Development began in 2009, but faced multiple difficulties, such as lack of access to the hardware in its early stages, balancing its many elements, and issues with its control scheme.

Since release, Uprising has sold over a million copies worldwide and received mainly positive reviews; praise was given to the story, characters, dialogue, graphics, music, and gameplay, although the control scheme was frequently criticized.

Once on the ground, players control Pit as he traverses through the level, which features more open spaces and hidden areas unlocked when playing on certain difficulties.

[1][5] Kid Icarus: Uprising takes place in a world loosely based on Greek mythology, and is set twenty-five years after the events of the first game.

During his missions, Pit fights Medusa's servant Twinbellows, defeats her commander Dark Lord Gaol with the help of a human mercenary named Magnus, then confronts the Goddess of Calamity Pandora so as to destroy the Mirror of Truth.

Pit and Palutena work against both Viridi and Hades, during the course of which a military base called the Lunar Sanctum is destroyed, releasing an unknown creature.

Launching a fresh assault, Pit succeeds in injuring Hades, but the Great Sacred Treasure is badly damaged, leaving only its cannon intact.

After completing work on Super Smash Bros. Brawl for the Wii, Masahiro Sakurai was taken out for a meal by Nintendo's then-president Satoru Iwata in July 2008.

On his way home, Sakurai was faced with both ideas and problems: Sora Ltd., which had developed Super Smash Bros. Brawl, had been drastically reduced in size as most of the game's staff had been either from other Nintendo teams or outsourced.

[11] With video game stories, Sakurai believes that developers lack an ability to balance story-based gameplay hindrances with the prerequisite of victory over enemies.

He also wanted the dialogue to mesh perfectly with the story and music: by writing the script himself, Sakurai was able to sidestep the necessity of explaining to another writer all the time.

This attitude, as observed by Sakurai, contrasted sharply with the weighty or grim character stories present in the greater majority of video games.

[8] During this period, to help design the game's settings and characters, Sakurai hired several outside illustrators to work on concept art: Toshio Noguchi, Akifumi Yamamoto and Masaki Hirooka.

[15] This hardware instability led to a protracted development cycle: in the event, the team managed to fully utilize the platform's capabilities, doing detailed work on how many enemies they could show on the screen at any one time.

[12] The original Kid Icarus was notorious for its high difficulty, but this was an aspect Sakurai wanted to adjust so that casual gamers could also enjoy Uprising.

For this reason, the Fiend's Cauldron was created as a user-controlled means of both setting difficulty and allowing players to challenge themselves by wagering resources against their performances.

[9] The addition of the AR Card game was based on Sakurai's wish to fully utilize the 3DS's planned features, and was inspired by the trophy viewing option from Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Their initial goal was to fully utilize the 3DS's processing power, which left little room for incorporation of elements such as the Circle Pad Pro, which was created fairly late in the game's own development cycle.

[13][20] The inclusion of a stand for the system to help players properly experience Uprising as part of the game's package was requested by the team from an early stage.

While similar touch-based aiming had been used for first-person shooters on the Nintendo DS, Sakurai was dissatisfied with the resulting experience, phrasing it as "like trying to steer with oars".

[9][19] The music was composed by a team consisting of Motoi Sakuraba, Yuzo Koshiro, Masafumi Takada, Noriyuki Iwadare, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Takahiro Nishi.

Sakuraba recalled that he needed to rewrite the opening theme multiple times after his first demo clashed with the footage he saw due to his not knowing much about the game's world.

Takada came on board when there was an ample amount of footage, but was shocked when he saw gameplay from the game's fifth chapter and tried to create suitable music within Sakurai's guidelines.

The theme for Dark Pit was composed by Western gun duels in mind, making heavy use of the acoustic guitar to give it a "Spanish flavor": multiple arrangements were created, including a version for use in multiplayer.

There were three shorts produced: the single-episode Medusa's Revenge by Studio 4°C, the two-part Palutena's Revolting Dinner by Shaft, and the three-part Thanatos Rising by Production I.G.

[12] The shorts were streamed in Japan, Europe, and North America through the 3DS's Nintendo Video service in the week prior to the game's release in each region.

[46] GameSpot's Ashton Raze said that Uprising was a fun game when it hit its stride, calling it "a deep and satisfying shooter" despite its issues with control and character movement.

[49] Neal Ronaghan of Nintendo World Report, while commenting on control issues, called Uprising an "amazing game" packed with content.

[48] Edge Magazine was positive overall, saying that fans of the original Kid Icarus would enjoy the game, praising the way it effectively combined elements from multiple genres.

[35] Upon being asked about a modern adaptation for the Nintendo Switch, he once again denied any possibilities, stating that it was difficult on a human resources level to maintain the development team as they were an ad hoc studio.