Kid Icarus (series)

Kid Icarus is a series of fantasy video games by Nintendo. The games are set in a Greco-Roman fantasy world called "Angel Land", which is a fictional setting that's loosely based on Greek mythology. The gameplay consists of a mixture of action, adventure and platform elements. The Kid Icarus franchise is known as a cult classic and a sibling series to the Metroid franchise.

The first installment, Kid Icarus, was released in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System and was received to critical acclaim despite poor sales. A sequel, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, was later released for the Game Boy. After a 20-year hiatus, Kid Icarus: Uprising was released in 2012 for the Nintendo 3DS handheld.

Pit
Pit initially appeared in Kid Icarus (1986). In the game, Pit plays a role in rescuing the Goddess of Light, Palutena, from the clutches of the wicked Medusa. Pit escapes his Underworld prison and descends the steep cliffs, fending off the armies of Medusa's troops, including snakes and the deadly God of Death. Along the way, Pit overcomes Zeus' challenges and gains stronger weapons to combat the Underworld's hordes. In conclusion, once Pit had completed the stage, he would explore a gigantic stronghold filled with traps and puzzles. In Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters (1991), Palutena's nightmare is interpreted by a fate teller as an imminent invasion by the demon Orcos and his goons. The goddess summons Pit, the leader of her army, and tells him to report for specific instructions so that he might use the priceless treasures of Angel Land. While Pit is on his quest, Palutena has these under the watchful eyes of three fortress guards to ensure their safety from Orcos. After Pit defeats the guards and finishes his training, Palutena gives him the priceless wealth. Pit reappears in Kid Icarus: Uprising (2012) following a twenty five years break, collaborating with Palutena to vanquish Medusa and her army.

Pit's design was vastly updated for his inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and has become his standard design since then. According to Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of the Super Smash Bros. series and director of Kid Icarus: Uprising, he initially alternated between using Pit's 2D design, his cartoonish art design, and a 3D redesign for Pit's inclusion before ultimately settling on the latter. Sakurai stated that Pit's redesign was based on the concept of how his appearance would have slowly modernized had the Kid Icarus series remained active, much like how Link's design has done throughout the various subsequent installments within The Legend of Zelda series. In comparison to his previous design, Pit now appears approximately 13 years old in angel years.

GamePro identified Pit's gameplay mechanics as taking elements from three of Nintendo's biggest franchises: Mario's jump, Link's ability-enhancing objects, and Samus Aran's projectiles. Pit takes inspiration from Greek mythology, with IGN's Lucas M. Thomas viewing him as a combination between Eros and Icarus. Thomas identified both his bow and his wings as his most iconic characteristics. He was featured as the front cover in Nintendo Blast's 2012 Portuguese book titled "Nintendo Blast Ano 3 Edições 25 a 36". GameZone's Vito Gesualdi considers Pit a combination of The Legend of Zelda Link, and American filmmaker Woody Allen saying that "Pit is equal parts Link and Woody Allen, a handsome young warrior with all the self-confidence of our favorite neurotic Jew".

Other characters
There are a number of regular characters in the Kid Icarus series. Palutena, Viridi, Hades, Magnus, Dark Pit, Medusa, Pyrrhon, Pandora, Arlon, Poseidon, Phosphora, Dyntos, Thanatos, and Cragalanche are the few additional common characters in the series besides Pit.

The Eggplant Wizard first appeared in the 1986 video game Kid Icarus. In the game, he serves as an arch-nemesis to Pit and depicted as an anthropomorphic eggplant sorcerer who can shoot eggplants at other characters and disable all of their abilities by encasing them into an eggplant. He also appeared in the animated television series Captain N: The Game Master and serves as an antagonist. The Eggplant Wizard was inspired by the game's creator Toru Osawa's passion for eggplants and the eggplant men from Wrecking Crew. Osawa said that he drew the character to celebrate his summer bonus.

Development
After Nintendo's release of commercially successful platforming games in the 1980s, including Donkey Kong, Ice Climber, and Super Mario Bros., as well as the critically acclaimed adventure game The Legend of Zelda, the company was interested in entering a different genre. They began work on an action game. The game was called Metroid. Nintendo released Metroid for the Family Computer Disk System on August 6, 1986, and on the Nintendo Entertainment System one year later. Kid Icarus was developed alongside as its sister game, as it shares elements and programmers with Metroid. The game was produced by the same man who produced Metroid, Gunpei Yokoi, who previously produced Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior (1982) and the original Mario Bros. (1983), and it featured music written by Hirokazu Tanaka, who also composed for Duck Hunt (1984).

After the release of its handheld sequel, Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, the series received no new installments for two decades. During 1990s, a different gaming magazine claimed another project named Kid Icarus: Angel Land Story, sometimes called Super Kid Icarus, to exist in-work for Super NES though it is unknown if the source is real or not. An installment for the Nintendo 64 was rumored to be in development, but was never released. During early 2000s, Capcom moved their resources to redo Dead Phoenix into new untitled Icarus game, to debut on GameCube. A series revival was planned for Wii, developed by Factor 5, but this appearance eventually led to cancellation. During the E3 event in 2010, Nintendo unveiled Kid Icarus: Uprising for the Nintendo 3DS, the first game in the series since 1991.