(Proceeds to fall back down half the level and die again.)
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I’m Really Bad At Not Jumping Into the Lava: Let’s Play Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters!
- Thread starter Beowulf
- Start date
(Proceeds to fall back down half the level and die again.)
Got a nice little chuckle out of this dialogue, thanks.
Is this game any good?
Is this game any good?
Backing up: Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters was a 1991 Game Boy game and a sequel to the 1986 NES game Kid Icarus. It does not, in fact, feature Icarus in any way. It follows the adventures of a soldier from Angel Land named Pit on a mission from the goddess Palutena. He’s trying to train enough to retrieve and use the three sacred treasures and then use them to defeat the demon Orcos. This is a mash-up of Greek and Roman mythology with pseudo-Christian concepts in the sort of way only Japanese developers can do.
This is one of the few Game Boy games that I owned as a kid that I haven’t covered in any way so far as part of the Beowulf’s Game Boy Youth series, because it deserved a full LP experience. Babywulf will be helping make this exciting for y’all.
Let’s have a look at the manual, shall we?
Just what are Orcos?
This is a very long game for the era, as evidenced by the fact it has a battery-save feature, which is unusual for a 1991 Game Boy game. There are four worlds, two where you climb vertically and two where you travel horizontally, and a maze-like fortress at the end of each.
Unlike the NES original, you can freely scroll in all directions, which means that scrolling the screen up and then falling back down doesn’t kill you. This is such a massive improvement, you don’t even know.
(In response to Mogri’s question, I don’t think it’s as difficult—the controls handle better, for one thing, and there’s less chance of stupid instant death.)
Babywulf encountered all of the basic items: Hearts are currency, hammers are used to break statues and secret walls, water of life in various vessels restores health. The other items figure more into the later stages of the game.
The new and exciting mechanic this game adds versus the original is grinding! You need to kill a certain number of enemies (and other requirements, but mostly that—I’ll go through the mechanics later) to prove your worth to Zeus. If you succeed, you’ll get extra life blocks at the end of stages and weapon upgrades in secret rooms. There are also challenge rooms where you need to destroy flying mirrors to win the special weapons. Depending on whether you’ve gotten enough upgrades by the end of World 3, you may not be able to use all three Sacred Treasures in the final world.
Babywulf also discovered a number of the special rooms. The Bat Chamber is a room full of bats.
Have I covered all of these secrets? We haven’t met the Eggplant Wizard yet, but we will.
The characters that run each of the rooms have names.
As do the monsters. In the first two stages we saw relatively few of these guys, as Snakes, Cyclops Skulls, Bats and the Grim Reaper are most of what you see until the first fortress; though the Spitball Blobs are memorable in that they’ll pop up en masse on certain platforms. Babywulf will make good use of them in the next entry.
It’s totally spoilers, but I’m putting the rest of the manual’s expose on monsters here, as well. But WHAT IS THE ORCOS?!?
FelixSH
(He/Him)
"Amazing Pit" is a pretty cool name. I want a job or something, where I get the title "Amazing" too.
Man, I miss manuals. This one is really fun to look through. Pit and Palutena look adorable, and the hint angel has this neat, grumpy look on his face. Like he isn't quite sure, if Pit can really, really make it.
Man, I miss manuals. This one is really fun to look through. Pit and Palutena look adorable, and the hint angel has this neat, grumpy look on his face. Like he isn't quite sure, if Pit can really, really make it.
(Dies to lava.)
I get the sense that this game is quite grindy...is it?
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I never played any of these but yeesh this sounds tough.
If I was him, I'd be skeptical too. Kid couldn't make it through the first area without dying in the lava half a dozen times.
For a platformer, sure, but that "grind to 999 hearts to make Zeus like me" sequence took less than five minutes. For those of us who had Final Fantasy Legend on our Game Boys this was nothing.
In terms of platforming and monster density, I'd put it harder than Super Mario Land 2 but easier than Kid Dracula. Also you functionally have infinite lives, because if you lose the 3 lives you get for each stage you just get knocked back to your last save...which was the beginning of that stage. You just lose whatever grinding/secrets you'd uncovered in the current stage so far, which can actually be a benefit if you went into one of Zeus's chambers and failed.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
Huh, I thought the zeus upgrades were in the original but maybe they just added them to the 3DS release?
So, if I’m properly documenting this play-through, let’s start with the opening crawl.
The code we’re using is the Game Genie code A75-8EB-B30, “Invincible against attacks by Galoob.”
Nintendo Power covered this, though far less thoroughly than I might have hoped. They only had maps for the first three stages.
Here’s stage one.
Stage 2.
And stage 3. Not very much of the game at all, really. Babywulf successfully hit all the upgrade rooms, so he’s in really good shape for this part of the game.
A Nintendo Power bonus: A Nestor’s Adventures comic based on this game!
Bat Rooms are actually pretty straightforward because there’s nothing you need them for. They’re just a pretty good place to grind for hearts because bats drop half-hearts (worth 5). Drop to the bottom, kill the bats down there, then move up and kill the others. Then leave, because there’s no other prize.
Treasure rooms seem like they’re randomized, but you might recall that the Game Boy doesn’t actually do randomization particularly well. You can actually get all 8 jars more than 50% of the time without using save states.
So, here’s the secret to the Treasure Chamber: The middle and bottom-middle pots are always safe, and you should always open them first. There are only 8 possible layouts, and depending on what you find in those first two pots you can narrow down the location of the God of Poverty either to one pot or a 50/50 chance.
If D and G are both Hearts, then the God of Poverty is either in B or C.
If D and G are both Hammers, then the God of Poverty is in H.
If D is a Heart and G is a Hammer, then the God of Poverty is in E.
If D is a Hammer and G is a Heart, then you need to shoot E third. If E is a Heart, then the God of Poverty is either in A or H. If E is a Hammer, then the God of Poverty is either in B or F.
If you manage to open the God of Poverty pot last, then it instead contains a prize, most often a Credit Card, which you can use for a free item at the Black Market. You can also get a Key or a bottle of Water of Life.
Life Blocks awarded at the end of stages are pretty straightforward, you just need a certain number of points (earned by killing monsters) for each upgrade. You’re shown this points total at the end of each stage. That said, while the “required points” number appears on several tip websites, I don’t think it’s accurate.
• 2 Life Blocks: 4350
• 3 Life Blocks: 9370 (Clearly wrong—Babywulf had more than this at the end of 1-3)
• 4 Life Blocks: 18900
• 5 Life Blocks: 28680
The Power Arrows and your ability to use the sacred treasure are determined by your secret points, which are different. I’ve never found anything online that actually cracks open how that system works, though the best theories I’ve found are that they include your regular points (so, kill lots of monsters) but also are related to collecting items and entering as many rooms as possible. Basically, grind for the life blocks and explore as thoroughly as you can, and you should be okay.
Well, the kid does have a point - why isn't the goddess fighting evil herself? Why does she need humans to do her bidding? Lol.
This does seem a little easier than the NES game. At least there is a save system for this one. The smaller screen and limited gameboy capabilities probably also puts a limit on the baddies attacking you, which at time seemed relentless in the NES game.
Jeez, does this game really have persistent debuffs that stop you from attacking? Why?
It's a holdover from the very difficult NES game, where it behaved exactly the same way.
Second quest of Legend of Zelda also had an enemy who would permanently disable your sword, but at least your tools still worked. (You could get it back, of course.)
Technically, you have an alternative: You can still use Hammers in eggplant form. They're limited and only do 1 damage (the arrows do more depending how many arrow rewards you've gotten from Zeus), but they are there.
But no argument, it's a terrible mechanic and it makes the eggplant wizards some of the worst enemies in the game. There's another really annoying one in the next section.
But no argument, it's a terrible mechanic and it makes the eggplant wizards some of the worst enemies in the game. There's another really annoying one in the next section.