Kid Icarus redesign project

Page Created: 24.Oct.07.

Page Updated: 22.Jul.09 - Changed scale of humans (chibi). Scaled up images.

Still WIP.

Foreword

I still remember when Kid Icarus came out, along with Zelda and Metroid. Although Kid Icarus was rather linear (a sausage-string game), it still had a great atmosphere rivaling the two sister games. I always wanted to take that atmosphere and inject it into a balloon (Zelda and Metroid were more balloon games than sausage string games.).

In order to get a grasp of the atmosphere I must engulf myself in it, and what better way than drawing all of the stuff? There's not much point in redesigning stuff. Sprites of this size are flexible enough to be nudged into my preference zone without losing much faithfulness.

Designs

Monsters

I'm trying to anthro things a bit here, kind of how the turtles from SMB1 became more anthro in SMW, walking on their hind legs, freeing up the arms. Examples of this are Shulm ('shroom) and Daphne (flower). I always thought that the eye of the Kobil looked like a nose.. so I deviated from the cyclop theme there, even though the nice instruction booklet illustrations used the eye approach. Generally I go with the look of the sprite since that's what everyone been seeing so much of. I'm not sure about the relative scale of things yet. I could probably extrapolate these designs into neat Light-Medium-Heavy types to provide more coverage. Fore example, the Kobils came in blue and red, so there could be a larger red elite Kobil. The larger enemies could also be less cute, and meet with the more mature humaniod character designs better.

Right: Examples of intermediate designs, interpolations, extrapolations... whatever. The color scheme used by the tougher version of the enemy could be used. Sizes could span from Cute, Mature up to Boss. So far I have drawn most of the Kid Icarus sprites at a cute scale ('Super deformed' or 'Chibi').

Characters (and more monsters)

I'm not sure what scale to settle for yet. I suppose I could go for a larger head size (more super deformed). Collins is the big armour. There's Ell-eyes (fillings?) coming out of a hatch in his chest. The Collin used to be a soldier of Parthena's so I have to align the design with the petrified archer. The Siren has 'steel claws' so I made it into a cyborg'ish female rather than a bird-woman.

Story

I decided to rewrite the original story from another perspective to give it some nuances. This is just a mock-up, I'm not much of a writer I'm afraid.

Inspired by:
Star Trek - TOS - Who mourns for Adonais
Prometheus and the whole fire deal.

Somewhere, in ancient times, there was a realm called Angel Land where gods and man lived together - a relationship not without problems. The most powerful goddess, Parthena, governed Angel Land and its laws. By some, she was perceived to have a disparaging attitude towards man and the demigods.

Several of the demigods openly opposed Parthena on some issues concerning the responsibility and self governance of man. It was decided that whomever would win in battle against Parthena could get his or her (or its) will though.

Parthena felt that since she was superior, she had nothing to lose with this agreement. It would give her inferiors a sense of having influence. Indeed, Parthena always won the disputes, inflating her self righteous attitude further.

Until one day...

A mere mortal, Medusa, entered into a dispute with Parthena after having been caught constructing a forge. Generally, mortals would never consider standing up against a god, but Medusa was very temperamental, and challenged Parthena on the issue.

The demigods, who had almost given up defying Parthena, were amused by the ingenuity of Medusa. They secretly infused the ores in Medusa's forge with magical properties.

Parthena, expecting to crush Medusa like a bug, was caught off guard by Medusa’s wits, luck and magical equipment.

Parthena, humiliated by her defeat, accused the demigods of cheating, and declared the settlement to be invalid. Parthena then turned Medusa into a monster and blamed her of having caused many of the troubles in Angel Land. The demigods who had helped Medusa were also made into monsters.

Many mortals, not having witnessed the battle, accepted Parthena’s story, and drove the monstrous Medusa into the underworld.

The underworld is a chaotic place with many kinds of monsters of varying character. In this place of misfits and outcasts, Medusa managed to find sympathy. She gave warring factions a common goal, and mounted an attack against Parthena’s castle in the sky. The forces of Medusa were numerically superior and ultimately defeated Parthena. Refusing to fold to Medusa’s demands, Parthena was imprisoned.

Medusa’s time in the sun was to be short. The population of Angel Land saw both good and bad things coming from Medusa’s revolution. New markets and goods had emerged, but there was also black markets. Some monsters could live in cooperation with man, others were constantly causing trouble.

Medusa was soon defeated in a stealth attack by the commander of Parthena’s personal bodyguard. The genie was out of the bottle however. Parthena was not powerful enough to take on all the monsters, and now there were even mortals who openly opposed her. As time passed by, Parthena grew acceptant of the situation, doing her best to make Angel Land a good place for everyone to live in, Gods, Demigods, Man and Monsters alike. A statue of Medusa in her human form was eventually erected in the capital.

To Do List

• Extrapolate the appearance of Parthena's army based on the appearance of 'Collin' and the statue guys.
• Use the stage graphics to design the environments. Level 1-3 (underworld) could be very sedimentary with temples built upon temples built upon temples... in diffrent styles with the earth changing colors. On the surface there's a tower reaching into the sky where there's fantastic floating isles and fluffy clouds.
• Figure out Medusa's motivations and level of evil'ness.
• Figure out how the war went down, who were involved, the effect it had, and why the shopkeepers and nurses are still around.
• Figure out the current power balance. Maybe there's still fighting.
• The monsters we're around before Medusa and lived in the underworld. What were their natural factions and are they brawling among themseles every now and then?

Information bits

Names and stuff

Really, Kid Icarus is a horrible name. It's like "Let's slap 'Kid' on something greek... something with wings! I know.. this dude Icarus had wings.. let's call it Kid Icarus!".

The hero's name is not Icarus, but Pit, or Pitto, probably derived from Pythian.

The Japanese name is something along the lines Myth of Light: Parthena's Mirror

Palutena or Parutena is actually Parthena or Parthenon, greek for Virgin.

Kometo probably means Baby Metroid. It's named Komeyto in the English manual.

Shulm (Castle mushroom) might be a Gomba.

The Siren has bare breasts, both the sprite and image from the manual.

When you die, the first 4 notes are from the famous wedding melody.

Kid Icarus sported one of the best looking instruction booklets ever. It was littered with nicely drawn color illustrations... which I of course made feeble attempts to copy as a kid.

More speculation

Apparently the regeneration bath is yellow like frying oil, and when you're an eggplant and duck in the bath it's some sort of joke about frying eggplants... ?

The Big-Mouth enemy is called Mick, after Mick Jagger I presume.

There's an enemy called Collins, which apperently is filled with flying worms that come out of its body. These might be called Fillings in the japanese manual. Filling Collins was a group or something Phil Collins had going. In 1985 they did a duett with a Phillip Bailey (Easy Lover)... Kid Icarus was released along with Metroid in 86 in Japan, I think.

In the Japanese version, you had to tap the button to fly on the last schmup level, but this feature was removed in the US and EU version. I think this is why the last battle against Medusa is so horrible broken (You can just hover at a safe spot).

There's an eye, nose and mouth enemy. Something to do with Greek mythology?

Pit and Parthena are actually rather evil. First, the 'good' Parthena transforms Medusa into Monster Medusa and banishes her into the underworld (Because Medusa was harassing people). Medusa now successfully unites the forces of the underworld and retaliates. Whilst Medusa strictly doesn't kill anyone with her petrification trick, Pit actually kills thousands of creatures on his rampage to save Parthena.

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Byline: Art by Niklas Jansson, 2007-2009. Kid Icarus is (c) Nintendo.