Review - Kid Icarus: Uprising

The original Kid Icarus is an NES classic, sure, but playing it today is like pulling teeth. Its meandering pace, frustrating difficulty, and seemingly endless verticality are... well, let's just say there are quite literally hundreds of platformers more worthy of your time and efforts, many of them on the NES itself. But after 20 years and a playable inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Kid Icarus re-asserts itself as a franchise with Kid Icarus: Uprising. How does it hold up? Well, rest assured, it's loads better than the original, though it's not without it's share of problems either.

The Top Seven Gameboy Games That Should Be On the 3DS eShop

Alright, I promise this will be last 3DS focused list for a while but I figured I might as well cross all gaming options on the 3DS off so now I’m focusing on the Virtual Console. Nintendo really struck gold when they decided to enter the world of downloadable games by rereleasing many of their classics on the Wii’s Virtual Console service. However, as many gamers will tell you, Nintendo hasn’t exactly treated that service very well. It started out great but as time when on, less and less games were released. To this day, several big name Nintendo titles such as Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island and Earthbound have yet to see Virtual Console releases.

You all should download Balloon Kid.

This hasn’t stopped Nintendo from trying it again with the 3DS however but they’re going with sort of a different strategy this time. Instead of releasing several games a week every week, they’ve so far only been releasing one a week. While I’m sure many gamers aren’t okay with this, especially having to potentially wait for their favorites, but I personally think it’s a fine strategy. There’s tons of Gameboy and Gameboy Color games out there and releasing one a week is a good way to keep folks excited about what’s to come. Not to mention Nintendo has mentioned the possibility of releasing Gameboy Advance and Sega Game Gear games on the service in the future, so the Virtual Console on the 3DS is looking mighty bright right now.

So what I’m going to be counting down is the top seven games I want to see rereleased on the Virtual Console service for the 3DS. So far, a lot of the really great ones have been released like Super Mario Land 2, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and even some lesser known classics like Gargoyle’s Quest. But there’s still plenty left they can pick from. Now, I’m only going to be doing Gameboy and Gameboy Color games because so far that’s all the service has hit. This list is open to both Nintendo and third party developed games as both have been released so far. So without further delay, let’s get to it.

VGM of the Week #7

Back to me, huh? Well, last time I picked a song from Super Mario 3D Land, which was released that same day. This week, however, no major releases are coming out so I'm going with what could very well be my favorite piece of music ever in a video game.

Now, nobody can deny, Super Smash Bros. Brawl has the best soundtrack of all time. It's almost unfair, new and old compositions of over 300 songs from over 40 gaming franchises? It's insane. With all those tracks to choose from, you'd think my favorite would be from one of my all-time favorite game franchises like Mario or Pokémon but actually, no. One song blew me away more than any other; The Underworld from Kid Icarus.


This track is so catchy and upbeat, I can't help but love it. And when the drums kick in during the breakdown towards the end? It's soooooo good. Not to mention, it was composed by Shougo Sakai, who has worked on many other games such as Kirby Squeak Squad, Super Smash Bros. Melee and the entire Mother 3 soundtrack, as well as Hirokazu Tanaka, who worked on the original Kid Icarus soundtrack. It's a great tune from a great soundtrack and perhaps my very favorite of all time.