Kid Icarus

I’ve enjoyed plenty of games that are harder than “Kid Icarus” (limit the discussion to just NES titles and “Blaster Master” and “Contra” spring to mind). “Icarus”, however, is just hard enough on top of providing too little joy that continuing past the point where the difficulty curve inverts feels like a chore. I had to rely on game footage by other players to understand where this goes, and the consensus among what I’ve seen is “Icarus” eventually stops throwing new challenges at the player and recycles the parts they had to master to proceed. That’s not good game design.

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