Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 402: Kid Icarus

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

35 years ago, a tiny team at Nintendo R&D1 crunched their way through a the development of a weird little game called Kid Icarus: a quirky, slightly alienating action-RPG starring a chubby angel who can't stop falling through platforms. Despite the lead character's prevalence in marketing from the early NES days, and his role in the classic Captain N cartoon, Nintendo barely seemed interested in touching this IP ever again, and let it lay dormant after a farmed-out 1991 Game Boy sequel. Then, 20 years passed, and along came Kid Icarus Uprising: a reboot known more for giving players tendonitis than it is for being a faithful, well-crafted revival of a classic series. So what's the deal with Kid Icarus, and is it doomed to once again sit untouched for decades? On this episode, join Bob Mackey, Jeremy Parish, and Ray Barnholt as they examine the Kid Icarus trilogy to determine which of its qualities should rise to the heavens, and which should be cast into the Underworld. Secrets of the Eggplant Wizard will be revealed! Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon at patreon.com/retronauts.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronaut, Icarus fights Medusa Angels. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Retronauts. I'm your host for this one, Bob Mackie. And today we're talking about Kid Icarus, the Kid Icarus trilogy, because Kid Icarus is 35 years old, a meaningless anniversary, but still an excuse to talk about Kid Icarus. But before I continue, who is here in the room with me today? Hey, it's Henry Gilbert, aka Pit 2.

Ooh, and who do we have on the line? Hi, it's Ray Barnholt, the one-winging angel. Is that the reference? Did I get that right? I think so. You just need to sever a wing or two. But, yes, we are now living in the 35th anniversary of Kid Icarus. It's been 10 years since he's had a game.

Last time, there were 20 years, so we're not doing too bad. So we've talked plenty about Kidokris in the past in passing when they were like virtual console releases long, long ago. But we've never actually had a formal Kidacris episode. So now is our chance. And in case you're wondering, if you have a 3DS, all of these games are played. So you can download the 3D classics version of Kid Icarus. You can download Kid Icarus of myths and monsters. And you can also download Kid Icarus Uprising for your 3DS.

It is your one-stop Kid Icarus platform. Yeah, and two of them are 3D. Exactly, yes. Although I have a new 2DS finally, so the 3D feature is completely gone. But I'm okay with that. Before I go any deeper into things, I would like to know everyone's history with the Kid Icarus legacy, this massive IP for Nintendo that they treasure greatly.

Ray, what is your history with Kid Icarus? I think I rented it once. Yeah, I did not try the first one all that much. And then it was still kind of interesting to me, but then I skipped the Game Boy one. I think it just didn't register. But I did play Uprising, got hyped for that along with everyone else and played through it.

But that's the gist of it. I was not a huge Kidagherst fan at the time. so maybe I shouldn't be here. I don't know. We'll find out in the comments later. When I, Ray, when I contacted you to be on this, you said you would be the uprising defender. In some respects, yeah, yeah. I can, you know, because of, you know, preexisting notions about that game.

And Henry, how about you? What is your Icarus history? Well, don't worry. You're not the only uprising defender because I think I am one of the highest people on Metacritic for reviewing this game. I gave it a 9 or a 4.5 out of 5, which, honestly, I should have given it an 8. I'm pretty sure I overrated every game I reviewed. Yeah, but as far as Kid Icarus goes, I, of course, addicted to cartoons, knew him from the cartoon he appeared in, which I'm sure we'll talk about. And because of that cartoon, I rented Kid Icarus and completely bounced off it.

I was like, this is too hard, too confusing, like it was a rental. And also, you know, I was a, I really only got into Nintendo NES in 89. And by that time, there were more technically proficient games than two. So Kidikris seemed not just hard, but old to me. And at that point, then I wasn't going to get the Game Boy one either. And then as I became more online and watching. every Nintendo E3 press conference diligently and talking about it in in forums over and over again, like, oh, it's going to be there. I knew then the kid Icarus became a thing that every year there were rumors, more kid Icarus, and it would never show up.

And it was like, you know, literally a decade for it. And so of just watching E3s for me and seeing nothing with him in it. And then, of course, the final stage of it for me was that once I became a professional in the games journalism industry, I had reached the level where I would be the person reviewing Kid Icarus, which I felt a certain honor about doing. And I got to preview it like five times it felt like in seeing it's like slowly the change and evolve. And so I have a closeness to that game as well there. Interesting. So you've seen many versions of it. At least a couple, like the E32012 version of it plays very different, yeah, or there was like a previous E3 or like demos, it was all over the place, the way I played.

I think I was like, ooh, this Wii U looks exciting. I don't want to care. I don't want to care about this new Kid at Gris game. I didn't flock to that demo station. As for me, like you, Henry, I was a Captain N viewer. And around at the same time, around 88, that's when I got a Nintendo. That's when I started reading Nintendo Power. So I just assume like Kid Icris was one of the biggest games like Mega Man, but I didn't ever see it on retail store shelves or at my rental location.

It just wasn't available. And eventually, I think by 91 when we moved, there was a new video store. I went there. I was like, oh, Kid Icarus, I always wanted to play this. And when I brought it home in 1991, when I played it for about 20 minutes, my takeaway was this game is old. It felt like an old game. And I was like, was this the game everyone was freaking out about? And I think because of the difficulty of the game and all the secrets and all the items and enemies and stuff,

this game lived on in Nintendo Power for at least two years in the classified corner and the top secret tips section and things like that. I think the marketing and the coverage of Kidacris made it seem much bigger than it ever was because Nintendo wasn't really keen on making a sequel to this. It seemed like it was one of those things Nintendo of America was much more into than NCL, yeah. And yeah, I rented I actually rented the Game Boy game. There was one location, far more

the disgraced Ohio retail chain. I rented it there. That's the only place I rented handheld games too. Oh, wow. I didn't know there were far mores in Florida. There was one. It didn't last long. But yeah. Yes, they're in with the mob. And then I was at one-up

for Kidacris Uprising. I believe Jose Otero reviewed it. I did not. But my takeaway with this game is I'm not even 30 and this game hurts me. My tend insert. This is really uncomfortable and playing it now on a different DS now that I know how you're supposed to play it. I am I'm 39. I am 10 years older and 10 years wiser. It doesn't hurt as much but I still think that game was a huge misopportunity but I have a greater appreciation for it now that we're so far removed and it's not just a joke anymore. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I think we'll get into that for sure. So let's talk about the games in order. And I want to start with the game we have the most detail about, which is Kidikris. In Japan, it's called Hikari Shina, Parutana no Kagami, which means a mythical tale of light, Palatina's Mirror. And this game came out in Japan for the Famicom disk system in December of 86. And it came out for the NES in August of 87. So developed by Nintendo R&D1. We've talked a lot.

about them on retrodons over the past 15 years, but in case you forget, they were the more whimsical and experimental branch of Nintendo developers. They started with toys and arcade games, and then they did a lot of the early NES and Famicom Dis System stuff, and then they moved on to do the lion's share of Game Boy development, but they were always sort of the odd balls at Nintendo with IP like Metroid, Kid Icarus, Mario Land, Wario, Wario, Famicom Detective Club, like sort of the unorthodox Nintendo developers were at that branch. I love these, like, techie weirdo freaks

in this group. Like, they make the strangest things. They have, they have the feel of, like, you know, the less popular kids who have their own little table with their own in-jokes and stuff. Yeah, I always love that. I still haven't played, I downloaded them instantly, but I haven't touched Famicom Detective Club yet.

Oh, yes. I really should. I'm in the midst of playing those now, and they are adventure games from 1988, but the presentation is very nice and it's interesting to see this missing piece of Nintendo history. Oh, sorry, Ray.

No, these guys are like Nintendo's hippies sort of. I mean, Sakamoto is sure, but, you know, and Tanaka for music as well. It's just like the most unique music that came out of Nintendo games at the time. I was reading an old interview that Chris Kohler did with Sakamoto right before Metroid Other M came out and he said that when he was at the company,

he worked under Gunpei Yoko, of course, the developer of the Game Boy, one of the greatest gaming development legends, but it was Yo-Koi's idea that if you can design sprite graphics, you can make a video game. That was his idea which is why he collected all of these odd

balls. And I think Sakamoto in that interview said, oh, Miyamoto didn't think that, but I never worked for him. So I guess there was a separation of church and state for Miyamoto's like, okay, graphics guys, you do this, I'll do design, but... Man, no wonder all of these, almost

all of these games once Miyamoto got like higher up. He's like, no, we're just handing this to a B team. We're handling this to this American studio, that American studio. Like there's less, let's ownership by R&D1 over most of these. Unless it's like the weird poop game of Wari to wear. Yeah. I mean, we're right after the announcement of Metroid Dread, which is being done by Mercury Steam again. So, yeah. It does seem like Sotomoto has, you know, at least he's talking a big game of like, oh, I have call over this. Or I, they're talking to me about that. He is a producer.

So like Metroid and Legend of Zelda before it, this game is built to show off the Famicom disc system. So it's large and maize-like. They're scrolling in multiple directions. There's a big inventory. And it's not designed to be finished in one sitting. Of course, when this came out for the NES, there was no battery save yet. It was just passwords. But this was meant to be saved to the disc, your save game.

And that's why it's also a very difficult game because, again, you're not supposed to beat this in one session. It's a real butt kicker of a game. I just, yeah, even turning it back on for the 3D classics version for a minute. I was like, oh, man, I understand why I bounce off this game every time. This is just not the game for me. And that game fixes a lot about Kid Icarus, especially the controls. Just by tweaking the controls a little bit, they make it a lot more manageable, but still it is an ass-kicking game from the beginning. But I do want to talk about the people who developed the game

and their harrowing story of the three months of ass-kicking development of this game that they probably regrets. And it does explain why the game is so weird and difficult. So Toru Osawa was apparently the sole developer of the game. this game at first, doing a lot of the design work while the development of Metroid finished. So he is credited as three pseudonyms in the credits for story, character, and art design. And apparently he came up with the core idea of this action RPG with a Greek mythology flavor to it. And he presented this idea to Nintendo with his artwork. So this is all his

idea from the beginning. That sounds rough. That sounds like especially coming straight off of Metroid to then have to have that Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Like, there's not a lot of interviews with him,

but there's enough where it seems like they were going to have intelligent systems ghost developed this game and he was going to basically be the director giving them like layouts

from, you know, mazes and layouts for levels and they would do all the ghost designing behind the scenes uncredited. Apparently that's not how it worked out in the end. There was some,

something going on there. Apparently they developed the prototype. But that's all they developed for the game. Just like, his idea was like, I wanted to make a running and shooting game. And he didn't have any ideas beyond that, because this is his first role as director. And other works he's credited for, he directed the second Famicom Detective Club game and created the scenario for the first and directed for the frog, the belt holes, and Mario Clash.

So a lot of weirdo games that are very fun. You'll really know if COVID super affected Nintendo's development, and if they do a remake of For The Frog, the Bell Tolls. If they finally remake that and bring it to America, it's like, wow, you guys were decimated by COVID. Yeah, just, hey, use that Link's Awakening Engine, right? Easy, yeah. Yes, that's what I say. And then make no money because no one will know what the hell it is.

Although I played it. I played it. It's great. Even I, when that game got referenced in like Smash 4, even I, the Nintendo mega fan, I was like, what the hell? Like, I never heard of it before. It is like a secret links awakening prototype in a way. So this is what Osawa said about Kid Icarus, the production of it, an interview from the Metroid database, mostly about Metroid, but there's some Kid Icarus stuff in there. So he says, quote, with I was the only person.

In addition, because the program was requested from an external company, intelligent systems, I wrote the design document, drew all the pictures myself, brought it to them, saw the finished product, and the thing was practically playable. Until the development of Metroid was completed, they were not concerned that only one person. person was making it. So, yeah, everyone else was busy on Metroid. He was, you know, writing the design document for this game with the idea that intelligence systems would develop it. And in other sources, I read Tose was going to develop it, but in this interview from this 2004 magazine, Japanese magazine, it says intelligence systems.

So other sources are incorrect. So this game directed question mark by Satoro Okada, and he joined Nintendo in 1969, retired in 2012, and he was the project manager for most of Nintendo's portable systems up through the DS, and he also directed an incredible amount of games, although I'm not sure about that. He's given a lot of director credits, but I think it's more that he was the head of that division, and the idea of a game director was not as formalized as it is today, because it does seem like Sakimoto directed this in terms of what he added to the game. Yeah, I mean, I think for a lot of developers, or development back then, they weren't taking the, especially the Japanese side of development. I don't think they were taking the American, like, Hollywood naming approach of saying, like, oh, the director, the person in charge. Like, I, I often think that in these cases, like it more means like executive producer, like the guy, like project manager is another term. I've seen. Definitely, director feels maybe too generous of what he did.

Yeah, but he was, his name was on a ton of these early titles, on a ton of early Game Boy titles, and then he fell back into hardware engineering, which is what he did until 2012. So that is the director in quotes. Music, we mentioned him before, I believe Ray mentioned him. It's Hirokazu Hip Tanaka. Again, we should all know who he is if you've been listening to Retronauts, but if not. A lot of quirky soundtracks, a lot of really interesting NES sounds. soundtrack, sound like nothing else on the system, things like Metroid, Dr. Mario, Mother, also did Super Mario Land, wrote some of the music on Mother 2. Now the president of Creatures Inc.

Pretty plum gig there, that Creatures Inc. man. Yeah, he's still a fun, you know, I haven't seen him tweet in a while. I should check. He had some fun tweets and just like, here's some old music or whatever. He's a fun guy. And he still makes new music from time to time. So yes, that's why the soundtrack for this game is so quirky. And apparently, the character spec knows in this game the base floating pair of Groucho Marx glasses is based on him and his hideous huge nose so man is that that's true Does he even have a huge nose I never noticed I'm looking at pictures it's not that big

yeah I was looking at pictures of him I'm like maybe compared to the other people in the department he had a big nose but this is back at a time where they were just putting themselves in the games I believe in that same Chris Kohler interview I mentioned earlier like the main character in Gumshoe is based on Yakoi just the design

like what he looks like is based on Yokoi. That's funny. And of course, the most notable name out of all these people, because he's still around, he's still you know, taking interviews and producing. It's Yoshio Sakimoto. He came in after his post-Metroyd break to assist with the game's development

and apparently really helped streamline things with his previous experience much more than the game's director did, or sorry, much more than Osawa did. So, Sakimoto, big wheel at the R&D1 factory would go on to direct basically be the

Metroid guy directing Super Metroid Metroid Zero mission he joined Nintendo in 1982 to work on Game and Watch products but apparently he's still there 40 years later and his latest role is on the recently announced as of this recording Metroid dread so yes Sakimoto we can forgive him for other M there were a lot of people a lot of slices of that pie

so I guess he was one of three directors of that game well I guess until he played dread we'll know if we truly can't forgive him but yeah i that that other am like he kind of staked a lot of his reputation on that one like no no this is real metro i'm here like see so that that is hurting the roll out of dread for me just a little bit because when he shows up i was like well i've heard this story before yeah i think by the time this podcast comes out that game will have released but i am cautiously skeptical because i feel like i was one of the few people who like samus returns you yeah nobody i feel like

basically no one else I knew even talked about that game once it came out oh a new Metroid game download it closed my 3DS plug it in goodbye I mean a 3DS for most people kind of became a dead system but I felt weird pulling it out now

my husband uses 3DS all the time just for Pokemon transfers and stuff he's a hardcore Pokemon but any thoughts on any of these guys so far Ray these R&D one guys working on this game well no exactly I mean, they're all, well, first of all, I couldn't, I can't imagine anyone retiring from Nintendo like Okada did, but it does happen.

He did not retire in a box. Yeah, he left alive. Like, I guess they have to wait until their hands atrophy or something. Yeah. But yeah, just, just, just like I said, a really rag tag group sort of compared to what we think of Nintendo, just being that sort of like shiny Miyamoto led group a lot of the time. That some people, you know, is inaccurate. it, but people get reminders of it still this day, because

Sakimoto and such, and we get new Metroid games and new Wario game, so... Still around. Yeah, and these guys were really like the kids in the back of the class, right? They were the no-good Knicks. And, yeah, and the development of this game is interesting than the...

I mean, I think it's more interesting than the game itself, because the game, I feel like it's fun intellectually to talk about, but I don't like playing it at all. And, yeah, let's talk about the development of this game because I just found out about this and you know it seems like all game development is exploitative and grueling but this in particular feels like a just a battle to get this game finished because the developers were very very candid in a in a jokey way about how

much time they put into this game just like constant crunch and I think the reason why kiddickriss this original game is so bizarre and alienating is because the people who made it were operating on like no sleep, little food, just constant crunch and just waiting for this game to be out the door. Yeah, the you know, whenever I read things about Japanese game development from

the 80s and same with like also anime production from back then too. They're just I, what used to be like, oh, that's a fun story or whatever now just like, oh good Lord. What that? You like you, I can't believe this. Like this was

torture like inhuman. main like a war crime even like it's just I can't yeah because like there's crunch and then there's what they describe in here yeah yeah and I don't think they're exaggerating because yeah these do seem like fun stories until you actually overwork yourself and you realize well these guys did much more than me and I could barely survive but I read this interview in Nintendo dream magazine that was translated by the Metroid database lots of fun and quote stories of basically sleeping in the office where the heat shuts off at night sleeping on flattened cardboard boxes

work until 7 in the morning then go to sleep then get up at 8 in the morning and continue working and being hungry constantly is what they remember from this game and apparently Sakimoto was just very angry throughout the entire game's development I would be too I would be hallucinating yeah I mean this there's no way this doesn't impact what a game

plays like when you're going through this but man just those those extremes of like you're not even feeding these guys it's like that and in turning off the heat like that is that's so awful like that's such like a cheap terrible company that can't even it's not that they're asking

for like overtime or bonuses they're like could you just keep the heat on they're like have you seen that that would cost us a hundred dollars more a day if we did that and we're not so sure about this kid icarus game you're making it's weird yeah we hear those cute stories like oh miyamoto would take a bath at nintendo and that's where he

get his ideas he took a bath there because he couldn't go home didn't go home his children he was a stranger to them yes yeah no that that taking a bath at work thing was a funny story until i really thought about it i guess too it's like the story sounds funny uh or interesting is uh when you're like in your early 20s you're like yeah i've worked all night a couple of times it's but that gets you the best results and now you're just thinking like Oh, God, yeah. The idea, like, I work best when I'm under pressure. It's complete bullshit.

Don't believe it. Your body will fall apart. But, yes, I don't know a lot more beyond their stories of just, you know, being punished and just trying to get through this development. But it seems to me my speculation is this original plan was for Okada to single-handedly design this game and then farm it out to intelligence systems to actually, like, make the game, put it together based on his documents. And maybe that didn't work out because as soon as the Metroid guys came back from vacation. it was like we got to get this game done in under three months and the game wasn't finished until three days before it had to ship which is why in the original version there is no credit sequence

they wanted to add one I think one of the guys wanted to add one and then like the response was are you crazy we have to strip this game out so yeah like distressingly nobody knew who made it you know even credited pseudonymously in the original version of the game so not only do they have to work themselves to death but they get no credit for it because the turnaround, oh, that's so, that's horrible. I'm glad, you know, the NES version could at least then allow them to have some credits. Yeah, they were able to add some improvements to the NES version, including an ending sequence and a credit sequence and things like that.

But for this, it was like between September to December, I think, was just all Kidichrist development. Well, I guess it was all hands on deck for the Famicom diss system, right? They're like, this has to, we need this for before New Year's in Japan, like for this disc system. And I found out some other really interesting stuff, again, based on the misery of these developers. But we all know Eggplant Wizard will talk about them. I'm one of the most irritating enemies in games. There are always two of them. They fire these eggplants at you.

And when you're hit by one of them and you will be hit by them, you have to find a special room in the dungeon to cure yourself of that status. That is normally when I stop playing this game. When I think, like, I'll finally play through Kid Icarus. then that happens to me and I'm like I don't want to do this anymore In fact when you go through Uprising the 3DS game Palatina's like oh remember in the past

when you used to have to go see a nurse to get cured of eggplant status you don't have to do that anymore so they tell you in the game don't worry don't turn this off Yeah they let that that bit of dialogue lasts just long enough for you to be hit by it

and have the reaction of like oh my God I'm an eggplant no and then hey here Palatina reassure you that it's what it should have been originally, which is a timed effect, not a permanent effect that you have to go to the hospital for. From this point, there will be no refunds.

Yeah, go do the Dragon Quest thing. Go to the inn, or church, and then get healed. And I learned from this interview that I found super interesting is that they started this game when they got their quarterly bonus, which apparently as a salaried worker in Japan, you get quarterly bonuses for, you know, killing yourself at work.

So they had just gotten their summer quarterly bonus after finishing Metroid. And while working on this game for three months All they could think about is like We just want to get that next bonus We're only doing this for the next bonus Which is why The Eggplant Wizard is a reflection of that

Because in Japanese Eggplant is Nasu And also your bonus Your quarterly bonus is Bonasu So when the Eggplant Wizards come out They're firing Nasu So like our bonus is coming Just keep working on the game

The bonus is being fired at you So yes They're looking forward to being paid is why the eggplant wizard is such a pain in the ass. That's, wow, man. That's, uh, and, and, and from that was born one of the also most annoying, uh, cartoon characters as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Disgusting that, that character. Mm-hmm. And kind of problematic now, just to look at him. I'm like, yeah, you know what? This is, uh, let's leave him in the past is the captain and design of eggplant wizard. It is grotesque and problematic too. But, uh, yeah, on this interview also, Okada and Sakamoto admit that, like, they have have a dark sense of humor when they work together

and that's why this game is so just bizarre and they were joking about how this was known as the falling game at Nintendo because one of the first mistakes people make is like I just went up I can surely go down can't I if you go beyond the border of the screen that you just traveled past you die

instantly and it says too bad oh that just yep when I turned on 3D classics this morning I was like all right let's give this a play and I'd forgotten that and instantly like I when I had my first fall is like Right. And close. The curse of ratchet scrolling, right?

Did I get that right? Are these terms that we're using on this podcast? I think so. Sure, why not? But yeah, like this game, one interview in 2004 really brought to light just the pain and misery making this game, which explains why it's punishing, why it's weird, why it's kind of undercooked, and probably why they never really made a sequel internally for a long, long time because they thought, like, we don't ever want to think about Kid, Icarus. That game robbed me of years of my life. Breakout in hives, even thinking about it. And not that popular anyway.

so let's talk about how this game plays it's a really weird game uh so there are a few regional differences between the famicom the system version and the nes version so they got rid of the worst ending where you become a speck nose they have a proper ending sequence now with graphics instead of just a black background uh they add some endings they have to you know dummy out some uh features that were only taking advantage of the fDS so in the nes version you use the buttons on the second controller to haggle with the shopkeeper in the this system version, you actually use the microphone on the second controller because that's

something that existed on that system. Interesting. And because this cart did not have a save battery, this NES version has a just a monstrously bad password system that kind of also acts as a game genie code generator too

just because of how the different variables can affect things in the game. So there are a lot of really wacky passwords in this game as a result of just how the passwords are programmed and probably intentionally. of course Metroid is similar it's truly just bolted on to Metroid as well that's true works in the same way

and like things like danger terror horror Icarus fights Medusa Angels things like that there are actual like sentences that will bring you to places in the game or give you like max health and max items and things like that yeah and interesting move on the localizers

to actually have the passwords not just be random words generated yeah it's one of those things where it like some people have the Mike Tyson code memorize which is fine but these are much easier to memorize because they're just complete words but we mentioned it before

this did come out in 2012 for the 3DS as part of their 3D classics version it's still very hard but they tweak the control slightly to make it much more playable and it's a huge difference although don't expect it to get you very far no well and

you've got save states too in the game or I mean you can like suspend to play anytime and yeah it's uh yeah arica they did they did a fine little job with it i like these they didn't do enough of them and i remember they started with like urban champion am i right about that that sounds right they did excite bike i believe that's right yeah so but in all those yeah they was such a cool idea of like the seeing the pixel perfect characters like on 3d planes like it was such such a simple and good idea

but I would guess they probably cost more than they look like they do and then I would bet the sales weren't that great people weren't chomping at the bit for this Kid Icarus kind of remake but yeah I recommend playing that if you want to play it it's also very cheap if you're just curious about this game

but what is this game about so more research I did because I just never questioned why you play as Pitt like I guess that's his name because it's called Kid Icarus nobody in the game is named Icarus Icarus. The Icarus legend is not referenced. It is in the next two games, but nothing about like flying too close to the sun or hubris or anything is reflected at all remotely in this game. So apparently in Japan, the Japanese word for Cupid is Cupid and Pitt is Pito in Japanese. So the localization of Pito is just Pitt. So I have to assume because you're a little chubby angel, pit is just Cupid. Like just the nickname for Cupid. But I never even thought about Cupid ever in my life in until I looked at that

a piece of information. If you look at the like original character art in the like the NES guidebooks and stuff, he has a heart at the end of his arrows and stuff too. There's more of the Cupid

to him than Icarus. I mean that's and it's not called Kid Icarus in Japan even. I don't, but I don't know why I would guess Kid Icarus is too many letters to put in the game. They'd keep it as three letters pit. It's easier to put the text in perhaps.

but it's it's really weird that's why again in the very great writing in uprising there's an early line of like it i think it's in the one of the many many training modes yeah they say like kid icris who's that pit asked like paleta kid icris who's that referring to she's like you know what don't worry about it it's it's nobody your pit forget it i mean it's a more it's a more compelling name than the japanese title if they would have just translated that. It does feel like a more 80s name. You're like, kid blank. But it is just kind of weird. And yeah, Palutana,

that's how they localized it way back in 1987. I think it's supposed to be Parthena, which is an actual Greek woman's name. So Parthena, Parthina, either one, I guess, works. But Palutana is not an actual name. But hey, then it turns into a much

easier to trademark thing for them. That's true. Do not steal my original Greek mythology character. So the plot of this game is all in the instruction booklet, not really told within the game because we're still pretty early in terms of storytelling in games. But Palatina banished Medusa to the underworld for being a jerk. So Medusa, you know, wasn't locked up properly in the underworld, joined forces with all the creatures down there, rose up,

took over the Sky Palace, and now you are pit. You have to escape from the underworld and then make it back to the Sky Palace to destroy Medusa. And the game's instruction book is very adorable and how it tells a story, lots of original artwork and yeah that explains why the game starts off so difficulty because you're escaping from hell hell itself and it only gets easier from there uh look at all those little cute greeks that's they are adorable and uh i mean i love this you know classic kind of uh mid 80s gag manga style of that art book do you notice this instruction book i linked everyone to it's just hosted on nintendo's japanese website for some reason it's because of the mini

Oh, okay, interesting. I was like, I just typed in critical instructions and I didn't know why it brought me here, but there you go. Thank you, NES Mini. Nobody plays it anymore unless it's, they modded it, yes. So, yeah, how this game plays is, it gets off on a really bad foot, which is why most people bounce off of it.

The first three levels are just this painful assent with this really underpowered character, lots of tricky platforms and enemies. If you fall off the bottom of the screen, You die. It also follows sort of like Pac-Man logic in terms of the physical space and that if you walk off the left side of the screen, you appear on the right. That's why in 1991, I was like, this is how old games play. Yeah.

This is this weird reality. You know, that was the one thing that didn't confuse me because I had played enough of Super Mario Bros. Two at that point. It's like, oh, it's like Mario 2. But then when I fell and died, I was like, oh, it's not like Mario 2. The rules have changed. Yeah. Why start with such a, it's also just like terrible.

mean design like you're you you start easy so people enjoy it and then keep going why why start it the almost one of the hardest ways to play maybe they're relying on people who played ice climber before just keep going up maybe it was like the mario one strategy of like well you played mario one now you're ready for harder games so we're not going to ease you into this you're you're now a gamer and you can climb out of this giant pits uh so yeah you should know there's no going back yeah yes there's no going back in kiddicarious uh so yeah it's an RPG and that that fact is kind of buried in the game because we didn't know what an RPG was at the time but your score in this case is experience points and once you meet certain thresholds uh you level up you level up four times in the game uh but you have to be at the end of a stage you'll tally up your score and once you hit a threshold you'll get more health and uh that's essentially how leveling up in the game works i think it just upgrades that one stats of of pits and you can also upgrade your attack power by meeting certain goals throughout the game there are these uh there are like all these little doors in the game and there are eight different types of rooms behind them and one of them is zeus's room and if he deems that you have

done a good enough job based on like hidden variables in the game by taking damage killing enemies etc he will upgrade your attack maybe that's also uh the the developers commenting off like the uh the capriciousness of their bosses like well they don't tell me if they did a good job or not sometimes sometimes i get a reward sometimes i don't i have to go to the Yo-Koi room to see if I can level up. But what really drew me to this game and still makes me really curious about it, even though it's a bit impenetrable for me, is that this game is so full of ideas, items, enemies, but none of them are really fully developed or work well together.

And if you look at the Japanese ad for this game, it's sort of like the American ad for Metal Gear, the original, where it's like a one giant one-page ad with just like, here's a ton of things that are in this game. And that's back when you can sell a game on like, look at all the things. Most games don't have a lot of things. Yeah. That Metal Gear ad did not sell me on Metal Gear. It just overwhelmed me.

I saw it in like a dozen comic books in my childhood, but I was just like, what the heck? It just looked like a catalog ad. I think it took a while for me to even realize it was a video game. It was telling you to gear up. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, because, you know, Mario, what does he have? Like the fireflower, the mushroom, the star. This is just like, look at everything we have in this game.

I, you know, too, when I first played it. the idea of like, well, hearts are money, not health items. That, too, was a thing for me. A lot of old games had that, and it still baffles me. Like, Castlevania has that as well. It's just like, why are hearts money? Power of love. It's just confusing.

But, yeah, there's a lot of really cool ideas in this game. Like I said, there's a lot of variety in terms of just the things that you see. There are all these doorways and levels. There are eight different types of rooms behind them. There's, like, a credit card item. You can buy things on credit. and then the hearts you pick up will immediately go to pay off your debt,

which is just a silly idea. Yeah, that's fun. I actually putting you into debt and teaching children about debt. And I do, you know, I was reminded, I'm not going to play this game far enough to get to like the Reapers, but their music that's in Uprising,

it's like, oh, that is a fun son. Do, do, do, do, do, yeah. Those guys are not as big a pains of ass as a pains in the ass as the eggplant wizard. Also, some fun ideas, like, one thing I didn't mention is that in the, so there are, I believe, 13 levels in this game, the first three are sets of four levels. So the first world, you're going up, the second world, you're going to the right, and the third world you're going back up again. And the last stage of every one of these worlds is a, let's put it in quotes, a Zelda-style dungeon. And that is a dungeon viewed from the side perspective.

But there are, you know, there's like a map and a compass and a pencil. And there are like a lot of different rooms. You have to find the boss. You can free all these centurions that will help you fight these very simple bosses. But that idea is cool too. That's where you find the eggplant wizards. But they were just trying out so many ideas in this single game. it's a mess of game design stages really but i guess too you know that was uh it was just trying

out a lot of stuff for the first time on the nes back then yeah a lot of that yeah i think a lot that was just sort of expected for video games or specifically famicom games back then it's just like yeah you would have all these elements of course it has all this stuff and of course it looks like this if it was just one type of game it'd be boring i i think uh uprising has something in common with that because this game was developed at the beginning of the FDS's life, right?

And it was probably them thinking, let's do all the things we could do that we couldn't do on the Famicom. And that's why there are just so many ideas.

And then when I play uprising, it's like, well, here's the multiplayer and here's the AR stuff, and here's this and here's that, all these features

that you never really engage with with the 3DS. Like, I don't need Palutana in my living room. I never asked for that. Uh, there's some people

who would want it She could step on you, especially. Even if I have been very lonely, but I have not gotten to virtual Palatina visiting me quite yet, maybe after a few more months. But yeah, so this game also contains a lot of the genuinely most irritating enemies in all of video games. We mentioned the Reapers before. They're at the very beginning of the game. These are like some of the first stealth enemies I can ever think of in a video game in that you have to avoid their gaze because if you do, they start freaking out and running back and forth and all their little mini-reepers come down from the screen. Also, I think this game is really inspired by shooters like schmups because so many of the enemy designs are right out of like Galaxian in terms of how they move across the screen.

That's just like how they swirl across the screen is very shudery. That's interesting. Yeah. I am considering it. They should just made a straight-up shooter. Just do that. But I guess that wouldn't show off the density of the disc system. No, this is a running and shooting game.

Mentioned Eggplant Wizards, they're annoying a cell. Like for a certain generation, you just name these things, like the speeder bike level in Battletoes. You're like, oh, God, I remember encountering that and thinking, I had the problem. But no, the game was mean. And also these guys later in the game, these plutons, they steal your weapon upgrades and you have to buy them back at a higher price from shop. So a lot of irritating enemies. I'm glad I never got far enough in the game to face those plutons. That's cruel.

But like you said, Bob, this is a mean game by upset people. The people designing this were getting one hour of sleep in nights. And just like, how can I just screw over these miserable children who are making me, who won't let me stop? Don't forget comadoes. Cometos? The Metroids. Oh, right. Metroids are in this game, too, yes.

Which is completely, like, characteristic of the development team because, you know, they would add, they would go on to add, like, you know, Mario enemies to Link's Awakening and stuff. Yes, I like that. I like, you know, stealing from other games. But the Metroid enemies act, they act like they do in the original game, right? I believe so. They latch on to you. In fact, the instruction manual says one theory has it that it came from a planet other than the Earth. Oh, wow.

Shared universe, everybody. Man, you know, back in those days, you just put them in there. There wasn't all this like IP, this sense of IP or asking permission to even use internal stuff. Yeah. I love Lynx Awakening because there's this weird off model Kirby enemy. There are like gumbas and piranha plants and nobody was arguing about this. It didn't damage the brand. But yeah, this game

To wrap up the discussion about this game It sounded like hell to make It sounded like the team wanted to move on And do anything but more kid icarus I don't know how well it's sold I don't know if it was popular But the character was a Saturday morning TV star From 1988 to 1991

I don't know if this game was reprinted Like I said I never saw it for sale In my earliest NES days starting in 1988 So, Raid, do you have any opinions on the popularity of this game? Like, was it a big game in America? I have no way of knowing. Well, I think it was to some degree, if you think about how excited people got about it in decades later.

But, yeah, I think it wasn't reprinted, I don't think. Like, they definitely did not also put it in their classics line later because, you know, they reprinted Metroid and Punch Out and Zelda 1 and 2 and stuff. Kid Eckers was not part of that, which is weird because I think, you know, it was still kind of brought up a lot even in the late 80s 90s, probably because of what you mentioned. earlier is that it would pop up a Nintendo Power a lot, like in the tip sections and stuff. So it was kind of like simmering. It was kind of simmering for a few years later.

Yeah. Well, Metroid and Zelda got all the attention, I think. Like I said, the Captain N cartoon made me think this was a huge game. And because, you know, Eggplant Wizard, he is a villain. Kid Icarus is a horrible character in the game with no personality.

I think he's in love with the princess and says Ikeus at the end of everything he says. the deal. Yeah, we did a podcast about it like eight years ago. Instead of Mega Mega for Mega Man. No, I... Green Mega Man, we love him. Yeah, no. Shows up in the comics, too, the Captain N comics. Okay. No, I, I figured

with the Captain N show, it was just like, you know, Deek already spent all that money on Mario and Zelda. And they're like, those are their own, that they can lead their own shows. But could we get a third show and we can't, there's nothing big enough to be its own show. So if we

just pull together, like seven other things and have them team up with a kid who is the kid watching the show, then they can, maybe kids will get into that. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't have played Castlevania if I didn't see Captain N as a kid like that.

That was a, that was the successful version of seeing Kid Icarus. Same with Mega Man 2, only played that probably because he was on Captain N like that. And I'm very happy that it's kind of sad, Henry. The TV told him.

TV told me too. I was eight and the TV had the characters on there. Okay, I'm sure at some point I would have played Mega Man 2 for sure, but it was sped up by having seen it on TV. And that and that just opened a whole new world to me because I could recognize that that was a game I really enjoyed and I wanted more of that type of game. But yeah, I wonder with the popularity of Icarus, I remember when they announced Punch Out Fighter for Smash Brothers. Little Mac, right? little mac when they announced a little mac for smash brothers i remember these stories uh published by kataku saying like here's what they're saying on the japanese forms about it and they're like who and they were mostly just like who ever heard of this guy like i've never heard of this game and

others saying like well yeah americans no punch out we never played punch out so it's one of just i i have a feeling it's a situation like that too where uh it got kid icarus through captain end mainly got much more of a push in america while meanwhile japan pan like it is seen as not as important. And the next game explained I think it validates your theory, Henry. But to wrap up on this one,

I feel like the reputation it had at least before uprising was people snickering about it in the early like aughts when the first wave of NES nostalgia would hit the jokes would be like that game sucked it was too hard, it was weird, eggplant wizards can go to hell.

I don't think it's a good game. I think it's an interesting game to talk about but not to play. but I don't want to disparage the game because of the misery that went into the creation of it and those men worked very, very hard and made this game in three months. Yeah, I think also, if you had no insight

into the development, you can just look at it and play it and be like, yeah, this is not on the same level as Metroid. People were definitely not putting the same kind of effort into this as Metroid. Yeah, that's definitely true. And yeah, Sakimoto was like, let me help you make this.

He wasn't there from the beginning. Maybe if he was, he would have, from the ground up, made it a better game with his Metroid experience. Instead of just someone's fanciful idea of a game. Yes. That then gets streamed through countless sleepless nights and cold sleepless nights. This was all your fault. Hi, we're Ellen, Stephen, and Mark. Hosts of Nice Games Club, the show where Nice Game Devs talk gaming and game development.

Topics include programming, design, tools, and more. We also do interviews and one of our game jams. Listen to Nice Games Club. Wherever you get to your... Blu-Let. Wherever you get to your podcast. You get there. Or at nicegames.com.

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible smile, join Nikki and Wyatt as we stomp our way through the history of Toho's Dai Kaiju films in Discuss All Monsters. Are you telling me we're going to discuss all monsters? We won't stop until there isn't a monster left to discuss.

Smash that play button like Godzilla and King Kong Smash an 18th century Japanese pagoda. Only on the Greenlit podcast. Network. To the next game. Very little known. Although, again, you can buy this on the 3DS e-shop. It is Kid Icris of Myths and Monsters released in November of 91.

Has anyone played this? I think we're talking... Wait, I played it for sure. Do you guys have experience with this game? I did. Only a teeny tiny bit is a professional. I didn't play it when it was new at the time. Because at that time, I was like, well, I know what Kid Icris is.

And I can only ask for two video games for my birthday. And it's going to be Mario in both cases. Ray, how about you? Yeah, I played the most on 3DS. I had a friend as a little kid who had it, but I only sampled it through them. So, yeah, it's like, I kind of wanted it back in the day, because I was like, oh, yeah, a new kid Icarus. That's interesting, but it just didn't happen. Yeah, it was really novel.

I rented it because it's like, oh, maybe this is a better version of what I just rented for the NES, that old game. And I mean, so I guess the story behind this is that. In November of 91, this launches and also Metroid 2 launches. So I think the idea was like, let's just put these weirdo sequels on the Game Boy. But for Metroid 2, that was internally developed. Sakimoto was on board. For Kidacris, it was like, let's just have Tose make a better version of the first game. Yeah, let's do what we should have done back in the day.

Yeah, just hand it over to somebody else and we can sleep at night. We'll give it to the Tose factory. It's their problem now. Yeah, I hate, well, you know, too, since R&1 had so much control over the game boy, I could also see like that the reason both those sequels happen is because they had a lot more power to just okay their own game sequels instead of having to bring it up the chain to get approval for a new kid, Icarus. Yeah, it feels a little like easier to get a project approved on the game boy for them then, yeah. But yes, this game developed by Tosei, no credits on the game, but one designer has been identified, and that's Masafumi Sakashita, who has one other design credit on Metroid 2. So presumably my speculation is one of the Metroid 2 guys, like part-time was just like designing maps and handing them off the Tosei, although it could be more complicated than that. But it sounds like that was the only presence of anyone from Nintendo working on this game.

Yeah, it sounds about right. I was trying to remember, like, when, when did the first Star Fee? Oh, they, they didn't start Star Fee until 2000. So, yeah, that Tose pretty much was like just, they did all this grunt work before they finally got their own, like, second party series. And that barely came to America. That came to America, right? It did, yeah. Eventually.

No, I, it was one of my earliest reviews in the games press. I was like, holy crap, we're getting the Starfee. Gilbert, you're on Starfee duty. It was like, you don't have to tell me twice. And then I played, I was like, man, it's all right. Tose had done a lot of Nintendo stuff. They made also like NES play action football and things like that. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, Tose, they were sort of like the Japanese rare in terms of just how many things they were developing for Nintendo. So the story behind this game, it's not important, but I do want to go over it, is that Palutana has a vision of this invading army. So she's like, hey, Pitt, we need to get ready for this battle that's going to happen. So I need you to undergo a bunch of training. So essentially, you are just tracing your steps doing the same thing from the first game because apparently even though you killed Medusa and save Palatina, you need to train for this battle she imagined. So there you have it. Off of her dreams. It's like Metal Gear Solid 2.

It's the K.I.3 simulation. Yes. It's a weird, like, I was looking at the instruction book and there's far too much text for this story printed out. I'm like, is this really this complicated? It's also in the intro of the game. and it's just also like just a text roll and it's just like okay thanks I get it all to just explain why you're replaying

the game I mean also what it reminds me of are the more than one kingdom heart game that's just like well because you're in a digital double now in another world that's why you have to go back to redo the storyline from kingdom hearts one I don't know I have not played enough of Uprising

to know if they reference this game but I don't think they do because there's nothing that really strikes me as something iconic from this game because essentially it's not a port but it's a second take on the same ideas with all the same elements but at the standards of 1991 game

design so it's like we know how this game should feel we know what the new standard is let's make it as if we were making it let's make the same game now instead of making the 1986 version on Game Boy you know it looks better as well the graphics are a little bit more cartooning you know

everybody looks a bit more cherubic I guess yeah yeah the the references go so deep in uprising that I wouldn't be surprised there's like a one off line directed at something about like hey remember when you had that dream palatina or whatever or if there's one unique enemy in this they probably appear in

uprising we'll get to it but they really they scrape the kiddick or a sparrow clean with uprising like is there one other thing we could put in this game that is not available yet that we haven't used yet yeah so plot wise you're tracing the same path I did watch this play through the game and also the ending and there's not a credits role but

it's pit going up the screen as he's scrolling all the enemies you saw in the game and then like literally in the last few frames of the ending his wings burn off so it's like I guess that's Icarus I guess we can reference Icarus finally Icarus

at long last this game did not come out in Japan until it was re-released for the 3DS so they just made this for America so maybe I think that was your theory Henry the more popular in America thanks to the cartoon I think they were like well

Captain N is still on the air as of this release so we have one small window of time like peak Icarus interest to release this game Icarus and Icarus in itchrist Ictorance yeah sorry that that was so that was the most tortured thing I've ever tried to say on here yeah I guess I mean especially

it was so rare back then to have a Japanese developed game that didn't come here especially from a main series it's not like oh we made an American football game that wouldn't come out over here or something that wouldn't come out in Japan. It's something they could have easily sold there. It seems like they didn't view it as worth printing up that big game packs, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, notable things are just like Mike Tyson's punchout and Star Tropics, things like that. But yeah, this is another one of those, although outsourced. And there are some improvements to this game. There's no ratchet scrolling, so you can't fall to your death. Pitts wings now work just barely and that you can kind of like glide yourself to the the ground. So it gives you a little assistance with the platforming. And yeah, like the last level

isn't a shooter like it is in Kidikris. We didn't mention that, but the last level in Kidikras is just a shoot him up. And Sakimoto had a bigger idea, but he was like, what's the easiest thing that we can do that's also nothing like anything else in the game? Let's make it a shooting segment that's very, very easy.

Overall, it does seem much more fair this Game Boy version of Kidikris, but when I was checking it out and playing it on my 3DS, what struck me is like the R&D1 personality isn't there and even if that made the first game less playable I did

miss the weirdness it did feel like someone was copying from someone else's paper yeah I mean yeah I Tose is not I mean they also Tose's job is to not put their personality into it like their job is to recreate the the game

plan handed to them they wouldn't be doing their job right if they put in their own weird stuff that they came with on a sleepless night i'm i'm sure their crunch was probably near as bad but they've uh it it was not their job to share that in uh horrible sadness through the game bob i also just watched the ending where you said uh his wings fall off in the last few frames yeah and it literally just literally does play out like an eric andre show freeze frame yes yes you can put you can overlay the music on top of that we'll be right back uh yeah i mean metro two came out the same month

And that game, I think, people really had to come around on it over time. I think retronauts in the early years helped redeem it. I think the first, like, episode zero was about Metroid, maybe. Is that part? Yeah, yeah, we did talk about Metroid, too. And I know Jen Frank said that, like, that was the Metro game she really was into. And yeah, once Sammis Returns came out, it was like, oh, okay, this is a more up-to-date version of this idea. But Metroid 2 did mess with the formula in terms of what it was doing.

Kid Dick Griss was like, just do the NES game better. And that's why I don't think it's remembered. and most people forgot it existed until it was re-released for the 3DS. And I do recall that, like, them bragging, or when they announced it for the 3DS, and it's never been in Japan before. Like, that was a big selling point for it. Same thing happened with Advance Wars, Days of Ruins as well. That's another gritty American take.

Yes, yeah. Like Star Tropic. All those Advance Wars. Let's move on to talk about the last game, which is almost 10 years ago, but we'll still count because it was supposed to come out with the launch of the 3DS. So that's Kidikris Uprising. It came out in March of 2012. There's an Awada asks about it, which is more like Awada Defense's choices, if you ask me. Or sorry, Sakurai defense.

fences choices. So 20 years have passed since the Game Boy Kidachris. It's mostly unknown. The N.E.S. Kidacris is like, oh, it's this weird bad game that nobody likes. We remember the cartoon. We're millennials and we have like weird nostalgia

for Captain N. And then Super Smash Bros. Brawl comes out. Kid Echris is in the game as a playable character. And people are like, oh, Kid Ikechris. I suddenly love him. Yeah. Because my master's at Nintendo said

he was a lovable character. Yeah. From the outside is before I got into the games press just in the like every year the e3 i watched e3 you know as as early as they could be streamed and before that just reading the updates and every year nintendo was the most important one to me and in the nintendo fan community it would be every time like i bet it'll be a kid icarus this year and and uh if you were watching with your friends i'd remember like if something that even could potentially look like kid icarus would appear we'd be like

Oh, no, it's not. And so, we want this and we don't know why. Yeah, that's what really hit me playing the game again. I was like, there's so many references to the original game that acts like you give a shit about it that then when I was playing it, I thought, oh, this misunderstood that the fandom for Kid Icarus was just on the idea of getting one, not a love of the original. Yeah, like all 40 enemies that are gloriously represented in polygonal models now. And every throughout the year, you'd hear the, every year between E3s, you'd hear rumors like, I hear this company's working on a kid Icarus, I'd hear that. Right. And then once he appeared in Brawl, yes.

Then it just became a given of like, there must be a kid Icarus coming at some point. They don't, people would say, like, they would never fully redesign and update the character just so he could be a playable guy in Smash Brothers Brawl. I remember maybe, Ray, you can comment on this in the early years of retronauts. there was always a lot of Kiddickriss discussion and the idea was like they're never going to do this. Well, I think one of the things we're not totally touching on is that Kidichrist had been kind of a thing in like the gamer communities ever since like the GameCube was announced

because it was a longstanding rumor that there was going to be a new kidacris for GameCube and I guess Factor 5 had like made some pitches and some artwork that showed, you know, a mature pit and a new Kid Icris game. And so that fueled a lot of rumors that came out of, I think, IGN a lot. Matt Casmasina at IGN would always write, you know, rumors or updates on rumors for Kid Ircris. And that, of course, fueled the crazy Nintendo fanboys and girls on the message boards and stuff for a long time. You're right. So it was really just this, again, a simmering thing for many years.

I don't think Kid Air Chris was completely forgotten because of things like that. And it was just like, it's coming. It's coming. You're right. It's coming. The seed was planted in the early office. thoughts and uh yeah you're so right that ig n was like a key component to that like they welded into existence i when i think about reading kid icarus rumors usually it was uh from uh casso cassimacina about that it's just like oh i'm here i'm here and there's another

kid icarus coming that i think that was my life too it's like what were you doing college parting no reading kid icarus rumors online yeah going to i g going to the nintendo page for IGN.com every day in refreshing and hoping that there'd be new rumors. Maybe that sweet, sweet pits. Yeah. Yeah, so people wanted this for some reason and go back to the history of retronauts. I'm sure we talked

a lot about it in the early years or I wasn't there, but other people did. So Brawl came out in Japan and America and there was a new platform coming out called the 3DS and president at the time Satoro Iwada approaches Masahiro Sakurai. He is the smash

brother's guy. He is the Kirby guy. He is chained to that franchise for life He's trying to gna off his own ankle as we speak But essentially Iwada's like Sakurai I want you to make a launch game for this new system And he's like, okay boss So there was no studio That he had to make the game

Because Smash Brothers is actually like 30 developers Joining forces to make one giant game It's where a lot of developers you might think What happened to them? They are probably working on Smash Brothers content So this is why Sokirai forms Project Sora, which was a tiny studio just built to make this one game ostensibly. I don't think there was a plan beyond that.

The only person who can make Sakurai make a game is Zawada. And because he passed away, that's why Sakurai is only on Smash Brothers from now on. He's like, well, I got to just keep working on the game of what it told me to do until I die myself. We, yeah, I mean, we'll get to it. But after playing this game, which is, has some issues, but I do genuinely think it's well made. I'm like, I wish they would let Sakurai do something else. He's, he has so many qualities as a game developer. And there really are all on display in uprising.

I was, when I was playing it again, I was telling my husband, like, oh, you know, I know you love Smash Brothers. This is such a Smash Brothers game. And my husband said, like, I play Smash Bros. for Nintendo. answer it's not gameplay i'm not i don't care that the menus look like smash brothers in terms of sheer craft it's uh it's like a smash brothers game but yes um so sacri knew that a lot of 3ds launch games were going to be ports um so he wanted to do something that uh i wada had not seen before an entirely new game in a in a genre that was not popular in japan and that would be the shooter so this original concept had no IP attached to it and it would involve air and ground

combat which the final game does and it would be a real shooter at first but then eventually give the player more control and I guess in the search for IP for this game they at first went to Star Fox this could have been a Star Fox game but then Sakra I was like

the ship combat doesn't give me enough options in terms of like what I can do with the characters and also maybe they played that Star Fox game that Namco made in which you were doing on foot missions and it sucks Armada Armada or assaults Assault, man, yeah, no, that game, that game sucked.

Yeah. Well, I mean, once I got on foot in that game, I was like, turn it off, pop it out. Every time. And it's not even the worst. I mean, zero's a worse game than that, I would say. But, God, poor, you talk about, you talk about your abused Nintendo franchises. Star Fox, I'd say, got it even worse. There's, like, baby, two good games in Star Fox. It's almost like, oh, Acreis is actually better off not having any new games, you No, because that hasn't done Star Fox any favors, getting new games.

It has a higher percentage of good game content in this franchise. So this is the first, Kid or Chris Uprising, the first game in development for the 3DS. It began in 2009. Obviously, would not come out until a year after the system had launched in Japan. So the one major issue with this game, and you will know this if you play the game, is that the 3DS does not have a second analog stick, which is kind of necessary if you're designing a shooter, because we know how shooters work

one stick moves you one stick controls where you're looking or pointing a gun or some sort of other weapon that's not happening with this game because the 3DS does not have that so very unorganomic controls because this game you have to basically

hold it only with one hand unless you have the special cradle that it shipped with there are other ways to hold it semi comfortably like if you rest it on your knee or if you rest it on your elbows as you're at a desk but because this game needs to be stable for the 3D to work correctly by default you are going to be at least slightly uncomfortable playing it

and that is fundamentally the biggest problem with this game well that's why I turn off the 3D effect and just have it crooked in between my hands also still uncomfortable oh oh it doesn't make my hand hurt any less but at least I don't get like you know slightly dizzy moving around as much with it, yeah. And a lot of people think, including me, and I think I still thought this going into the research. Well, it's like, well, yeah, but Nintendo, they're like,

oh, yeah, we're sorry we didn't have a second analog stick. That's why we have the Circlepad Pro, which is just a weird fix. And the assumption was, well, okay, that'll fix the game, right? Because one stick will be, you know, aiming and when the other one will be moving. No, that is only for left-handed players. So by default, if you are left-handed, you cannot really play this game, because this game is designed for a right-handed player. Oh, it's really crazy.

I mean, I remember that CirclePad Pro, it was one of the first things I got, I went straight to when I got to do Tokyo Game Show 2011, the first time I ever went to Tokyo, cover TGS. And the main thing was like, get a picture of that CirclePad Pro go straight to the Capcom booth. We need to know if it's real. Yeah, because, well, not in a good way did my bosses want to know it was real. Like, because this is ridiculous. Let's take a picture of it and just laugh of like, why did they, what the hell? Like, yeah. I think you needed a bat.

Am I correct? You needed a battery for that thing. Yes. Yes. You did. A battery. Yeah, that was also crazy. Yeah.

It was a mistake. Yeah. Because it was not, it was not, didn't, it did not hard to connect. I think it used like infrared. Yes. Use the infrared port on it. That's right. Yeah.

But, hey, it was made for Monster Hunter. That's correct. You know. It's the only reason. anybody would give a damn. That is the biggest. I love the 3DS. I recently got a new 2DS and downloading games,

checking out all my software library because I was in the games press at the time. I have so much stuff on that thing. And I still think like this should have had a second analog stick. You guys messed up big time. Sakurai, maybe he was lobbying for one. Maybe he didn't lobby hard enough because that is what is holding a lot of games back. Yes, they added that weird little nub with the new 3DS, but that nub is awful. I can't use it and I don't use it

Tap on the nub just a little bit It's like, okay, no It's not satisfying Yeah, well also, I mean it's not analog It's just like it's a nub you tap Yeah, move slightly Like it's it's better than literally nothing Like it's better than that

But yeah For the longest time I was like Well, this game is just so hard to play So of course you're going to port it But to this day no And reading about the development They were developing this before They had 3DS development hardware

So they were developing it for the Wii at first. So I'm thinking, this game feels like it is a Wii game that was just jammed onto a 3DS because I can think of this, yes, I'm moving with the Nunchuk and I'm moving the reticle with the Wii mode. And it feels like it would be natural. So I was like, well, where's the Wii port? It's 2012. It's not too late for a Wii game.

That never, ever happened. I was kind of expecting that maybe they would announce, you know, a Wii U version, you know, an HD version. because then at least you'd also get two analog sticks but yeah that never came to be I want to know what you think about this Ray my theory is that and I hope to be proven wrong

because I really would like to play this game in a way that's not painful is that Nintendo re-releasing this game for another platform would be acknowledging a mistake and that is why we're not seeing the virtual boy again

any presence of that in terms of like re-releasing games although this game apparently sold okay but I feel like it would be a top level Nintendo guy saying yeah that was a big mistake we had to literally ship this with a a cradle to put in front of you otherwise it is just too hard to play i feel like that is what's holding them back but i want to be proven wrong uh yeah

interesting interesting thought there uh yeah it's hard to tell because it's nintendo you know so who knows really what they're thinking i i i mean you could undo that mistake pretty easily just by the nature of making it for you know switch or whatever you know with something that has dual analogs like it does solve the major complaint the major issue everybody had, I don't think that people would still completely dismiss it just because of some memory of the, the stand or something.

I think, too, it's Sakurai's like power or seniority of like that it's his, it's his game. Yeah, he'd have to approve it or, you know, obviously a corporation's going to do what it wants to do. That being said,

I, you know, Sakurai currently is a very senior employer. or not even like a contractor, I suppose. He's sort of on the outside of Nintendo. But I would think to this date, he has such sway there that if he doesn't want it remade, he could prevent it. And on top of that, like, there's not a huge demand for it to be remade anyway. Like, it kind of came and went.

And I could also see on Zacharize part just from being part of the press side of previews of that game, he was not happy at all to answer questions about it, have get critiques from early players who say, could you change this though? He like, he didn't want to hear any of that. And I think just for him personally, a re-release that uses a second stick in the way it would work best would be him admitting he messed up, not just Nintendo, but Sakurai himself would have to go like, I was imperfect. Yeah, I mean, if you look at coverage at the time and the cover. The cover. was Sakurai basically saying oh it's not actually that hard

in fact if it's hard you're doing it wrong it was sort of like kind of like him being a bit of a scold where he's like we just tried to release it like this I can't admit it's a mistake but yeah all it is is it is a replacement for another analog stick there's nothing to be on that the game could function perfectly if you had a second stick

but it does not give you one and that is the big fundamental flaw with the game which is a very well made game I think outside of that fundamental flaw one yeah and having played earlier versions of it for like previews and stuff, I could see how they refined it as best they could of like, oh, like when I played the final version, I did think, wow, this camera movement in the on foot sections used to be even worse.

Like now I, I feel a better control over it. Like maybe that too is why I gave such a high review to it was like, hey, if you guys knew how bad it used to play at this preview event I went to, you'd be impressed that they they figured it out to the extent they did. I never got a chance to do hands-on before the release. So I only played the final version and I only played it on originally on the original 3DS, which is not good. It's not a good feeling system. The screen isn't great.

The new 2DS that I've recently played in on, like, this feels like a better experience, although I'm still in pain. I was able to record this podcast at least. Yeah, it definitely feels much more comfortable for me on my new, in capital and new three. 3DS XL yeah mine is a new new 2DS Excel I think it's an Excel too on top of that there's a lot of prefixes and suffixes it's the latest thing it came out in 2017 Nintendo 2DS XL yes that's right that's right So it felt like to me upon revisiting this game and the things around it, like, did Nintendo have something more in store for this franchise?

Because this is the beginning of the 3DS, of course. And this is back when Nintendo was like, we're going to release 3D movies for your 3DS that were quickly discontinued. But because of that, there are three anime shorts you can watch. The 3DS video app is dead now. You can't really use it anymore. But if you go to the 3DS store, can still watch these three kiddickrous anime shorts and uh yeah it made me wonder like they're

building in so much story in the game they're building in all these new characters they're showing like here is what kiddickrous anime could look like were they thinking like this could be a big new IP for us with a full voice cast yeah like who could easily take those voices in a tv series or a movie or if they did if they did a full anime series like if they did a be right back at you. Yes. For Kid Icarus. Yeah.

Well, this also was the era of when, you know, it was a little later, but they did the Pikmin original movies for it, too. That's right. They were getting a little into the original content game, which was also, I mean, it was the style at the time, the Xbox, they were going to have a whole network, the Xbox network. Oh, my God. It just made me think, like, as websites were pivoting to video, so was Nintendo. Like, make two-minute videos.

People love those. Like, why? We all had a brain sickness. I never wanted to do this. Yeah. Though those Icarious shorts were really good. I mean, it was by anime pros, you know. Yeah, I mean, the 3DS ship with, what was a dinosaur office party on the system.

Oh, right. Just like, here's a little movie you can watch me by robot chicken guys. I forgot about that. Yeah. So, yeah, basically, if anything ever existed in a kid of curse game, it's in this game. Because they just, like I said, they scraped the bearer clean every, weapon, every enemy, every character to the point where it's like, well, we need to

add more characters so they do. But if there's something you like from the original game, the little dinky sprite on the screen is now he fully realized 3D model with animations and sound effects and it's sometimes dialogue, like they've found everything to do with Kiddikerson put it in this game.

I mean, that's, that's Sakharai's hallmark, you know, at that point. Yes. You know, even with Smash Brothers, you know, he proves that he enjoys making good on like video game legacy basically and that means like being very faithful to something like kid icress as well not just you know every other sort of game character from nintendo but specifically honing down on kid icarus is my point is that yeah he's gonna be just as passionate about faithfully reproducing that stuff yeah if it was given to like any other

triple a studio they would identify many of the story points that would cause like just a brick wall design wise or whatever. Maybe like, well, we can't, let's forget about that whole palatina thing or Hugh Draw, like, well, that's a dumb name. We can't use that. But in the English version, the American version, like, they use all of the stupid names. Yes, it's like, we got, we need pork you spines, we need paramushes, we need brawny claws, get them all in there.

These things that some tired guy named in 1987 put him in the game. Oh, man. I love when they say, like, oh, it's Hugh Draw. Remember this guy? And then it's just the eight-bit spray. Right, right there on the bottom screen. Yeah, yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that, Henry, because one of the big appeals of this game is that it does feel a lot like Star Fox 64 and that there is like a constant conversation happening.

But the bottom screen is Palutana and Pitt sort of having like a Monzae style comedy relationship with each other. Constant conversation throughout the every level. And you can tune it out if you've heard it before, but there's just like a running commentary throughout the entire game from these two characters and also characters you meet along the way. it's yeah it's really and crazy it's one of my favorite localizations ever like it's just so funny and it also feels built into the game like it felt actually worked on almost in community like it doesn't i've seen some really great localizations that feel like say i really love a lot of the modern dragon quest localizations but in those cases it is you know a completed game handed to localizers who then do great work with it but this one feels like there was much

more communication of like, oh, well, this would be a funny joke if this happened on screen while this guy said it. And then it got put into the game. Like I, it seemed a lot more collaborative, which was just really great. I mean, and our buddy, our buddy Mike Drucker. And future Emmy nominee and, you know, great comedy writer for Hollywood, Mike Drucker. He began in localization. Yeah. And he's, he said, I've heard him say before as one of his favorite things he's ever worked on was his kid Hickr's uprising. And he, he should be proud. Like, it's really, it still made me laugh playing this time. It's like, oh, that's really

funny and good and great acting by the voice actors too. It's good stuff, yeah. And again, just showing up the 3DS and that like we have more cartridge space. So there's going to be all of this dialogue now that we could do on the DS. It might be compressed, but here we're on a new system. There's just going to be people talking back and

forth the entire time. And yes, how it plays is that yes, it does describe to the Icarus myth and that you can only fly for a limited time and Palutana controls your movement in terms of like where your moving throughout the stage but you can move around on the screen to dodge things so there's a five-minute flying segment and then you are put down into an on-the-ground segment uh doing ground combat with enemies while shooting it's sort of like devil may cry except you have essentially one

action button maybe two if you count the um the shooting as a separate element but it's a very simple uh action set up in terms of the control scheme but they find a lot of variations in terms of like dashing and charging and things like that like this game is designed around just having one button. Which, you know, if it's with like smash controls as well. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. But you really couldn't play it with more than one attack button because of the

way you're holding it. You have one hand and the L button is your attack button and that's it. When replaying it to one of the funny things was in between levels, they actually do assign actions to buttons of like, oh, hey, it's a go through stuff. You can hit the Y button and it changes that or changes this or that. And I thought, oh, right. other buttons and I like creak my hand back into natural position. I forgot about these. X, Y. My old friends. Yeah, you can adjust the control scheme and I tried

that this morning, but none of them are as satisfying as using the touchscreen as another analog stick, which is very sad. Yeah. Man, the shooting sections really, even today I'm like, man, these are good. They're good, yeah. The other sections can be good, but I also, they're the ones that made me the most angry of like I didn't mess this up you did yeah I think like the camera's in too close a lot of the times they do realize the game is hard to play so they give they throw a ton of items at you and so many arrows to be like yeah we know you're lost the arrow here's the second arrow on the wall go that way we were we were still in the era era of like colored arrows guiding you everywhere too but yeah this game has something interesting in it in terms of

difficulty and that smash brothers would borrow this in the latest version but In terms of like how you want to play the game in terms of difficulty, there is the, the cauldron and that you bet, you place hearts in the cauldron to up the difficulty. So you're kind of placing a bet on whether or not you can beat the level at a certain difficulty. And based on what the difficulty is at, certain doors will be open. Certain items will be available. And yeah, it's an interesting way because, again, if you want to cruise to the game, you can just have the difficulty at one and just see all the content. But if you want to challenge yourself and see more of the content that's hidden, you can always up the difficulty. yeah i really uh love that fiends caldrain and when they brought it back for smash four i was like

yes finally one thing from this game survived like i i really loved being able to just you know the game is you know it's much longer than it seems at first too like it's actually a pretty long game but uh for extra replayability even going back through this time even though i knew how much it hurt my hand i was like all right i only beat this at like like like 4.6. Let me go up to 6.1 and see if I can really pull this off. It's very granular. It's like a video game review score. Yes, yeah. The perfect 100 point scale, the right way to review thing. Yes.

IGN did have an influence. You're right. You're right. You know, this game, I downloaded it for 3DS, just, you know, for intellectual reasons. Just like, I'm going to see how this game played. I didn't like it originally. and the heartbreaking thing is that when I sat down to play it I really like it I really really like it I was like oh I kind of want to play through this entire game I kind of want to see how I can challenge myself

I want to see all the content but then that's when my body started hurting and that's what made me think like this it's heartbreaking because this game is such a well-made game but it is not on the platform it should be and it is like begging to be liberated from the 3DS because it is so well crafted there's just so much talent

working on this game. We didn't even talk about the soundtrack. It's like the All-Stars of Japanese music because Sakurai knew all these guys because of all the remixes they were doing for Smash Brothers. People like Sakuraba, people like Mitsuda are working on this game. Like it is just all-stars of video game talent working together, but it is just too difficult to play in terms of ergonomics. And that is what breaks my heart about this game. Yeah, it's it's painful to play in many ways. But yeah. I don't. I don't know. guys. I never had that problem. Oh, really? You have stronger hands than us then, I guess. I guess, but like, it never really affected me. And I think that people kind of blanket

crapping on the game because of the controls, it gets really tiring, man. And like, was it the best choice for the controls game? No, of course not. It's super hampered by the 3DS. I'm not going to argue that at all. But, like, you get this, you got this a lot from people who just

generally go like portable give my hand cramps and it's just like loosen up literally just try i wish people were just like not trying to play it one certain way like they're like gamer kids in a stock photo or something yeah troll or some crazy way like you need to actually like adjust yourself and not try and like play it in some way that you think nintendo wants you to play it like just go ahead you got hands use them use them loosen up and just you know um try it in different ways. And I think maybe that's what Sakurai was talking about. That's sort of like you're doing it wrong sort of thing. It's like

you know, we all hold controllers differently. We all find different comfort levels of how we play games and it's not there's not one set way to do it. So I think in many ways people should just like give it a second shot. Yeah. And if they already did and still didn't like it, that's fine. I don't

care, but I don't want to be, uh, I wanted to bring nuance to this conversation because I think like in 2012 I was like this sucks. These controls are stupid. This time I'm like, it's not ideal, but I'm actually enjoying the game. I don't know if I want to commit to an entire playthrough. It could be a much better experience in terms of controls, but I still feel like there is something there worth checking out. I just don't want to hurt people in terms of their joints and tendons because I don't know if I have poor

circulation, but when I play Switch for too long, I rarely play it in handheld mode because just the way you hold it, my hands go numb. I don't know how I'm holding it, but I had to by like the hoary like the beefy the beefy sticks you slide into that thing it's like beefy sticks are pretty nice yeah but the way it's designed like my hand just go numb if I'm holding a portable system for too long especially

with one hand so yeah like well so look in defense of my hands I like played Dragon Quest 7 in like seven hour chunks in bed over and over again didn't I didn't have one problem of that

playing but playing kid icarus the way i hold it and i refuse to learn a new way to hold it i that hurts my hands you're supposed to flick the stick like you're spinning a globe yeah it's all it's like spinning a globe yeah no i it i i was the defender back in 2012 like i was the guy in the office who said like guys you're being too mean to this game it's actually pretty good if you can get past this part or whatever like it's i uh i i was surrounded by people who were just like look at that stupid Oh, I got to buy a cradle for it. Like, everybody in my office was mocking it.

But that was also the style at the time of, like, oh, Japanese games are bad. Like, that was the conversation you just had to have all these obtuse games from Japan. The genre of video games passed them by. Like, at Kittaker's, I think, definitely early 2012, suffered from that stupid bias that was still going around then, you know? Well, also handheld, too. like yeah same people are like in this country excuse me we play games on a 60th television okay yeah i mean i i love the switch it is a handheld i never play it handheld because i just like you know sitting in front of my couch with a tv but i did recently spend like a hundred dollars on

the switch sales so i'm committed to handhelds in a way even though i rarely play them handheld uh and this i get i so you know i don't want to uh get like a bad reaction from people thinking i'm only saying that you know their their pain is invalid or anything i just am like there is people who came in with preconceived notions of handhelds and stuff and just didn't either didn't play the game straight out or just didn't try it another way and I'm just saying hey look if it did still hurt you no matter how many times you tried it that or any other handheld game or whatever that's fine valid you can go ahead and have your complaints but for kid acres in particular it's like it's you mean if I didn't

have a problem I feel like some other people have the capacity to not have a problem. Play it before you get too old. Yeah. I need to finish it before I turn 40 next year. Otherwise, just like Mr. Mac, your hand is, well, won't function anymore. At the very least, go to YouTube and pull up one of the Kid-Igress Uprising, funniest funniest.

And you can experience the really great writing, the very funny stuff in the game. Can I see people reacting to them? Is that something I can do? Not the ones I watched. I made sure. Reaction free runs. No guy going like. And then a really funny thing, I believe.

Right. Yeah. It is a very high quality game. It's like a very AAA sort of like 3DS game. Yeah, yeah. Because it was like 100% voiced and it has, you know, great writing and all that. And it is just kind of fun. It is a good action game.

Like I do give Sakurai credit for being a game designer who does his research and tries to make things as tight and well designed and feeling well as possible. He does do that. When I was playing it again and I got back in. to like uh i i had my perfect setup and so i was like oh yeah that just this weapon was my weapon and these powers are my powers but then when i dug back in it was like oh right god there's so many different weapon types with so much like diversity of action and then on top of that the like puzzle game element of laying out your power-ups like basically like a resident evil briefcase of of items it's a really there's so much novelty and creativity on display there

This really could have been just a straightforward linear action game, but instead it's just like, well, no, the point is to go into levels and improve your playability by upping the difficulty and then, you know, get new weapons, fuse existing weapons, turn weapons you don't need into hearts and then, you know, adjust your skills to each you get of like the ideal output and, you know, different abilities, resist certain things. It's like there is so much going on under the hood that most people won't even think about when they think of Kid Icarus, you know, just like this very complex action game with a super customizable, lead character. I could see Nintendo as a company after this game coming out and it not having, you know, the greatest sales, certainly not higher sales than Super Mario 3D land or Mario Card 7, not in that realm. I could see them saying like, hey, you told us for 10 years you wanted a kid Icarus game. And when we finally gave it to you in the most like high level way we could, you didn't

show up for it. So no more. You don't get any more of this guy. is the like and it's sacri like what's worth saccharide's time is just to be the smash brothers factory like if you're looking for return on investments only rating it on that you sacchari spending five years on a kid icarus game and then then being able to go back to smash brothers like that's uh i think that was another reason sacri was pissed if i could i could be more of a there uh backseat therapist to him during those interviews as once awada at the wu announcement said and i've talked to

saccharide he's making a smash brothers for we you spits out us coffee saccharide every remaining interview from that point on about icarus was like so here's my two questions about icarus now what are you planning to do with that next smash brother he's like and zachari every time i had to be like well i'm trying to ship this kid icarus game i'll be thinking about it later you know what not to go on too but in terms of like exploitation poor Sakurai we need to free him instead of freeing Kidickriss from the 3DS because I just thought like

this game this game shipped in 2012 and then by 2014 he needs to make a Smash Brothers for the Wii U, the first HD Smash Brothers and also a port of that for the 3DS which is one of the most like technically amazing achievements to put that game on the 3DS essentially

with no major differences Oh yeah yeah I mean just like scale and player count like that stuff but it's a fully online real last spanish brothers game with all of the same characters in each version and it will have like parody of dLC characters as well like and that one actually did use the uh the second uh circle pad pro oh you're right yeah it can be done yeah but uh yeah that is our kid iccress podcast of really fun discussion uh long overdue in terms of just this very weird series it gets a game about every 15

years, I guess, at this point. But yeah, 35 years of Kittakeris. And my final question before we go is, do you think we need more Kittakeris in our lives? I'll go first briefly because I have a quick statement in that let's have a Kittaker's collection. Let's put it on Switch and let's fix Uprising. I've said my, I've spoken my piece. I've said my case. Ray, what is your stance on this? Well, first of all, I do like the character. I like Pitt. I think it's a cool character. I think sacroi sort of you know or whoever involved with smash brothers that upgrade of upgraded pit that was a good approach uh for that and then uprising him too uh however my short answer is no we don't need more i think um it was always kind of like third string to metro it was one of those

weird games again whether or not regardless of what we know about the development or whatever it's just not on the same level of quality but at the same time people love a underdog and you know they they loved the pit and kid egress for all these years and people also say the same things about star tropics or and mike from star tropics like when's he's going to be in smash brother um i think it's just sort of like a part and parcel sort of thing there so i you know it was a good revival i think uprising's pretty good but it's not like nintendo recognizes it on the same level of Metroid and Samus. It's true.

You know, I would say we do, but I think it really does have to be like they get a good pitch from a third party, a next level games type group or whoever. We need some Canadians on this, some Vancouverites. But just a company like or Mercury Steam,

somebody like that comes with them with a good idea and Nintendo shepherds it. Like I don't think Nintendo is going to put internal money and resources into another kid Icarus after this last one I don't think saccharis not anymore sacchar is not going to return to it either and so I I think kid Icarus is now in that you know them honestly yes below star fox and Metroid which those are also just handed to secondary teams yeah they're not internal so no one's being handed to star fox anymore to begin with yes yeah I but but yeah I think kid I

you know at the very least somebody they really should just court it it could work with two sticks but my personal belief is sacchari if he if it's up if he's the final approval on that happening then it wouldn't happen i but i i think you know the most positive feelings i've ever felt from kid icris wasn't even playing uprising which i did have a really good time with but it seriously was sitting at my desk at work with the one other guy who is on the home team for covering E3 that year and when the trailer started

and you can see Medusa and we're like wait what what and then when he says like sorry to keep you waiting and he comes across the screen we're like ah like we jumped out of our seat just like yes it happened but what we were celebrating was the fact that the thing we always thought would happen

EG3 never happened and here it happened that was the excitement not that we were going to get to play a Kid Icarus game but that an announcement happened and so I don't know maybe they can make a new trailer and people would be like yay more Kid Icris but yeah it was an improbable thing and I say

let's hound Nintendo for the next improbable thing like let's say you're in a meeting with Doug Bowser first of all you got to make a joke can you believe it his name's Doug and then you make a stupid joke and you'll do that for the rest of time and then you'd be like Doug we need a new gum shoe

we need it now who's making the shit are you well I mean really it's still mother three right oh yeah it still hasn't happened well yeah localize mother three let's get star tropics three i don't know find some new improbable thing to tie your hopes and dreams to we even got famicom detective club so it's like boy i'm running out of things and what i would have complained about was advanced wars

and now way forward to making that so it's like i'm nintendo's man i'm running out of things to complain about nintendo that doesn't do anything that that was another thing i was going to bring up it's like i'm sure there are like Japanese Nintendo fans out there who were like, where are they going to make a new Shin Onigashima? Oh, yeah. That's even more ignored. Yeah. It's true. Okay. It goes both ways, right? So we got Kid Akris. Maybe they'll get something nice and obscure

and later. So that has been another episode of Retronauts. Thank you so much you're listening, folks. By the way, we are supported by all of you kind people out there. If you want to give us some of your money in exchange for some content, please go to Patreon.com slash Retronaut. Sign up there. If you sign up for three bucks a month, you get all these episodes one week at a time and add free. Sign up for five bucks a month. You get two full-length bonus episodes every month and also a weekly column and podcast by Diamond Fight. And if you've never signed up at that level before, we have been doing these two bonus episodes a month for almost two years. So you have not heard a ton of episodes we've been putting out.

So please check that out at patreon.com slash retronauts. Ray Barnholz, what are you up to? Where can we hear you, support you? What are you working on? Up to a little bit. Well, first of all, my big things are. my other podcast, No More Whoppers. I do that with my friend Alex. It's on this network. You may have heard a promo for it.

No Morewoppers.com. We also have a Patreon. You can get early episodes that way. I also have a game company called Bipel Dog. I made a game called BlastRush, which is on mobile and Steam right now and PC. And little smaller things. Personally, on Twitter, I am RDBAAAA.

That is also my name on Twitch now. I just started streaming some stuff. I'm streaming some of my favorite games. That's been fun. You can support me through those means as well. Those are the big things. Podcasts, game company, Twitch, and Twitter for more crazy game stuff. That's me.

And also it is Ray's birthday. Three months before you're hearing this. So thank you for joining us on your birthday, Ray. Oh, wow. Happy birthday. My kid Icarus birthday. Thanks, guys. Your cake is in the mail.

Yeah, I got the themed dinnerware and everything. so Henry how about you what are you up to I'm involved in a lot of this aren't I yeah well actually first I was going to say that's ironic because I believe this episode will be released on my birthday wow what about my birthday

that's when gum shoe too comes out but yes so it's a special treat for my birthday you should check out my podcast that I do both of them with Bob Mackie they are talking Simpsons and what a cartoon So talking Simpsons, you like the Simpsons, I'm sure you're a good person. So you would love to hear me and Bob go chronologically through the entire Simpsons series with tons of fun historical analysis. And funny guess says we go through all of it.

Right now we are getting deep into season 12 while also revisiting season 2. You can hear that each week. And twice a month we do our What a Cartoon podcast where we cover an animated series super in-depth going into its history. one of their classic episodes and that's all supported at Patreon as well. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Get you a ton of extras including me and Bob

giving the same treatment to series like King of the Hill, Futurama, The Critic, and Mission Hill. You get so many extras just for five bucks a month and even more at 10. Please check that all out. Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And of course you can follow me on Twitter

at H-E-N-R-E-Y-G. You know if you're listening to this, the day it comes out, you can wish me a happy birthday there. Please wish Henry, happy birthday, and say happy belated birthday to Ray Barnholz. Oh, thank you. But yes, that's been another episode of Retronauts. We'll see you again very soon. Take care.

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