In Chapter 5, it turns out that Pandora has been using the Mirror of Truth to duplicate Medusa’s army, as the mirror reveals the darkness within. As for his weaponry, as in the first game, he uses Palutena’s bow, and after defeating an enemy he collects their hearts (not as creepy as it sounds) and uses them as currency for upgrading his weapons. In Uprising, he exhibits a very cheerful and childlike personality, admitting to eating ice cream off the floor, bathing in puddles, and even being illiterate. He is extremely loyal to Palutena, leading her to sometimes mock him for it, saying that he really ought to make some friends. In Kid Icarus, Pit is a member of Athena’s army of angels, being a general and a ‘special case’ as he cannot fly. The story is divided into arcs, which are divided over 25 chapters, the first 9 chapters are similar to the original plot of the 1986 game, with Pit fighting Medusa’s three generals after her resurrection. Sakurai wrote all the dialogue himself, as he wanted the dialogue and gameplay to flow together perfectly, rather than the game stopping so the characters could talk. Kid Icarus: Uprising’s form facilitates a more story-driven narrative, with the 3DS having much better hardware than the NES, and with the device having two screens, combat would take place on the upper screen while dialogue would take place on the lower one. Thus, we cannot make a great big argument for it being an adaptation the way we can for the original, but that doesn’t mean Uprising doesn’t feature similarities to Greek myth either. The game is ‘Greco-inspired’ and features characters from mythology, yet deviates from it further than the original ever did, featuring an alien invasion and a ‘reset bomb’. Sakurai is not known to be a Greek mythology fan, and Toru Osawa was not working on this game, leading the game to stray far away from anything we could narratively compare to a Greek myth. He was told to do what he considered best, and after some careful deliberation, he landed on Kid Icarus, leading to the release of Kid Icarus: Uprising in 2012. He received the OK from Nintendo and asked if he should create a brand-new IP or use a different Nintendo franchise, as he currently had a skeleton of a game. He wanted to create a shooter that took place in the sky as well as on the ground, as shooters were not very popular in Japan at the time. However, this would all change when game developer Masahiro Sakurai was approached by the head of Nintendo to create a game for the brand-new 3DS, and he came up with an interesting vision. The Kid Icarus series went silent after that, and for twenty years it would seem that this was truly the end. This joke only really applies to non-Japanese audiences, as in Japan the series is called Myth of Light: Palutena’s Mirror. It features a very convoluted plot, and at the end, after saving Palutena again, Pit soars to the sky and his wings fall off with ‘The End’ cheekily sitting next to it while the sun scarily smiles at him, as seen below. Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters is a rather odd member of the franchise, as the game was not released in Japan, which is where Kid Icarus originated, and was thus not regarded as canon going forward. In 1987, Kid Icarus would be released in Europe and North America, and in 1991, Kid Icarus: of Myths and Monsters would be released in North America. Rather, these comparisons are drawn from smaller story beats and visual elements, and to fully analyze these elements we have to look at the history of the Kid Icarus franchise, and what happened to it after 1986. The reason I address these two together is because nothing in the grand overarching narratives of the games resemble the myths in the same way the original Kid Icarus resembles the story of Perseus. Namely how the protagonist of the series, Pit, looks a lot like Eros, better known by his Latin name Cupid, and of course Icarus. Last time I went on a bit of a romantic tangent talking about Kid Icarus 1986 and how it adapts the Greek myth of Perseus, leaving the more obvious comparisons to other Greek myths for this piece.
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