Thursday, March 22, 2012

I'm Buying Kid Icarus: Uprising Tomorrow


One year ago, I made the decision to purchase a Nintendo 3DS. One of my concerns for the system out of the gate was the obvious lack of big name exclusive titles. When the system’s biggest launch title is a 3D port of Super Street Fighter IV, the concerns over the system’s future were more than justified. However, I was buying the 3DS based on the promise that bigger and better games would be releasing in the future. Specifically, I was buying the system at the time solely for one game. That game was Kid Icarus: Uprising.


I’m going to have to admit, I’ve never played either Kid Icarus games before. I’ve meant to, but I’ve just never got around to purchasing either of the games. Fortunately, I do have the Uprising pre-ordered, so I will be getting the 3D updated version of Kid Icarus. That way, I will have no excuse to not play the game.




Truth be told, I’ve been interested in Pit as a character. I’ve heard a lot of mostly positive things about the Kid Icarus games which often had me wondering why Nintendo hadn’t released a new game in so long. I love Nintendo, but I can only take so many Mario and Zelda games before I start wondering when we will see some new entries from their other game series (Star Tropics comes to mind). I guess I just like the idea of older series being brought back into the limelight.

That being said, I pretty darn excited when Nintendo revealed the first trailer for Kid Icarus back in E3 2010. I feel like the trailer was very well done on Nintendo’s part. It contained a buildup with some vague storyline segments followed by the big reveal of Pit flying through the air. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” That was the first thing Pit said in the trailer. And then people applauded. To me, this was a sign that Nintendo was willing to take a chance on characters outside of their super mainstream brand names. And holy cow is Nintendo is promoting this game to no end. They have released numerous trailers, given away free AR cards for Club Nintendo users, and offered a free download of the 3D version of the original Kid Icarus for the NES. I think it’s pretty safe to say that Nintendo wants this to be a smash hit.

You know what? I think the promotion is working. Nintendo has shown off a lot of impressive features of the game. I think the ability to tweak the game’s difficulty is a great idea. In addition, the concept of the multiplayer looks like it can be a lot of fun. But by far, the part I am looking forward to the most is the flying segments. They look amazing and I can’t wait to see what they look like in 3D.

With that said, I do have one major concern; the controls. Uprising uses a combination of the circle pad and touch screen to move and aim. As great as the game looks, this scheme looks like it can cause a lot of trouble for players. To make me more concerned, Nintendo is providing a playing stand with the game for free. I don’t know about you, but I’m not so sure I want to use a stand to play a handheld game. It appears that your enjoyment of the game will rely on how you can handle the game’s controls.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to handle said controls and enjoy Kid Icarus: Uprising when it comes out tomorrow. Either way, it is nice to see Nintendo give one of their lesser seen characters a chance to shine in the spotlight.




E3 2010 Reveal Trailer (Don’t worry; the new voices are better than these):



Medusa Trailer:

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