Super Kid Icarus, known in Japan as
A Mythology of Light: The Caduceus of Palthena, is the third game in the Kid Icarus series. It is a direct sequel to the NES
Kid Icarus, and the GameBoy
Kid Icarus: Of Myth and Monsters, which in this game is revealed to be a prequel to the first game.
The plot of the game is that Tanatos, the God of Death, has stolen Palutena's Caduceus, and is using it to revive the dead to serve as his army in order to liberate his master, Medusa. The game begins similarly to the first one, with Palutena captured, Medusa in power, and the Three Sacred Treasures separated. Many levels from the first game are recreated or reinterpreted, but played in a more traditional Metroid-style, with interconnecting screens and worlds instead of the first games level format.
The game features three big worlds to explore, Underworld, Overworld, and Skyworld, plus several shoot-em-up levels. The gameplay is similar to Super Metroid, where the player must traverse multiple large worlds, discovering Bow and Arrow power-ups, Health increases, secret rooms, and hot springs where the player can save and heal. The player can also find stores where they can buy maps to areas they haven't fully explored, item and health refills, extra lives, Kirby's Warpstar (which can teleport the player between shops), a demo of Super Metroid (that can be played at the title screen), and more.
In the shoot-em-up levels, Pit must defeat enough enemies, or score a high enough score, to proceed. If the best ending is unlocked, the player can choose any of the shoot-em-up levels to play on the file select. If all endings are unlocked, a secret bonus shoot-em-up level is unlocked, and if that is beaten, you unlock the ability to play the shoot-em-up levels again, this time as Samus' Gunship.
Marahiro Sakurai, better known for his work on Kirby with HAL Laboratory at the time, was asked to help out with the design and writing of the game. The game features several references to the Kirby series, as well as Metroid.
The game features five multiple endings, four of which depend on how much of the game is completed. The best ending (at 300% completion) has Pit turned into an adult by Palutena, who kisses him. The second-best ending (at 200% or more completion) has Pit return as a captain in Palutena's guard. The third-best ending (at 100% or more) has Pit guarding Palutena's throne room with a text crawl wondering if she'll ever return, implying she has either died, or disappeared. The worst ending (at less than 100% completion) has Skyworld in ruins, with the ending text asking if justice will ever rise again.
An alternate fifth ending has Pit betray Palutena for Medusa if he brings Palutena's Caduceus and the Letter of Evil with none of the Three Sacred Treasures collected to the final room of the game. There Pit is turned into an adult with black bat wings and kissed by Medusa as Palutena is trapped in a cage.
The game received good critical acclaim, and sold a respectable 750,000 copies by late 2000. A remake for the Game Boy Advance was planned for release in the Winter of 2005, and was mostly finished, but was canceled for unknown reasons. It was re-released in 2008 on the Nintendo Wii Virtual Console.
This was the other wikibox idea I mentioned that I had brewing for a long time in the
Tussle update, and what I meant by "it's not Metroid." But I got lazy again, and instead went to make the Kangaschan box instead (no offense Pit, baby Kanga is more cute). Either way, I got this done eventually. I've only played the original NES
Kid Icarus (via Virtual Console), not
Of Myths and Monsters or
Uprising, but I want to one day (and have seen
two LPs of Uprising, so I have a clue about the plot of that game... "plot" in quotations).
The source of the game box is
Pixiy on deviantart.