Kid Icarus NES

Kid Icarus, released in 1986, casts the angel Pit on a quest through the underworld to recover three sacred treasures and rescue the goddess Palutena from the Medusa-inspired Underworld army — a Greek-mythology setting that was unusual for Nintendo at the time, sitting somewhere between an action platformer and a vertically-climbing shooter.

Structurally it alternates between two very different modes: standard side-scrolling platforming stages, and vertically-scrolling “climbing” stages where Pit ascends a tower while the screen pushes upward regardless of position, punishing hesitation the same way a Metroid-style ceiling would. Hearts collected from enemies double as currency at shops between stages, buying upgraded bows, hearts, and other equipment — an RPG-adjacent system that wasn’t common in action platformers of the period.

It was directed by Satoru Okada and produced by the same R&D1 team behind Metroid, released the same year, and the two games share a family resemblance in pacing and difficulty even though their settings couldn’t be more different. Pit himself stayed dormant as a character for over two decades afterward, before his prominent return in Super Smash Bros. Brawl reintroduced him to a much wider audience.