Kid Icarus: Uprising

Kid Icarus: Uprising
Packaging artwork released for all territories
Developer(s)	Project Sora
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Director(s)	Masahiro Sakurai
Producer(s)	Yoshihiro Matsushima
Artist(s)	Toshio Noguchi Akifumi Yamamoto Masaki Hirooka
Writer(s)	Masahiro Sakurai[1]
Composer(s)	Motoi Sakuraba Yuzo Koshiro Masafumi Takada Noriyuki Iwadare Takahiro Nishi[2] Yasunori Mitsuda[3]
Series	Kid Icarus
Platform(s)	Nintendo 3DS
Release date(s)	JP 22 March 2012 NA/EU 23 March 2012[4][5] AUS 29 March 2012
Genre(s)	Third-person shooter, Rail shooter

Kid Icarus: Uprising (新・光神話 パルテナの鏡, Shin Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami, lit. "New Light Mythology: Palutena's Mirror")^[6][7][8] is a third-person shooter for the Nintendo 3DS video game system, developed by Project Sora and published by Nintendo.^[9] It is the third game in the Kid Icarus series and the first since 1991's Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters.^[9] It was released worldwide in March 2012.^[10]

The game is also compatible with Circle Pad Pro and is bundled with the Nintendo 3DS Stand accessory for every copy of the game. It was the first online-enabled title outside Japan to be officially recognized under the Nintendo Network brand and was re-released as a digital Nintendo eShop title on 31 October 2013 in Japan, on 7 November 2013 in North America, and on 9 April 2014 in Europe.

Gameplay

Players take control of Pit, who must protect the land from the evil Medusa.^[11][12] The game is controlled with the Circle Pad and stylus and has highly customisable options. The Circle Pad Pro peripheral is also supported for left-handed players.^[13] The game ships with a stand allowing the player to hold the 3DS in place.^[14] Each of the game's various chapters are split up into air and ground sections. Air sections are on-rail shooting segments, in which players must shoot flying enemies while dodging enemy attacks. Once on the ground, players have more control over Pit as he traverses through the level. Pit can either shoot enemies from a distance or attack them up close with melee attacks, while also performing various moves to dodge enemy attacks.^[13] As the game progresses, Pit earns several weapons of nine types- bows, claws, blades (a combination of a sword and a gun), clubs, orbitars (two objects that hover at Pit's shoulders), staffs, arms (a weapon that fits around Pit's wrist), palms (magical tattoos covering Pit's arm), and cannons, each with their own advantages and disadvantages.^[15] By collecting hearts from defeated enemies, players can bet these hearts to increase the 'intensity' of a chapter, increasing its difficulty. If the player successfully clears a chapter, they can earn rewards, such as new weapons, depending on the intensity settings, with higher intensity earning more powerful equipment.^[13][16]

Along with the game's single-player story mode, the game also features multiplayer for up to six players locally or via Wi-Fi. Players can compete in Team Deathmatches or Free-For-Alls using standard fighter characters. In the Team Deathmatch mode, named Light vs Dark, each team has a health meter that depletes when a player is defeated. The value of the player's weapon determines how far the meter depletes after death, and the player whose death depletes the meter completely will become their team's angel, a more powerful character who represents the team. The match ends when the other team's angel is defeated.^[13][17] The game also comes with Augmented Reality cards that can be used to play a battle minigame with the 3DS' augmented reality features.^[13]

Plot

Set 25 years after the events of Kid Icarus, the plot of Kid Icarus: Uprising follows the angelic protagonist Pit, as he battles against a reborn Medusa, Goddess of Darkness who seeks to destroy mankind. With the help of Palutena, Goddess of Light, Pit gains the "Power of Flight" to travel the skies and fight the Underworld Army, defeating Twinbellows.^[11] After Pit takes out Medusa's commander Dark Lord Gaol with the help of a human mercenary named Magnus, he battles Hewdraw before going after Pandora in the Labyrinth of Deceit to destroy her artifact called the Mirror of Truth, which creates copies of Underworld monsters. In the process, a doppelgänger of Pit named Dark Pit is created, but he operates according to his own free will, which is destroying both the Underworld Army and Pit. He absorbs Pandora's remains and becomes a wild card in the conflict. After giving an unsuccessful chase after him, Pit and Palutena resume their attack on Medusa and kill her last commander, Thanatos, with the help of Poseidon. After retrieving the Three Sacred Treasures from Space Pirates, Pit enters the Underworld and defeats Medusa. However, it turns out that Medusa was a fake leader revived by the true Lord of the Underworld: Hades.

Revealing that Medusa's actions were his doing, Hades intends to take the war to a grander stage by causing an all-out war among the nations of men with a red herring known as the Wish Seed. This results in a war among the gods as Pit finds himself fighting the forces of Viridi, the childlike Goddess of Nature, who intends to wipe out the "greedy" humans and restore natural order with her genocidal "Reset Bombs". Pit manages to defeat her commanders, Cragalanche the Mighty, Arlon the Serene, and Phosphora the Lightning Warrior, to halt Viridi's plans of further harming humans.

After Pit defeats all of Viridi's commanders, the massive-scale war of the gods causes a mysterious alien race called the Aurum to take notice and invade Earth for its resources. All three factions, along with the Sun God Pyrrhon, join forces against them. However, being well informed of their enemy and tired of their belittlement, Pyrrhon used the other gods to fuse himself with the Aurum Brain, the Aurum's Hive Mind, to surpass them all. Pit defeats the controlled Pyrrhon. In the end, with the Aurum Brain critically damaged, Pyrrhon uses the last of his strength to send the entire Aurum armada and himself to the other end of the Galaxy.

However, the Chaos Kin, a monster that was sealed in the Lunar Sanctum until accidentally released by Pit when he won the fight with Viridi's general Arlon and thus destroyed the Sanctum, takes control of Palutena and uses her to attack humanity. Meanwhile, Pit's soul is trapped inside a ring for three years before being reunited with his body with the help of Magnus. Pit ends up joining forces with Viridi as she sends him to the Hall of the Lightning Chariot, where Pit faces the Chariot Master in a chariot race. The Chariot Master sees Pit as an honorable warrior, and passes the Lightning Chariot needed to destroy the barrier around Skyworld and reach Palutena to him as a final action before dying. Pit takes the Lightning Chariot through a warp hole that brings him to Skyworld, where he successfully shatters the barrier and infiltrates Skyworld with the help of Viridi. He confronts Palutena, and seeing that she is not acting like herself at all, attacks the Chaos Kin controlling her every move. Though Pit succeeds in breaking the hold the Chaos Kin has over her, it takes Palutena's soul and escapes into the Chaos Vortex. Pit and Dark Pit team up to give chase and track down the Chaos Kin. While navigating through the Chaos Vortex, Dark Pit explains to Pit that he was in a coma for three years, hinting at an inherit connection between the two. They successfully track the Chaos Kin to an island in the Vortex and confront it in battle, finishing it off and restoring Palutena's soul. With its final bit of strength, the Chaos Kin clutches Dark Pit and dives into the nothingness. Pit dives after him, and begs Viridi to reactivate the Power of Flight. Viridi initially refuses, knowing full well that Pit is putting himself in mortal danger by overusing the power, but Pit demands to save his counterpart regardless of the consequences. She reluctantly does so, enabling Pit to save Dark Pit, but his wings are burned off and he hovers near death. Palutena, having been restored, is deeply saddened by Pit's heroic sacrifice.

Dark Pit then travels to the Underworld and seeks out the Rewind Spring, a spring of divine water that allows the user to turn back the effects of time. While heading there they learn of Hades' true intentions: Hades is using the souls of those lost in the conflict to create more monsters and enhance his power, but at the cost of upsetting the balance of life itself. Hades admits that he even devours excess souls to further fuel his powers, enraging Palutena, Viridi, and Dark Pit. Once at the Rewind Spring, Pandora escapes Dark Pit's body and throws herself into its waters, restoring her original body. Dark Pit defeats Pandora and restores Pit to life. Pit, now fully healed, makes an attempt to destroy Hades with the Three Sacred Treasures, but the attempt ends up getting the Treasures destroyed, and Pit swallowed by Hades. After destroying Hades' heart and escaping his body, Pit seeks out Dyntos, the God of the Forge, and endures his three trials to be granted the Great Sacred Treasure.

Making a final stand against Hades, Pit confronts the evil Lord in a tremendous battle. He manages to sufficiently injure Hades, but Hades turns the tide against Pit and destroys the Great Sacred Treasure in an ambush attack, leaving only its cannon intact. As Hades prepares to kill Pit, Medusa intervenes and distracts Hades long enough for Viridi and Palutena to activate the Power of Flight for Pit and charge the cannon of the Great Sacred Treasure with divine energy. Pit then unleashes the full power of the Great Sacred Treasure, vaporizing Hades and saving the world. In a post credits scene, Hades' disembodied voice is heard directly referring to the player- commending them on their victory, remarking that "the 8-bit Pit never would have made it this far" and that he can return within 25 years' time- referencing the gap between the release of Uprising and the original Kid Icarus.

Development

Kid Icarus: Uprising was developed by Nintendo's Project Sora development studio^[18] and built specifically for the Nintendo 3DS.^[11] According to the writer and director Masahiro Sakurai, the game was initially planned to be a Star Fox game: Only once Sakurai experienced the general gameplay did he determine that it would be suitable as Kid Icarus title.^[19] The game retains Pit and Palutena's new looks as introduced in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.^[20]

Release

The game has two soundtracks. The first one, entitled Kid Icarus Uprising Music Selection (新・光神話 パルテナの鏡 ミュージックセレクション, Shin Hikari Shinwa: Parutena no Kagami Myūjikku Serekushon) features twenty-five tracks that have been selected from the game.^[21] The original soundtrack however, holds all seventy-one tracks.^[22] The soundtrack was written by an all-star team of Motoi Sakuraba, Yuzo Koshiro, Masafumi Takada, Noriyuki Iwadare, Takahiro Nishi, and Yasunori Mitsuda.

To promote the game, Nintendo commissioned three Japanese animation studios to produce short stereoscopic animations based on the game, which were made viewable on the Nintendo 3DS' Nintendo Video service:

• Thanatos Rising (空飛ぶ木馬, Soratobu Mokuba, lit. Flying Trojan Horse) by Production I.G: Three-part short as Pit works to save a village from being attacked by Medusa's first in command: Thanatos, the God of Death.
• Medusa's Revenge (メデューサの逆襲, Medyūsa no Gyakushū) by Studio 4°C: A prologue to the game showing Medusa's rise to power and Palutena's pledge to stop her.
• Palutena's Revolting Dinner (おいかけて/おいかけられて, Oikakete / Oikakerarete, lit Chasing After / Being Chased) by Shaft: Two-part short in which Palutena accidentally unleashes a group of living vegetables all over Skyworld.

Reception

Upon release, Kid Icarus: Uprising has received positive reviews. Official Nintendo Magazine gave the game 91%^[32] while Famitsu gave it a perfect 40/40 score.^[27] Edge gave the game an 8 out of 10,^[25] and IGN gave it an 8.5, calling it a game full of superb action, stunning graphics and solid gameplay, though criticizing its control scheme.^[30] Eurogamer gave the game a 9 out of 10 and said that "Kid Icarus: Uprising is a strong, pretty game turned into an essential one by way of its surrounding infrastructure."^[26] Nintendo Power scored the game a 9.5 out of 10, praising its surprising story and controls, and saying that it "was well worth the wait".^[31] In contrast, Game Informer was more critical, giving the game a 7 out of 10 and stating that "Kid Icarus: Uprising is charming, and there’s plenty to see and do. It’s a shame that the very real threat of repetitive stress injury may keep some players from playing to the end."^[29]

Prior to release, Kid Icarus: Uprising was nominated for Best E3 Trailer by GameSpot at E3 2010.^[33] At the 2012 "Platinum Chalice Awards", the game won "best handheld game" chosen by the readers.^[34] The European site Gamereactor chose it as the best portable of 2012.^[35][36] The game sold 316,000 copies in Japan in 2012.^[37] As of 31 March 2013, the game has worldwide sales of 1.18 million units.^[38] Despite the positive reception, Sakurai said he is not intending to develop a sequel.^[39]

See also

• Kid Icarus
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl
• Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Super Smash Bros. for Wii U

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Kid Icarus: Uprising

• Official website