Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters - Development and Reception

Development and Reception

Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters was designed by Masafumi Sakashita, and developed by Nintendo in co-operation with the external company Tose. It was released in North America in November 1991, and in Europe on May 21, 1992. As such, it is one of the few first-party Nintendo games that were not published in Japan. Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters has been met with generally favorable reviews. A writer of the UK publication Nintendo Magazine System awarded it a score of 71 percent, and described it as a "fairly jolly adaptation of the NES platform game provides the fun, but is now getting rather long in the tooth". Joystiq's JC Fletcher thought that it "advances significantly beyond its predecessor", yet "remains unquestionably Kid Icarus, the same weird game about shooting snakes falling out of inverted clay pots". A GamePro reviewer under the pseudonym "The Great McGillicuty" found the game's controls to be "precise and accurate", and gave its gameplay the magazine's maximum score of five points. He said that the "music sets the mood", and that the graphics were "fine in black-and-white", owing to its "large sprites and nice backgrounds". IGN editor Audrey Drake called the game an "awesome sequel" that stood out to her because of its improvements over the gameplay of the original Kid Icarus. Although she found it to be "not as punishing ... and, perhaps, not as memorable" as the NES game, she thought that Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters was "a solid title that has undeservedly been all-but-forgotten". GameZone's David Sanchez believed that it "faithfully captured the magic of the first game", and demanded a digital re-release for the Nintendo 3DS handheld console. Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters was included in Nintendo Power's list of the 20 best Game Boy games, where it came in 18th place. It remained the last installment in the Kid Icarus series for 21 years, until the 2012 3D shooter Kid Icarus: Uprising for the Nintendo 3DS. The 3DS Virtual Console re-release was scored 8/10 in a NintendoLife review.