YMMV / Kid Icarus (1986)

• Anti-Climax Boss: Medusa in the first game, who can't even hit you as long as you just stay in the right position, which is easy to figure out.
• Awesome Music: Most of the music in the first game is pretty nice:
  • The title theme— so good, Super Smash Bros. Brawl used it twice.
  • The more recognized Underworld theme and its many variations, such as the Palace in the Sky.
  • The Overworld, a peppy tune and the Most Wonderful Sound after finally climbing out of the dreary, punishing Underworld.
  • The Skyworld
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The Reapers, who take a dozen hits to kill and summon a swarm of Reapettes if alerted.
  • Many flying enemies (Monoeye, Mick, and Komayto) and jumping enemies from the bottom of the screen (Commyloose and Octos) move in patterns that are not always easy to juggle, especially not when dealing with four of them at a time in addition to whatever other enemies or hazards may be on-screen at the moment.
  • Enemies that pop out of the ground (Mcgoo, Girin, and Holer) have a nasty habit of spawning next to (or worse, directly underneath) Pit if he stands too long in particular areas. They are only vulnerable when they fully emerge, but they fire a projectile the moment they do so. Fortunately, this projectile can be avoided by ducking... unfortunately, these enemies can spawn on platforms where ducking will instead drop Pit to his death.
• Goddamned Boss: Hewdraw moves in an incredibly predictable pattern and does not have any ranged attacks. However, having 200 HP means it's a long grind of shooting short-ranged arrows at him, and the small platforms over lava limits the safe space that Pit can stand on to fire these arrows.
• Polished Port: The 3D Classics version of the original, which adds some backgrounds to the levels, difficulty modes to make the game easier to newcomers while preserving the difficulty in the harder ones, and the option to switch between the old, NES controls and a new control scheme that makes things easier.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Ducking on certain platforms (such as ice or clouds), even if only for the briefest moment, will cause Pit to drop down. It's useful for navigating labyrinths... but given the notorious Ratchet Scrolling and Bottomless Pits in the main stages, this is more likely to drop Pit down to his death in all other instances. Since ducking is useful for shrinking Pit's hitbox and dodging enemy attacks, it becomes problematic when the player's instinct to safely duck instead leads to an unavoidable death.
• That One Level: The Underworld in the original game is probably better known to most players than the rest of the game, even though it's just the first level! This is not without good reason either, given Pit's small health bar and puny bow at the beginning of the game not to mention one wrong jump and it's back to the beginning of the stage unless you use a password to continue! The Underworld is so notorious for its difficulty that Pit and Palutena joke about how brutal the difficulty was back then in Kid Icarus: Uprising when Pit goes to the Underworld to stop Medusa.

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