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Monday, May 15, 2006

Of Myths and Monsters

Meg Horexjhxi — Meg! — wrote me with a reminder of a new bit that will be of interest to Nintendo die-hards like her and me.
You probably already heard this, given your capacity for arcane information, but Pit from Kid Icarus is going to appear as a playable character in the next version of Super Smash Bros. It's called "Brawl."
I realized when she wrote that this news is also of interest to Back of the Cereal Box readers, for
I think many don't understand the origins of this blog's address and my AIM screenname. You see, "Kid Icarus" is a wonderful side-scrolling game Metroid-esque I played when I was wee. And played. And played again. In fact, I can still hear the tinny, early 8-bit theme song in my head. It stars a winged little guy with a bow and arrow. His name is Pit and he is on a never-ending mission to defeat Medusa and rescue the fair goddess Palutena. (Much later in life, I found out that this name was a Japanese corruption of “Parentha,” which is one of the names of Athena. Go figure.) Anyway, the game combined my love of video games with Greek mythology, as Pit had to fight characters like Cerebus and such. A good, long-standing childhood memory.

Now Pit is being updated for the next entry in the “Smash Bros.” franchise, “Smash Bros. Brawl.” The game pits old and new Nintendo mascots against each other in hand-to-hand combat, for no real reason other than to make a fun game. And seeing Pit re-imagined for a high power system makes me happy.

Here's Pit as I remember him from my childhood:



And here he is, computer generated and looking much more like the hero of Greek legend he was supposed to be. That is, of course, Greek mythology by way of anime.



Small victories. You take what you can get. I honestly can wait to wail upon the likes of Mario, Pikachu and Princess Zelda with arrows of pointy justice.

2 comments:

  1. did you see the trailer for the SSB? It's so hilarious! You should check it out and you'll get what I'm talking about. "it's showtime!"

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  2. That pic would be far more accurate if he was falling helplessly to the cold, hard earth below after foolishly flying too close to the sun. Then again, that would make for a crappy game.

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