Built by the same Nintendo R&D1 team on the same engine as Metroid, and released alongside it, Kid Icarus (1986 in Japan, 1987 here) sent the little angel Pit on a punishing climb out of the Underworld to rescue Palutena.

The shared DNA with Metroid is obvious once you know to look for it: the same physics, the same door sounds, the same approach to a world built out of repeated tiles. What's different is the direction. Metroid scrolls sideways and lets you wander; Kid Icarus scrolls up, and it does not let the screen come back down. Drop below the bottom edge and you die, no matter how much health you have. Every jump in the first three stages is therefore a commitment, and the game's whole difficulty comes from that one rule.

The structure alternates between those vertical climbs and a fortress at the end of each world, which is a top-down maze full of locked rooms, and those play almost like a different game. Along the way there are hidden shops where a black-market merchant sells you arrows and health, training rooms that upgrade your bow, and treasure chambers you reach by finding the right door.

And there's the Eggplant Wizard, who fires a projectile that turns you into an eggplant with legs. You can't attack while you're an eggplant. The only cure is finding a hospital, and the fortress you're standing in may not have one.

The password system became a joke of its own, since the game accepts almost any string and the community traded rude ones for years alongside the useful ICARUS FIGHTS MEDUSA ANGELS.

Underneath the difficulty is a charming, weird Greek-myth world Nintendo mostly left dormant for decades. For those of us who pushed through, Pit earned his place in the pantheon.