Another Nintendo classic to tick off, Kid Icarus stars Pit as he travels through Angel Land to rescue the Queen Palutena from Medusa. While the story is minimal, I’ll give them honest credit for the presentation, the character sprites are a cut above what you may expect on the NES. The game mostly runs well and the enemy designs really delve into the Greek mythology the story runs with.

The game is like a mixture of Metroid and Zelda, there’s 3 main worlds, and each have 3 normal levels, then a dungeon. The main levels aren’t too bad, they go by pretty fast and challenge your platforming and shooting skills. The dungeons are more complex and honestly just confusing, and that sums up a lot of the experience. Confusing.

There’s a few crucial yet unexplained systems that are going to make things hell. This game is hard when you start with a single health bar, low damage and no items. You need to essentially grind to stand a chance. You can unlock power ups for Pit to make him extremely powerful, but you can’t use them in the dungeons.. which is where the bosses are.. it’s a weird balance that never quite hits right.

There’s a bit of fun to be had with the gameplay, it controls well, but the structure is like oil and water clashing.

The music’s pretty catchy, and the game goes by fast when you get going. But overall, I’m just abit confused with this one - 5/10