The Money Pit
Kid Icarus fetches nearly five figure-acus.
Everyone check your attic – a sealed copy of Nintendo’s original Kid Icarus was been discovered in some dude’s upstairs loft and has sold for over $9000! That was not a Dragon Ball Z reference! That phrase existed long before Vegeta!
What a perfect game to find in a dusty attic, though. Kid Icarus, one of Nintendo’s most mysterious games. I’ve grown to be exceptionally fond of Pit’s multi-genre adventure, while never quite understanding all of its mechanics. Apparently you can haggle down prices in the shops – who knew? Well, anyone who read the manual I suppose.
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Icarus is a visually arresting, brilliantly unusual game. There are elements of it that remind me of the original Metroid – the somewhat sparse graphics, for one thing, as well as the maze-like later stages and the ability to “farm” enemies. Punishing the knots of snakes that descend after you in the early vertical levels is a great way to grind drachmas. And you’ll need them to power up, to keep climbing. At first I thought the whole game would be an ascension, but then you reach the aforementioned maze stages and it goes all Castlevania.
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You’d think that’d be it, but no. After completing this segment of the game you move on to areas patterned after horizontal shmups, with a fully tooled-up Pit smiting the evil Medusa before transforming into a grown man and macking the goddess Palutena. It’s a crazy, mixed-up slice of Weird Nintendo and I love it. The level of challenge isn’t too high, the levels all look suitably distinct, and the music is superb. If you know it, you’re probably humming it now.
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Not quite worth $9000, but you can play it with Nintendo Switch Online right now-acus.