Nintendo is having quite the year so far. With The Super Mario Bros. Movie quickly becoming one of the highest-grossing console adaptations of all-time, the spotlight is back on the company that brought you well-known legacy franchises like Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and of course, the aforementioned brothers Mario.
For every Samus Aran, however, there’s a Pitt. Who’s Pitt? You probably know him (and his bow and arrow) from the Super Smash Bros. franchise as a real cute kid, but he made his debut in the ultra popular classic Kid Icarus, one of Nintendo’s gems that unfortunately petered out.
The truth is that Kid Icarus is one of quite a few Nintendo franchises that didn’t get the Zelda treatment with a new iteration every four years or so. Some of the games on this list do have a sequel, but there hasn’t been a new entry in over a decade or around that time. Let’s take a look at some missed opportunities for the video game company.
Kid Icarus
Like a lot of Nintendo characters, Pitt – from the game of the same name – appears in Super Smash Bros., but he made his first appearance in 1986 with the first iteration of the popular platformer/shooter hybrid. There are three games in the series with the latest one, Kid Icarus: Uprising, released in 2012.
The Kid Icarus story revolves around Greek mythology in a place called “Angel Land.” He can fly a little, has a bow and arrow and a few other attacks and he faces off against characters like Hades, Magnus, Dark Pit, Medusa, Pyrrhon, Pandora, Arlon and Poseidon.
A sequel came out in 1991 called Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters on the original Nintendo Game Boy. Like the game that came before it, it was a 2D side-scrolling platformer. In 2012, we got the excellent Kid Icarus: Uprising, which was a complete refresh for the series.
It eschewed the 2D playstyle of the previous games and brought Pitt into the modern era with 3D gameplay and a slew of new abilities. The game was actually very popular, sold well and was thought to get momentum back into the franchise. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. It’s the perfect time to revive the series considering it’s been more than ten years since Uprising. Come back to us Pitt!
F-Zero
We’re about at the 10-year-mark since we last saw a game in the very excellent F-Zero racing series. The first one came out in 1990 for the Super Nintendo and it featured a brand new technique called “Mode 7 Scrolling” to simulate 3D environments on the game.
It’s fast, fun, and features Super Smash Bros. mainstay Captain Falcon. It’s a classic that basically ushered in a new genre of racing games, and won a ton of accolades in the process. In 1998, we got F-Zero X, an upgrade in the truest sense of the word. It was the first one to have 3D graphics and featured new abilities like being able to attack other racers, and a random track generator called the “X Cup.”
In 2004, Nintendo released F-Zero Climax for the Game Boy Advance. Unfortunately, stateside players never got to play it because it was released exclusively in Japan. Perhaps it for the best because it didn’t get great reviews at the time, but what better reason to revive the franchise?
Startropics
Startropics is a classic game from a long lost 8-bit era. It came out in 1990, and is the rare Nintendo game only intended for an American release. The game centers around Mike Jones, a 15-year-old high school kid from Seattle who goes to see his uncle in a remote village and discovers he’s missing.
To find him, Jones must traverse through a tropical island, solving puzzles, killing bad guys with his yo-yo and launching a really cool submarine. It does have whiffs of Zelda, but ultimately it’s an original property from the gaming giant. Nintendo released a sequel for the game in 1994, right at the end of the original NES life cycle.
It was actually the second-to-last game released for the console (Wario’s Woods was the last one), and because of this maybe it didn’t get the attention it deserved. The sequel is bigger in every way, with more locales to visit in different time periods. Unlike the first, Mike can move in eight different directions as opposed to just jumping in four.
There’s so much to do with this franchise. It has a mountain of lore to pull from and would make for a great Uncharted-style adventure. Bring it back!
Golden Sun
The original Golden Sun for the Game Boy Advance came out in 2001, and it’s a bona fide classic. Seriously, if you ever get the chance to play it, do yourself a favor and do just that. The game is about a group of “adepts,” who can use magic and have to stop the dangerous power of alchemy.
The game’s bright graphical style and incredibly fun gameplay made it an instant classic, and a sequel called Golden Sun: The Lost Age was released in 2002. We didn’t hear anything about the game for a while until 2010, when Golden Sun: Dark Dawn was released for the Nintendo DS, which sold incredibly well in Japan.
Punch-Out!
Mike Tyson lent his name to a Nintendo game in 1987 called Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, and it became one of the most recognizable games of all-time. It starred a little guy named Mac as he tried to fight his way through the rankings of fighters until he faced the big man himself.
A sequel was released in 1994 called Super Punch-Out!!, and then another game came out in 2009 on the popular Wii system. There was a pretty cool arcade game as well that showed Mac in wireframe as he fought, with two “punching” controllers.
In 2009, we got a spin-off called Doc Louis’s Punch-Out!!, but it was only released exclusively to Club Nintendo Platinum members. This one is itching for a revival. We could even do a fun boxing simulator or an RPG style game with boxing matches a la Pokémon. Someone email Miyamoto!