten classic. He was the spice of gaming for a couple of years, and then....nothing for fifteen odd years. now look at you, a 3DS game all to yourself. I can't wait to play that! But for now, I'm going to talk about the classic NES game. I never thought I'll find a game as bizarre as this one, with it's crazy creatures and odd logic which is the kind of logic you would expect when dealing with angels. So get your wings and get ready as we soar into this odd entertaining game.

So the story is that the area known as Angel Land is ruled by two beautiful Goddess. The goddess of Light: Paltutena, and the Goddess of Darkness: Medusa. Palutena lives in the Palace of the sky and gives off lovely light so that man would grow their crops and live in happiness and peace. Aww, how nice ^^ However, Medusa hated the men and sought to weather their crops and turn them all to stone. Palutena hated Medusa for that, and turned her into a hideous foul and unthinkably ugly monster....and then she tossed Medusa into the Underworld. So only naturally, Medusa wants revenge and wants to take over the Palace of the Sky. So she wages war and sprang a surprise attack which Palutena could hardly fence off, and eventually Medusa took over the Palace of the Sky and with it, the hole realm of Angel Land. So Palutena, with her last ounce of power, gave a bow and some arrows to a young angel names Pit, who apparently was head of being Palutena's personal bodyguard. How Ironic. So he escapes and goes after the three scared treasures in order to save Angel Land. It's a Good story line, I'll give it that.

So your at the depths of the Underworld. You are an angel, but you can't quite fly yet. Maybe those wings help him jump higher. They are quite small wings, though. So you kill enemies and gain their hearts as currency....wait....hearts as currency? This isn't Castlevania. What would angels need with hearts? Not a very angelic thing for angels to use as currency. Maybe the markets have a trade with the people in Castlevania. Well, the small hearts are worth one heart. The medium half hearts are worth five, and the big hearts are worth 10. That's more than in Simons Quest. And every enemy drops a heart, unlike Simons Quest. You can hold up to 999 hearts, unlike Simons Quest, in which you could only hold 256 hearts. There are also these doors that take you to places such as a market, a harsh training session to gain a weapon, a room filled with enemies and a room full of pots, which you can break for goodies. If you can break all the pots without breaking open the God of Poverty (he looks like a mini Grim Reaper), you get a special item, weather it would be a feather, a barrel or...a credit card? Sometimes. there is nothing at all in the room. Why have that in the game if there isn't anything in it? If you play well, you might come across a man who will give you a stronger arrow, and a new look. But what strikes me is what he says: "Glad you came Pit. Here, take this" Doesn't that sound familiar to the old man in the Legend of Zelda? Is he in this game as well? Well thanks, old man, now I'm stronger and I have green hair now. I want my brown hair back =<

There are some handy items you can find or buy. There is the barrel, which can hold up to eight bottles. A bottle can restore one block of health if you so happen to die. A goblet of....wine? Red wine? Is pit an alcoholic? Anyway, this goblet of red wine restores one block of health on the spot, an you can find them lying around in the underworld. You can also get a Roc Feather....wait *squints* oh wait, for a moment I thought this was a Roc Feather from the Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening. No, this is some angel feather for when you so happen to fall off and die, you'll be able to fly up and save yourself, and fly a little more by pressing the A button wildly. You can also get a credit card from the pot room if your lucky. This words as a normal credit card. You can buy anything you want, all your hearts are taken away, and now your in debt to the market, although you can only use it in the market that has the really expensive stuff. Now when you collect hearts, those hearts go to the market you owe money to. This is getting a little odd, an angel that gets in debt with a credit card? When you pay off the debt, you can collect hearts as normal.

Well, you'll find often that you'll have to do the Pac-Man thing where you go off one side of the screen and and appear on the other side, which was a nice touch to the game play. There is this red jelly stuff that hurts you when your in it, but there is also, if your lucky, a pool of orange juice which when you go in, you get healed, rather than hurt. Oh, I love orange juice om nom nom nom ^^ You can loose (not fire, you don't fire an arrow, you never fire an arrow, not even an arrow on fire, you loose an arrow) arrows up in the air, but you can't shoot (yes, you can shoot arrows, just not fire them) down. That gets a little annoying at times when I'm jumping and I try to shoot an arrow down to the enemy below. The enemies are not all that bad, they have a huge range of cute to creepy, the snakes with wings are just adorable (Ahhhhhhhh =D), but those red crab things that pop out of the bottom of the screen are as creepy as those wall masters off Ocarina of Time, were they just appear out of no-where and threaten to kill you if you don't get a move on. My favorite enemy has to be this Grim Reaper guy that just walks around, occasionally looking back for a split second. I can imagine him singing "oh what a wonderful morning" while stopping the song to look back to see if anyone is following him. Don't let him see you, as he'll take that as you trying to assassinate him and go bananas, running towards your general direction (but not going off the platform he's on. He's very fond of it you know.) while interrupting the music to bring his minions to kill you. This guy can take a lot of hits, so it's best if you can hit him with his back turned. Don't bother hitting his with arrows when he's running at you, as they won't do damage.

Oh look, a harp, I wonder what happens when I get this. Maybe it destroys everything on the screen. *collects harp*
....It turns all the enemies into mallets?!? How does that make any sense? How is that logical? How is that even possible? I mean.....what? You can even pick them up! What good are these mallets, anyway? After the first time, though, it is very satisfying to get the harp and turn them into mallets. Is it wrong that I take pleasure turning my foes into collectable mallets? The game is very challenging. If you die, you get a game over, and these levels are long. So if you complete a level, you should be proud. This game has to have the weirdest game over screen. The words "I'm finished" appear and you get a weird scoring system at the bottom. Does that mean I did badly? There are a lot of zeros there. It was later I figured out that those are in fact the paswords to the game. 20 characters for a password? That's worse than Simons Quest. And they have lower case and upper case as well. So after you complete a level, you get a score added to your total score. It turns out that this score acts like exp. The higher your score, the higher level you can get up.There are five levels, and all of them increase your max health.

After you complete three levels, you'll come across a temple of some sorts, which you must navigate to get to the boss. So this is a Adventure platformer shooter RPG fantasy side scrolling game....That comes close to Mega Man, I'll have to admit. This temple is tricky to get through. You'll need a map, but that's useless unless you get a pencil, which marks the rooms you have been to. Also helps to get the torch thing, which tells you the current room you are in. The problem is that you need hearts to buy them, and it totals up to 400 hearts for the lot (with the map being free, but hidden in the temple). Err...I'll just make my own way around. The most comical, but at the same time down right annoying, is the Eggplant Wizards. These guys will throw eggplants at you. Never let an eggplant hit you. Your top half of your body will become an eggplant and you won't be able to loose any arrows. Although it is hilarious the first time to be half an eggplant (you can even press down to look like a full eggplant and play "where's the angel?"), you need to go to the medical room and get it removed. And these are normally quite a fair bit away from the Eggplant Wizards them self. So you have to be really careful when facing these guys.

The mallets come in handy in the temples. Press select if you have any and you'll be equipped with one. Press be to swing your mallet to break statues to free your angel buddies, who will help you in the boss fight, or you could use it as a weapon to squash some enemies. Again, this is really satisfying to do on the winged snakes in particular. Just something about using the hammer for that. But use them wisely, as every time the hammer hits something, it gets used up. And for some reason, it sounds like a squeaky hammer when you use it. Maybe the angels power makes squeaky hammers as powerful as real ones. The boss battles seem a little uncreative and simple. I was expecting more from them. If you don't have any of your angel buddies, this could turn out to be very tedious. After you defeat a boss, you gain a sacred treasure and move onto the next stage. For some reason, any power ups gained will take a little time before they become active. You have a protective crystal which can deal damage to enemies that are night up to you, a sacred bow that can loose arrows much further that normal, and a fire arrow, which can kill multiple enemies in a small space.

Overall I give this game a 9.3/10 This game is a classic despite the limited games it has. To be fair, the music started off great, but as the game went on, the music got worse until the last level when it becomes a simple loop loosely based on the Underworld Theme. Not that it's bad, and it becoming worse it very gradual , but I felt they might have done a better job of it with world 3 and beyond. Aside from all that, everything in this game seems to come together to make a truly classical game, if not one or two things were just copied and altered from the Legend of Zelda game (the man that helps you with arrows, for instant). If you like platformer game, you'll love this game. If your a fan of angels, don't give this a miss. Now if you'll excuse me *picks up a harp* I need some more mallets *plays the harp and the light in the room becomes a pink mallet and falls on my head* Ow!