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Sunday, September 28, 2008

Isn't It Gorgonic?

You doesn’t have to try too hard to prove that what early video games put in their instruction manuals didn’t always match up to what appeared on screen. Nonetheless, I was surprised at how very off-model Nintendo’s take on Medusa was when her appearance in Kid Icarus’s instruction manual is compared against what she looked like in the game.

As the concept art puts it:


And her two in-game sprites, neither of them approximate what the instruction manual promised:



The glaring, wall-sized face of death is how she first meeting the player. The swooning, toga-clad woman appears when Missus Big Face crumbles away. Maybe the instruction manual blended the two into one? Wall face or not, this two- or three- or ugly-faced woman is the first-ever female big bad in a Nintendo game, unless I’m mistaken.

There’s no big conclusion here — just a little thought that I had the time to post.

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