Kid Icarus: Uprising

Kid Icarus: Uprising is a third-person shooter video game developed by Project Sora and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 3DS. Released worldwide in March 2012, it is the third installment in the Kid Icarus franchise, the first to be released since Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters in 1991, and the first worldwide release since the original NES game in 1986. It is also the only video game Project Sora made before shutting down in mid-2012.

Kid Icarus: Uprising takes place in a setting based loosely around Greek mythology. The main protagonist is the angel Pit, servant to the Goddess of Light, Palutena. When the Goddess of Darkness Medusa returns to destroy humanity, Pit goes on missions first against her, then against the forces of Hades, the Lord of the Underworld and the source behind Medusa's return. During gameplay, the player controls Pit during airborne rail shooter segments and ground-based third-person shooter segments. In addition to the single-player campaign, various collectable and unlockable items can be obtained, and several multiplayer modes are available for up to six players.

Masahiro Sakurai created Uprising after receiving a request from Satoru Iwata to create a launch title for the then in-development Nintendo 3DS. 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. Sakurai was responsible for writing the story, which retained the lighthearted tone of the first Kid Icarus game while having uninterrupted gameplay. A team of composers worked on the music, including Motoi Sakuraba, Yuzo Koshiro, and Yasunori Mitsuda.

Since release, Uprising has sold over a million copies worldwide and received mainly positive reviews; praise was given to the story, characters, graphics, music, and gameplay, although the control scheme was frequently criticized. Elements from the game are prominently featured in the Super Smash Bros. series from its fourth installment onwards.

## Gameplay

Kid Icarus: Uprising is a third-person shooter where players control of the angel Pit during his missions for Palutena, the Goddess of Light. Gameplay is divided into aerial-based rail shooter segments and ground-based segments that feature both linear paths and free-roaming areas. The game's difficulty, or Intensity, is determined by betting hearts in the Fiend's Cauldron before beginning each mission. The difficulty ranges from the very easy "0.0" to the highly difficult "9.0". Pit's combat abilities are divided between long-range attacks using gun-like weapons, and close-quarters melee attacks. During missions, defeating enemies grants the player hearts, the game's currency, which is used to increase difficulty by laying bets against the player's own performance. As the game progresses, Pit gains access to weapons separated into nine types, each with unique advantages and disadvantages: bows, bracer-like claws, blades (a combination of a sword and a gun), clubs, orbitars (twin orbs hovering near Pit), staffs, arms (a weapon that fits around his wrist), palms (magical tattoos covering Pit's arm), and cannons. Once equipped, weapons can be tested in the game's Practice Range. Using the 3DS' StreetPass network, players can share weapons with other players in the form of Weapon Gems. Other players can pay hearts to convert the gem into a weapon. Hearts can be spent to upgrade weapons or fuse Weapon Gems, and gained by dismantling unwanted weapons or converting Weapon Gems.

Each chapter begins with an aerial battle, consisting of an on-rails shooter segment, with Pit being guided along a predetermined path. During these stages, the player moves Pit with the Circle Pad, aims with either the 3DS' stylus or face buttons, and fires with the L button. Not firing for a time allows the player to fire a powerful Charge Shot, which kills several enemies at once. 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. Pit can either shoot enemies from a distance or attack them up close with melee attacks, while also performing various moves to dodge enemy attacks. The main controls are carried over from aerial segments, but their assigned actions alter slightly. When an enemy strikes Pit, his health bar is depleted, and can be replenished with items scattered throughout levels. If sufficiently damaged, the health bar vanishes and Crisis Mode is activated: this will either end naturally or ended by fully replenishing health with a "Drink of the Gods" item. If Pit is defeated, the player is given the option to continue, but some Hearts are lost from the Fiend's Cauldron and the difficulty is lowered. Completing a level without dying grants additional rewards. In ground-based levels, Pit can take control of various vehicles for short stretches, gaining special attacks unique to each vehicle type. Each stage ends in a ground-based boss battle. Pit has the ability to sprint during ground-based gameplay, but sprinting for too long uses up his stamina and leaves him vulnerable to attack.

Uprising supports both local and online multiplayer. Along with the game's single-player story mode, the game also features multiplayer for up to six players locally or via Wi-Fi. Players can compete in team-based cooperative matches or free-for-all melees using standard fighter characters. In the team-based mode, named Light vs. Dark, each team has a health meter that depletes when a player is defeated. The value of the player's weapon determines how far the meter depletes after death, and the player whose death depletes the meter completely will become their team's angel, a more powerful character who represents the team. The match ends when the other team's angel is defeated. In addition to normal ways of playing, Uprising comes bundled with a 3DS stand for the platform for ease of play. Augmented Reality (AR) Cards are collectible and can be used as part of a card contest. Using the 3DS' outer camera, the AR Cards produce "Idols" (representations of characters from Uprising): by lining up the back edges of two AR Cards and selecting the "Fight" option, Idols appear from the cards and battle each other, with the winner being determined by its statistics.

## Synopsis

Twenty-five years after the first game, the Goddess of Darkness, Medusa, mysteriously resurrects and sets out to conquer the world. In response, Palutena sends Pit on missions to destroy Medusa's forces, and he fights her returning commanders Twinbellows, Hewdraw, Pandora, and Thanatos, as well as the new commander Dark Lord Gaol with help from a human mercenary named Magnus. In the battle with her, Pandora uses a magical mirror that spawns a doppelgänger of Pit called Dark Pit, intending to use him as a slave. However, because Pit destroys the mirror before he could be completed, Dark Pit turns against Pandora, steals her powers from her corpse, and vows to kill the gods to stop the conflict, as well as Pit in the belief he is the original. After briefly tailing him, Pit eventually gains the key to the Underworld from the defeated Thanatos, then retrieves the Three Sacred Treasures from space and travels to the Underworld, where he kills Medusa with Dark Pit's assistance.

As the credits roll, it is revealed that Medusa was a resurrected puppet of Hades, the ruler of the Underworld who has been using the war to harvest the souls of humans and turn them into monsters to build his army. He spreads a rumor about a wish-granting seed guarded by a Phoenix, turning humanity against each other and prompting Viridi, the Goddess of Nature, to intervene;. Angered by both sides' desecration of Earth, Viridi and her army, the Forces of Nature, drop nuclear weapons called Reset Bombs that create artificial forests. This forces Pit and Palutena to focus on Viridi, destroying the Reset Bombs' depot and defeating her commanders, Arlon and Phosphora.

Before Pit and Palutena can defeat Viridi, the deities' ongoing battles prompt a hive mind alien race called the Aurum to invade Earth for its resources. With assistance from the sun god, Pyrrhon, Pit and the deities reluctantly unite against the threat, but in the final battle against the Aurum Brain, Pyrrhon betrays the deities and attempts to gain power by taking over the Aurum Brain, but is taken over himself. Viridi saves Pit, who defeats the Aurum Brain, and Pyrrhon takes them away from Earth.

Though peace is briefly restored, Pit wakes up three years later in the form of a ring, and after reclaiming his body with help from Magnus, he learns that, in his battle with Arlon, an insectoid monster called the Chaos Kin from another dimension escaped. The Chaos Kin devours others' souls to puppeteer them; its latest victim is Palutena, who, under its control, incapacitated Pit and sent her army against humanity, bringing them to the brink of extinction. Pit is forced to ally with a somewhat-reformed Viridi to save Palutena and humanity, but is unable to reach her temple since it is guarded by a forcefield. He claims the Lightning Chariot to break through the barrier and infiltrates the temple. He frees Palutena of the Chaos Kin, but it steals her soul and turns her to stone. Pit and Viridi follow the Chaos Kin into its dimension, and with the aid of Dark Pit, who has discovered he and Pit have a symbiotic relationship, they kill the Chaos Kin and restore Palutena. However, the Chaos Kin makes a desperate strike against Dark Pit, and Pit overuses his Power of Flight to save him, burning his wings and leaving him on the brink of death. To save him, Palutena and Viridi direct Dark Pit to a fountain called the Rewind Spring, where his wings can be restored. Pandora, who has been hiding in Dark Pit's wings, uses the Spring to reclaim her body but is defeated by Dark Pit, who revives Pit but loses Pandora's powers.

Pit attempts to destroy Hades with the Three Sacred Treasures, but Hades easily destroys them and consumes him. After escaping from Hades' insides, Palutena guides Pit to the home of Dyntos, God of the Forge, who fashions a mecha called the Great Sacred Treasure after Pit proves himself worthy in three trials. Pit succeeds in injuring Hades, but the Great Sacred Treasure is badly damaged, leaving only its cannon intact. Hades attempts to launch a massive attack on Pit and a nearby town, but Medusa, whom Hades revived again, sacrifices herself to create an opening. With Palutena's and Viridi's help, Pit uses the cannon to vaporize Hades and save humanity. As he and Dark Pit celebrate among the townspeople, he manages to talk Viridi down from another attack. If the player waits five minutes after the credits end, a disembodied Hades speaks to the player, pretending to delete their save data and postulating that he will return for the next sequel in another twenty-five years.

## Development

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. During their meal, Iwata asked Sakurai to develop a launch title for the Nintendo 3DS. The platform was still in early development at the time, with Sakurai being the first person outside of the company to learn of its existence. 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. While he had the option of creating an easy-to-develop port for the system, Sakurai decided to create a game around the third-person shooter genre, which was unpopular in Japan yet seemed suited to the planned 3D effects of the 3DS. At this point, the project was still an original game. In later conversations with Iwata, Sakurai decided to use an existing Nintendo IP as the game's basis. This was inspired by feedback received from players of Super Smash Bros. Brawl that many members of its character roster had not been in an original game for some time. After a positive response from Iwata at the suggestion, Sakurai ran through the possible franchises. One of the franchises under consideration by Sakurai was Star Fox, but he felt that there were some restrictions in implementing the planned gameplay features within the Star Fox setting. He ultimately decided to use Kid Icarus due to its long absence from the gaming market and continued popularity in the West. He also decided upon him due to his involvement with the character through Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Once he had chosen a possible series, he conceived the basic sequence of five-minute aerial segments, ground-based combat, and bosses at the end of chapters. After submitting his plan, Sakurai was given the go-ahead to develop the game. Uprising was the first Kid Icarus game to be developed since the Western-exclusive 1991 Game Boy title Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, and the first to be planned for Japan since the original Kid Icarus in 1986.

Sakurai took responsibility for writing the game's story and script himself. With video game stories, Sakurai believes that developers lack an ability to balance story-based gameplay hindrances with the prerequisite of victory over enemies. To this end, he was obsessed with striking that balance with Uprising, and so wrote the entire story script himself. He did this so he could write a story that "jibed" with the flow and style of gameplay. The characters' roles and personalities were shaped by their roles in the game and the game structure itself. 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 also made fine tuning much easier for him. While retaining the first game's Greek mythic influences, the mythology itself had no direct influence on the story of Uprising. Sakurai also wanted to make sure that the game's Greek influence did not stray in the same direction as the God of War series. For the main story, Sakurai avoided portraying a simple good versus evil situation; instead, he had the various factions coming into conflict due to clashing views rather than openly malicious intentions, with their overlapping conflicts creating escalating levels of chaos for players to experience. Rather than relying on standalone cutscenes, the majority of story dialogue was incorporated into gameplay. What cutscenes there were, were made as short as possible. Events after Chapter 6 were deliberately kept secret during the run-up to release so players would be taken by surprise by what they experienced. The character of Palutena, a damsel in distress in the original game, was reworked as Pit's partner and support. The original idea was for Pit to have a mascot character as his support, but was abandoned in favor of Palutena. Pit and Palutena's dialogue was influenced by the traditions of Japanese double acts. Dark Pit was written as a mirror image of Pit rather than an evil twin. A key element was retaining the humorous elements from the first game, such as anachronistic elements and silly enemy designs. This attitude, as observed by Sakurai, contrasted sharply with the weighty or grim character stories present in the greater majority of video games. The story was originally three chapters longer than the final version, but these additional parts needed to be cut during early development.

### Design

In November 2008, after Sakurai was given the go-ahead to develop Uprising, he rented out an office in Takadanobaba, a district of Tokyo. At this stage, due to the game's platform still being in early development, there were no development tools available for Sakurai to use. Between November and March 2009, Sakurai finalized his vision for the game. 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. The art style was inspired by manga. In January 2009, development studio Project Sora was established for Uprising's development. At its inception, it had a staff of 30. With the start of active recruitment in March, the game officially entered development: at the time, it was the very first game to be in development for the new platform. During this early stage, due to the lack of platform specific development tools, the team were developing the game on Wii hardware and personal computers. The changing specifications of the developing hardware resulted in multiple features undergoing major revisions. 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. Debugging also took a long time due to the size and variability of gameplay built into Uprising.

From the start, Uprising was meant to be distinct from the original Kid Icarus: while Kid Icarus was a platformer featuring horizontal and vertical movement from a side-scrolling perspective, Uprising shifted to being a fully 3D third-person shooter divided between airborne and ground-based segments in each chapter. Much of the game's depth and scale came from Sakurai's own game design philosophy, along with the inclusion of various weapon types that opened up different strategic options. The number of weapons available in-game was decided from an early stage, as Sakurai wanted solid goals for the development team so development would go smoothly. 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. The Fiend's Cauldron tied into the game's overall theme of "challenge". The game's difficulty was one of the three key elements decided upon by Sakurai, alongside the music and lighthearted storyline. 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. Due to the volume of cards produced, the team needed to create a special system based on a colorbit, an ID recognition code along the bottom edge of a card. After consideration, it was decided to have the "Idol" displays able to fight each other, with battles revolving around a stat-based rock paper scissors mechanic. It also provided a means for players to measure the strength of characters without directly connecting their consoles.

While the game featured fast-paced action and a high difficulty, its control scheme was designed to be relatively simple. This was because Sakurai had observed equivalent console games using all the buttons on a console's controller, creating a barrier for first-time players. To open up the game for newcomers while keeping gameplay depth, the team took the three basic controls and combined them with the game's structure. In later interviews, Sakurai said that the team had great difficulty properly incorporating the control scheme into the game. 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. Due to the lack of space, providing independent analogue controls for left-handed players was impossible. 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. A major element of the 3DS's design that influenced development was the touchscreen, used for aiming Pit's weapons. 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". With the 3DS's touchscreen, the team was able to create a more responsive experience similar to a computer mouse, creating the system of flicking the 3DS stylus to change camera and character direction. The team also attempted to tackle the ingrained problem of trying to move the character and camera while stereoscopic 3D was enabled. The multiplayer functionality was decided upon from an early stage, with the main focus being on balancing it with the single-playing campaign. The design for weapon usage was inspired by fighter choices in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, contrasting with weapon systems from other equivalent Western shooters.

### Music

The music was composed by a team consisting of Motoi Sakuraba, Yuzo Koshiro, Masafumi Takada, Noriyuki Iwadare, Yasunori Mitsuda, and Takahiro Nishi. Nishi served as music director, while orchestration was handled by Mitsuda and his studio assistant Natsumi Kameoka. Early in the game's development, Sakurai and Nishi were in discussions about what the style of Uprising's music would be, and which composers to hire for it. The composers were those who had contributed most prominently to Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The music involved both live orchestral music, synthesized tracks, and tracks that combined both musical styles. The air battle themes were created to match the dialogue and action on-screen, which was stated early on to be an important goal. Another aspect of the music, as noted by Koshiro, was that it should stand out while not interfering with dialogue. Sakuraba and Koshiro were brought in fairly early, and thus encountered difficulties with creating their music. 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.

Iwadare was asked to create memorable melodies, but found creating suitable tracks difficult as many of his initial pieces were thrown out. For Kameoka, recording the live orchestral segments proved a time-consuming and difficult business: each element of a track was recorded separately, then mixed into a single track, then each orchestral element needed to be adjusted for speed and tone so they lined up correctly. According to Mitsuda, the live recording of music spanned seven full sessions, estimated by him as being the largest-scale musical production for a video game to that date. He was entirely dedicated to orchestration and recording for four months. Mitsuda was tasked with creating the music for the game's 2010 reveal trailer, which he knew was an important task as it would have an international audience. He estimated that around 150 people in total worked on the score throughout its creation.

In separate commentary on selected tunes, Sakurai drew to particular tracks. Sakuraba's main theme was made notably different from earlier themes incorporated into the soundtrack, because he wanted Uprising to have an original theme to distinguish it from its predecessors: as it played in the main menu between missions, the team treated it as Palutena's theme tune. Koshiro composed "Magnus's Theme": the theme had two distinct versions based around the same motif, alongside incorporating one of Hirokazu Tanaka's original tracks for Kid Icarus. 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. Mitsuda was responsible for the "Boss Theme", and worked to make the music positive and encouraging as opposed to the more common "oppressive" boss tunes heard in games. Iwadare's "Space Pirate Theme", written for a faction of the Underworld Army, combined musical elements associated with both seafaring pirates and outer space. Iwadare also composed "Hades' Infernal Theme", which mixed choral, circus and "violent" elements to both symbolize Hades's contrasting attributes and distinguish him from Medusa.

Koshiro's track, "Wrath of the Reset Bomb", used the motif associated with Viridi, which would be reused in multiple tracks. According to Sakurai, it was only intended to be used in one level, but he liked it so much that he made it the theme for Viridi's Forces of Nature. A track that went through multiple redrafts was "Aurum Island", the theme associated with the titular alien invaders: while every attempt made to create a theme ended up as a "techno-pop song", the tune underwent multiple adjustments so it would not clash with the rest of the soundtrack while retaining its form. "Lightning Chariot Base", due to the size of the level, was designed so players would notice its presence without growing tired of it. "Practice Arena", the tune for the pre-multiplayer training area, was designed by Takada to have a light, analogue feel; it was originally composed for a different unspecified area, but it was decided that it fitted well with the build-up to a multiplayer match.

Selected music from the game was originally released in a promotional single CD by Club Nintendo. A limited 3-CD official soundtrack album, New Light Mythology: Palutena's Mirror Original Soundtrack, was released through Mitsuda's record label Sleigh Bells on 21 August 2012. The soundtrack received praise; Video Game Music Online writer Julius Acero gave it a perfect 5-star rating, calling it "the best modern Nintendo soundtrack, beating out the likes of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and even Super Smash Bros. Brawl". It also won the site's "Best Score award in the Eastern category". Patrick Gann, writing for Original Sound Version, called it an "epic musical score", praising the developers for bringing together the composers to create the score.

## Release

In 2009, Sakurai was working on a new game through Project Sora. Uprising was officially announced at Nintendo's E3 2010 conference immediately following the announcement of the Nintendo 3DS. In an interview closer to release, Sakurai said that he had misgivings about Uprising being shown off at gaming expos since 2010 while it was still in an unfinished state. The game suffered a delay that pushed its release into 2012, ultimately released worldwide in March. The game's box art was almost identical between its Japanese and English releases.

The English version of Uprising was handled by Nintendo of America's localization department, Nintendo Treehouse. Sakurai gave the localization team "a lot of leeway" for this part of development. Much of the original script's humor stemmed from the usage of Japanese conversational nuances, which would not have been organized properly into English. Because of this, adjustments needed to be made so that it was enjoyable for English speaking audiences. The video game references were taken almost directly from the Japanese dub, with some adjustments so they resonated with the Western market. As with other localizations, the team avoided topical references so the scripts would take on a timeless feel. The casting and recording director was Ginny McSwain. Three prominent English cast members were Antony Del Rio who voiced Pit and Dark Pit, Ali Hillis who voiced Palutena, and Hynden Walch who voiced Viridi. The majority of voice recording was done separately, but half of the dialogue between Pit and Palutena was recorded by the two actors together before scheduling conflicts forced them to record their lines separately, responding to either voice clips of the other actors or the director reading lines. The European version only included the English voices, as there was no room on the 3DS cartridge to include multiple voice tracks.

To promote the game, Nintendo collaborated with multiple Japanese animation studios to create animated shorts based on the world and characters of Uprising. 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. Sakurai supervised work on the animated shorts, but otherwise let the animators "do their own thing". 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. Limited packs of AR Cards were also produced by Nintendo in two series, including special packs featuring rare cards. Six random cards also came packaged with the game itself.

## Reception

Kid Icarus: Uprising received largely positive reviews from critics. On aggregate site Metacritic, the game scored 83/100 based on 75 critic reviews. Famitsu gave the game a perfect score of 40 points. In its review, the magazine praised the attention to detail, flexibility, and general gameplay balance. It also positively noted the game's dialogue. Marty Silva, writing for 1Up.com, said that there was "a never-ending litany of things to love" about Uprising. IGN's Richard George called Uprising "a fantastic game" despite its flaws. Simon Parkin of Eurogamer said that "Kid Icarus: Uprising is a strong, pretty game turned into an essential one by way of its surrounding infrastructure". 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. Neal Ronaghan of Nintendo World Report, while commenting on control issues, called Uprising an "amazing game" packed with content.

Nintendo Power gave a positive review to the game. Jeff Cork of Game Informer was more critical than other reviewers, saying that most other aspects of the game were let down badly by the control scheme. 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. Steve Hogarty of Official Nintendo Magazine recommended Uprising for hardcore gamers rather than casual gamers, saying that it felt deeper than equivalent home console games. Opinions were generally positive on the lighthearted story, in-game dialogue, graphics, several aspects of gameplay, and its multiplayer options. However, a unanimous criticism was the control scheme, which was variously described as difficult or potentially damaging to players' hands, while also creating issues with moving Pit. There were also negative comments about the game's linear structure.

During its first week on sale in Japan, Uprising reached the top of gaming charts with sales of 132,526 units. It also boosted sales of the 3DS to just over 67,000 from just under 26,000 the previous week. By April, the game remained in the top five best-selling games with over 205,000 units sold. Going into May, it was cited by Nintendo as a reason for increased profits, alongside other titles such as Fire Emblem Awakening. As of December 2012, Uprising had sold just over 316,000 copies in Japan, becoming the 28th best-selling game of the year. In North America, the game sold over 135,000 units, becoming one of the better-selling Nintendo products of the month. In the UK, the game came in seventh place in the all-format gaming charts. As of April 2013, the game has sold 1.18 million units, being the 10th best-selling title for the system at that time.

## Legacy

Despite speculation about a sequel for Uprising being developed, Masahiro Sakurai confirmed that there were no plans for a sequel to the game. 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. Uprising was the only game Project Sora ever produced; just four months after the game's release, the studio was closed with no explanation given for the closure, while Sakurai and Sora Ltd. were beginning work on the next entry in the Super Smash Bros. series. Pit returned from Super Smash Bros. Brawl as a playable character in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, now sporting his slightly updated redesign from Uprising, while fellow Kid Icarus characters Palutena and Dark Pit joined the roster as playable newcomers. The games' Classic Mode also incorporated a wager-based difficulty slider similar to the Fiend's Cauldron in Uprising, and an Easter egg called Palutena's Guidance can be triggered that mirrors the dialogue from the original game. All of these elements were retained in the 2018 follow up, Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch.

2012 video game

Multiplayer and single-player video games

Video games directed by Masahiro Sakurai


Hockey Hall of Fame

The Hockey Hall of Fame (French: Temple de la renommée du hockey) is a museum and hall of fame located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dedicated to the history of ice hockey, it holds exhibits about players, teams, National Hockey League (NHL) records, memorabilia and NHL trophies, including the Stanley Cup. Founded in Kingston, Ontario, the Hockey Hall of Fame was established in 1943 under the leadership of James T. Sutherland. The first class of honoured members was inducted in 1945, before the Hall of Fame had a permanent location. It moved to Toronto in 1958 after the NHL withdrew its support for the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario, due to funding issues. Its first permanent building opened at Exhibition Place in 1961. The hall was relocated in 1993, and is now in Downtown Toronto, inside Brookfield Place, and a historic Bank of Montreal building. The Hockey Hall of Fame has hosted International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) exhibits and the IIHF Hall of Fame since 1998.

An 18-person committee of players, coaches and others meets annually in June to select new honourees, who are inducted as players, builders or on-ice officials. In 2010, a subcategory was established for female players. The builders' category includes coaches, general managers, commentators, team owners and others who have helped build the game. Honoured members are inducted into the Hall of Fame in an annual ceremony held at the Hall of Fame building in November, which is followed by a special "Hockey Hall of Fame Game" between the Toronto Maple Leafs and a visiting team. As of 2022, 294 players (including nine women), 113 builders and 16 on-ice officials have been inducted into the Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame has been criticized for focusing mainly on players from the National Hockey League and largely ignoring players from other North American and international leagues.

## History

The Hockey Hall of Fame was established through the efforts of James T. Sutherland, a former president of the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (CAHA). Sutherland sought to establish it in Kingston, Ontario as he believed that the city was the birthplace of hockey. In 1943, the NHL and CAHA reached an agreement that a Hall of Fame would be established in Kingston. Originally called the "International Hockey Hall of Fame", its mandate was to honour great hockey players and to raise funds for a permanent location. The first nine "honoured members" (players Hobey Baker, Charlie Gardiner, Eddie Gerard, Frank McGee, Howie Morenz, Tommy Phillips, Harvey Pulford, Hod Stuart and Georges Vézina) were inducted on April 30, 1945, although the Hall of Fame still did not have a permanent home. The first board of governors included hockey executives Red Dutton, Art Ross, Frank Sargent, and Lester Patrick; and journalists Abbie Coo, Wes McKnight, Basil O'Meara, J. P. Fitzgerald, and W. A. Hewitt.

Kingston lost its most influential advocate as permanent site of the Hockey Hall of Fame when Sutherland died in 1955. By 1958, the Hockey Hall of Fame had still not raised sufficient funds to construct a permanent building in Kingston. Clarence Campbell, then President of the NHL, grew tired of waiting for the construction to begin and withdrew the NHL's support to situate the hall in Kingston. In January 1958, the NHL and the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) reached an agreement to establish a new Hall of Fame building in Toronto, and Frank J. Selke was named managing director of the project.

The temporary Hockey Hall of Fame opened as an exhibit within Canada's Sports Hall of Fame at Exhibition Place in August 1958, and 350,000 people visited it during the 1958 CNE fair. Due to the success of the exhibit, NHL and CNE decided that a permanent home in the Exhibition Place was needed. The NHL agreed to fully fund the building of the new facility on the grounds of Exhibition Place, and construction began in 1960.

The first permanent Hockey Hall of Fame, which shared a building with the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame, was opened on August 26, 1961, by Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker. Over 750,000 people visited the Hall in its inaugural year. Admission to the Hockey Hall of Fame was free until 1980, when the Hockey Hall of Fame facilities underwent expansion.

By 1986, the Hall of Fame was running out of room in its existing facilities and the board of directors decided that a new home was needed. The Hall vacated the Exhibition Place building in 1992, and its half was taken over by the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. (The building was eventually demolished; portion of its façade was preserved as an entrance to BMO Field stadium. Development of the new location in the BCE Place complex (now Brookfield Place), featuring the former Bank of Montreal at the corner of Yonge and Front Streets in Toronto, began soon after. The design was by Frank Darling and S. George Curry. The new Hockey Hall of Fame officially opened on June 18, 1993. The new location has 4,700 m2 (50,600 sq ft) of exhibition space, seven times larger than that of the old facility. The Hockey Hall of Fame now hosts more than 300,000 visitors each year.

## Operations and organization

The first curator of the new Hall of Fame was Bobby Hewitson. Following Hewitson's retirement in 1967, Lefty Reid was appointed to the position. Reid was curator of the Hockey Hall of Fame for the next 25 years, retiring in 1992. Following Reid's retirement, former NHL referee-in-chief Scotty Morrison, who was the president of the Hockey Hall of Fame since 1986, was appointed curator. Morrison supervised the relocation of the Hall of Fame and its exhibits. The current curator is Phil Pritchard.

The Hockey Hall of Fame is led by Lanny McDonald, Chairman of the Board, and Chief Executive Officer, Jeff Denomme. It is operated as a non-profit business called the "Hockey Hall of Fame and Museum" (HHFM), independent of the National Hockey League. The Hall of Fame was originally sponsored by the NHL and Hockey Canada and revenue is generated mainly through admissions.

## Exhibits

The Hockey Hall of Fame has 15 exhibit areas covering 60,000 square feet (5,600 m2). Visitors can view trophies, memorabilia and equipment worn by players during special games. The Esso Great Hall, described as "a Cathedral to the icons of Hockey", contains portraits and biographical information about every Hall of Fame honoured member. The centrepiece of the Great Hall is the Stanley Cup; for part of the year a replica is put on display when the presentation cup travels outside of the Hall of Fame. The original version of the Cup and the older rings, as well as all of the current National Hockey League trophies, are displayed in the bank vault, an alcove off the Great Hall. The Hall of Fame induction ceremony is annually held in the Great Hall.

The NHL Zone is a large area featuring displays relating to the NHL. Current teams and players are highlighted in the NHL Today area, while the NHL Retro displays include memorabilia and information about every NHL team past and present. The NHL Legends area features rotating exhibits focusing on honoured members; and NHL Milestones displays exhibits of noteworthy records including Darryl Sittler's ten-point game and Wayne Gretzky's all-time points record. The Stanley Cup dynasties exhibit features displays that include memorabilia from the rosters of nine teams considered to be dynasties because they dominated the NHL for several years at a time. This area also has a replica of the Montreal Canadiens' dressing room as it existed at the old Montreal Forum. The Panasonic Hometown Hockey section is dedicated to grassroots hockey in North America; it includes exhibits about various leagues and sections on women's and disabled hockey leagues. Special exhibits in the past included an exhibit in 2000 showcasing Gretzky memorabilia.

Interactive displays are featured in the NHLPA Be A Player Zone. At the Source For Sports Shoot Out, visitors take shots using real pucks at a computer simulation of goaltender Ed Belfour. Its counterpart, Lay's Shut Out, has visitors playing goaltender, blocking shots from computer simulations of players Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. The TSN/RDS Broadcast Zone provides a look at how hockey broadcasting works and allows users to record messages that may be displayed on both the Hockey Hall of Fame's website, and the TSN/RDS networks.

### World of Hockey Zone

While many of the Hall of Fame exhibits are dedicated to the NHL, there is a large section devoted to hockey leagues and players outside North America. On June 29, 1998, the World of Hockey Zone opened. It is a 6,000 square feet (600 m2) area dedicated to international hockey, including World and Olympic competition and contains profiles on all International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) member countries.

The IIHF agreed to transfer its exhibits from the International Hockey Hall of Fame in Kingston, Ontario, to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1998. The World of Hockey Zone is sponsored by Tissot. The zone includes the IIHF Hockey Hall of Fame honour roll, listing each inductee by country and year of enshrinement. Each national association member of the IIHF is represented in the collection of artifacts in the display, which includes many national team hockey jerseys. The World of Hockey also recognizes members of the Triple Gold Club, and displays memorabilia from the "Miracle on Ice" at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games. Other notable events included are the 1972 Summit Series, the men's and women's Ice Hockey World Championships, national-level hockey leagues in Europe, the Spengler Cup, the World Cup of Hockey, and the Canada Cup.

## Hall of Fame

### Selection process

As of 2009, new members can be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as players, builders or on-ice officials. The builders' category includes coaches, general managers, commentators, team owners and others who have helped build the game. The category for on-ice officials was added in 1961 and a "veteran player" category was established in 1988. The purpose of the category was to "provide a vehicle for players who may have been overlooked and whose chances for election would be limited when placed on the same ballot with contemporary players". Eleven players were inducted into that category, but in 2000, the Board of Directors eliminated it; the players who had been inducted under this category were merged into the player category.

Candidates for membership in the Hockey Hall of Fame are nominated by an 18-person selection committee. The committee includes Hockey Hall of Fame members, hockey personnel and media personalities associated with the game; the membership is representative of "areas throughout the world where hockey is popular", and includes at least one member who is knowledgeable about international hockey and one member who is knowledgeable about amateur hockey. Committee members are appointed by the Board of Directors to a three-year term. The terms of the committee members are staggered so that each year there are six newly appointed or reappointed members. As of November 2018, the selection committee includes: chairman John Davidson, James M. Gregory (Chairman Emeritus), and committee members David Branch, Brian Burke, Colin Campbell, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, Mark Chipman, Bob Clarke, Marc de Foy, Michael Farber, Ron Francis, Mike Gartner, Anders Hedberg, Jari Kurri, Igor Larionov, Pierre McGuire, Bob McKenzie, David Poile, and Luc Robitaille.

Each committee member is allowed to nominate one person in each category per year. Nominations must be submitted to the chairman of the board of directors by April 15 of the nomination year. The committee then meets in June where a series of secret ballot votes is held; any player with the support of 75% of the members of the committee present is inducted. If the maximum number of players does not receive 75% after the first round of voting, then run-off votes are held. Players with less than 50% are dropped from consideration for that year and voting continues until either the maximum number of inductees is reached or all remaining nominees receive between 50% and 75%. In any given year, a maximum of four players, two builders, and one on-ice official are inducted as members. Player and on-ice officials must have not participated in a professional or international game for a minimum of three years to be eligible for nomination. Builders may be "active or inactive".

The waiting period was waived for ten players deemed exceptionally notable; Dit Clapper (1947), Maurice Richard (1961), Ted Lindsay (1966), Red Kelly (1969), Terry Sawchuk (1971), Jean Béliveau (1972), Gordie Howe (1972), Bobby Orr (1979), Mario Lemieux (1997), and Wayne Gretzky (1999). Following Gretzky's induction, the Board of Directors determined that the waiting period would no longer be waived for any player except under "certain humanitarian circumstances". Three Hall of Fame members came out of retirement after their induction and resumed a career in the National League: Gordie Howe, Guy Lafleur and Mario Lemieux. Chris Pronger was inducted in 2015 while still technically an active player; in his case, he had signed a contract with the Philadelphia Flyers that was not due to expire until after the 2016–17 season. The Hall of Fame amended its by-laws by introducing the "three-year waiting period", which made Pronger eligible for induction because he had not played since 2011.

On March 31, 2009, the Hall of Fame announced new by-law additions which were implemented on January 1, 2010. Starting in 2010, male and female players are considered for induction separately and a maximum of two women can be inducted as players per year. The by-law also clarifies that a builder does not need to have been a coach, manager or executive to be inducted. Although they remain separate categories, the builders and on-ice officials are considered on the same ballot and a combined maximum of two can be inducted each year. The board of directors will now meet at least once every five years to consider potential changes to the limits.

There is also a category for "Media honourees". The Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award is awarded by the Professional Hockey Writers' Association to "distinguished members of the newspaper profession whose words have brought honour to journalism and to hockey". The Foster Hewitt Memorial Award is awarded by the NHL Broadcasters' Association to "members of the radio and television industry who made outstanding contributions to their profession and the game during their career in hockey broadcasting". The voting for both awards is conducted by their respective associations. While media honourees are not considered full inductees, they are still honoured with a display at the Hockey Hall of Fame. The ceremonies associated with these awards are held separately from the induction of the members of the Hall of Fame. Some of the award winners have also been inducted into the Hall of Fame as builders, including Foster Hewitt.

### Induction ceremony

The induction ceremony was held at the Hall of Fame from 1959 until 1974. In 1975, it was held at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto and would be held there until 1979. From 1980 to 1992, the ceremony was held at various different locations in Toronto, except for 1986, 1987 and 1991 when the ceremonies were held in Vancouver, Detroit and Ottawa respectively. Since 1993, it has been held at the current Hall of Fame building. The ceremony was first broadcast by The Sports Network in 1994. In 1999 the "Hockey Hall of Fame game" was established, a contest between the Toronto Maple Leafs and a visiting team, with a special ceremony honouring that year's inductees held before the game. Robert Tychkowski of the Edmonton Sun reports that many, including Edmonton Oilers president Kevin Lowe, believe the induction ceremony should be held on a night when there are no NHL games scheduled. This would allow a more representative portion of the hockey world to attend.

### Criticism

The Hall of Fame has been criticized for inducting several lacklustre candidates in the early 2000s decade due to "a shortage of true greatness". Since then, some have claimed that the Hall of Fame has become too exclusive. The Hall of Fame has also been criticized for failing to induct international players; critics re-emphasized, from 2005 to 2007, that the Hall has been far too focused on the National Hockey League, that it is more of an "NHL Hall of Fame" than a general Hockey Hall of Fame. Partially in response to these claims, the Hall of Fame has hosted International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) exhibits and the IIHF Hall of Fame since 1998, and announced that it would start looking at more international players for induction. While Vladislav Tretiak had been a notable inductee in 1999, Valeri Kharlamov was inducted in 2005, and is one of the few other modern-day inductees to never play in the NHL. The Hall of Fame has also been criticized for overlooking World Hockey Association players and overrepresenting the Original Six era from 1942 to 1967. For several years, the Hall of Fame was criticized for overlooking female hockey players before the Hall of Fame announced that women would be given separate consideration. In 2010, Angela James and Cammi Granato were the first women to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

One of the most discussed potential nominees is Paul Henderson, who scored the winning goal in the final moments of the deciding eighth game of the 1972 Summit Series between Canada and the Soviet Union. This is one of the best-known moments in hockey and Canadian sports history. While there is little question of the historical significance of that goal, Henderson's NHL statistics are not at a level comparable to those players usually selected for induction. His candidacy led to many debates among hockey fans and columnists.

### Controversy

#### Conn Smythe resignation

Conn Smythe served as the Hall's chairman for several years, but resigned in June 1971 when Harvey "Busher" Jackson was posthumously elected into the Hall. Smythe said that it made him sick to think of Jackson alongside such Toronto Maple Leafs players as "Apps, Primeau, Conacher, Clancy and Kennedy. If the standards are going to be lowered I'll get out as chairman of the board." Jackson was notorious for his off-ice lifestyle of drinking and broken marriages. Smythe would not condone the induction and even tried to block it because he considered Jackson a poor role model. Frank J. Selke, head of the selection committee, defended the selection on the belief that a man should not be shut out "because of the amount of beer he drank".

#### Gil Stein dispute

On March 30, 1993, it was announced that Gil Stein, who at the time had been president of the National Hockey League for nine months but had been bypassed for the new job of commissioner in favour of Gary Bettman, would be inducted into the Hall of Fame. There were immediate allegations that he had engineered his election through manipulation of the hall's board of directors. Due to these allegations, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman hired two independent lawyers, Arnold Burns and Yves Fortier, to lead an investigation. They concluded that Stein had "improperly manipulated the process" and "created the false appearance and illusion" that his nomination was the idea of Bruce McNall. They concluded that Stein pressured McNall to nominate him and had refused to withdraw his nomination when asked to do so by Bettman. There was a dispute over McNall's role and Stein was "categorical in stating that the idea was Mr. McNall's". They recommended that Stein's selection be overturned, but it was revealed Stein had decided to turn down the induction before their announcement.

#### Alan Eagleson resignation

In 1989, Alan Eagleson, a longtime executive director of the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA), was inducted as a builder. He resigned nine years later from the Hall after pleading guilty to mail fraud and embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NHLPA pension funds. His resignation came six days before a vote was scheduled to determine if he should be expelled from the Hall. Originally, the Hall of Fame was not going to become involved in the issue, but was forced to act when dozens of inductees, including Bobby Orr, Ted Lindsay and Brad Park, campaigned for Eagleson's expulsion, even threatening to renounce their membership if he was not removed. He became the first member of a sports hall of fame in North America to resign.

## See also

- Ford Performance Centre, home of Hockey Hall of Fame archive and research centre
- List of museums in Toronto

Ice hockey museum in Toronto, Canada


Gillian Welch

Gillian Howard Welch (/ˈɡɪliən ˈwɛltʃ/; born October 2, 1967) is an American singer-songwriter. She performs with her musical partner, guitarist David Rawlings. Their sparse and dark musical style, which combines elements of Appalachian music, bluegrass, country and Americana, is described by The New Yorker as "at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms."

Welch and Rawlings have collaborated on nine critically acclaimed albums, five released under her name, three released under Rawlings' name, and one under both of their names. Her 1996 debut, Revival, and the 2001 release Time (The Revelator), received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album. Her 2003 album, Soul Journey, introduced electric guitar, drums, and a more upbeat sound to their body of work. After a gap of eight years, she released a fifth studio album, The Harrow & the Harvest, in 2011, which was also nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album. In 2020, Welch and Rawlings released All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), which won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.

Welch was an associate producer and performed on two songs of the soundtrack of the Coen brothers 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a platinum album that won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2002. She also appeared in the film attempting to buy a Soggy Bottom Boys record. Welch, while not one of the principal actors, did sing and provide additional lyrics to the Sirens song "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby." In 2018 she and Rawlings wrote the song "When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs for Wings" for the Coens' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, for which they received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Welch has collaborated and recorded with Alison Krauss, Ryan Adams, Jay Farrar, Emmylou Harris, Mark Knopfler, the Decemberists, Sam Phillips, Conor Oberst, Ani DiFranco, Robyn Hitchcock, Barry Gibb and Molly Tuttle.

## Early life

Gillian Howard Welch was born on October 2, 1967 in New York City, and was adopted by Mitzie Welch (née Marilyn Cottle) and Ken Welch, comedy and music entertainers. Her biological mother was a freshman in college, and her father was a musician visiting New York City. Welch has speculated that her biological father could have been one of her favorite musicians, and she later discovered from her adoptive parents that he was a drummer. Alec Wilkinson of The New Yorker stated that "from an address they had been given, it appeared that her mother ... may have grown up in the mountains of North Carolina". When Welch was three, her adoptive parents moved to Los Angeles to write music for The Carol Burnett Show. They also appeared on The Tonight Show.

As a child, Welch was introduced to the music of American folk singers Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Carter Family. She performed folk songs with her peers at the Westland Elementary School in Los Angeles. Welch later attended Crossroads School, a high school in Santa Monica, California. While in high school, a local television program featured her as a student who "excelled at everything she did."

While a student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, Welch played bass in a goth band, and drums in a psychedelic surf band. In college, a roommate played an album by the bluegrass band The Stanley Brothers, and she had an epiphany:

> The first song came on and I just stood up and I kind of walked into the other room as if I was in a tractor beam and stood there in front of the stereo. It was just as powerful as the electric stuff, and it was songs I'd grown up singing. All of a sudden I'd found my music.

After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a degree in photography, Welch attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where she majored in songwriting. During her two years studying at Berklee, Welch gained confidence as a performer. Welch met her music partner David Rawlings at a successful audition for Berklee's only country band.

## Career

Upon finishing college in 1992, Welch moved to Nashville, Tennessee. She recalled, "I looked at my record collection and saw that all the music I loved had been made in Nashville—Bill Monroe, Dylan, the Stanley Brothers, Neil Young—so I moved there. Not ever thinking I was thirty years too late." Rawlings soon followed. In Nashville, after singing "Long Black Veil," the two first realized that their voices harmonized well and they started to perform as a duo. They never considered using a working name, so the duo were simply billed as "Gillian Welch." A year after moving to Nashville, Welch found a manager, Denise Stiff, who already managed Alison Krauss. Both Welch and Stiff ignored frequent advice that Welch should stop playing with Rawlings and join a band. They eventually signed a recording contract with Almo Sounds. Following a performance opening for Peter Rowan at the Station Inn, producer T-Bone Burnett expressed interest in recording an album. Burnett did not plan to disturb Welch's and Rawlings' preference for minimal instrumentation, and Welch agreed to take him on as a producer.

### Revival

For the recording sessions of Welch's debut, Revival, Burnett wanted to recapture the bare sound of Welch's live performance. Welch recalled, "That first week was really intense. It was just T-Bone, the engineer, and Dave and myself. We got so inside our little world. There was very little distance between our singing and playing. The sound was very immediate. It was so light and small." Later, they recorded several more songs and played with an expanded group of musicians; guitarist and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee James Burton, bassist Roy Huskey, Jr., and veteran session drummers Jim Keltner, and Buddy Harman.

The album was released in April 1996 to mostly positive reviews. Mark Deming of Allmusic called it a "superb debut" and wrote, "Welch's debts to artists of the past are obvious and clearly acknowledged, but there's a maturity, intelligence, and keen eye for detail in her songs you wouldn't expect from someone simply trying to ape the Carter Family." Bill Friskics-Warren of No Depression praised the album as "breathtakingly austere evocations of rural culture." The Arlington Heights, Illinois Daily Herald's Mark Guarino observed that Revival was "cheered and scrutinized as a staunch revivalist of Depression-era music only because her originals sounded so much like that era." He attributed this to the biblical imagery of the lyrics, Burnett's threadbare production, and the plainly-sung bleakness in Welch's vocals. Ann Powers of Rolling Stone gave Revival a lukewarm review and criticized Welch for not singing of her own experiences, and "manufacturing emotion." Robert Christgau echoed Powers: Welch "just doesn't have the voice, eye, or way with words to bring her simulation off."

The song, "Orphan Girl," from Revival has been covered by Emmylou Harris, Ann Wilson, Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine, Mindy Smith, Patty Griffin, Linda Ronstadt, Tim & Mollie O'Brien and Holly Williams.

Others who have recorded Welch's songs include Joan Baez, Grace Porter, Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile, Punch Brothers, Mike Gordon, Bright Eyes, Calexico, Ani DiFranco, The Decemberists, Karl Blau and Jim James.

Revival was nominated for the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, but lost to Bruce Springsteen's The Ghost of Tom Joad.

### Hell Among the Yearlings

The duo's 1998 Hell Among the Yearlings continued the rustic and dark themes; the songs' subject matter varies from a female character killing a rapist, a mining accident, a murder ballad, and an ode to morphine before death. Like Revival, Hell Among The Yearlings featured a sparse style that focused on Rawlings and Welch's voices and guitars.

The album also received favorable reviews. Robert Wilonsky of the Dallas Observer observed that Welch "inhabits a role so completely, the fiction separating character and audience disappears". Thom Owens (Allmusic) stated that the album "lacks some of the focus" of Revival, but is "a thoroughly satisfying second album" and proof that her debut was not a fluke. No Depression'''s Farnum Brown commended the live and "immediate feel" of the album, Welch's clawhammer banjo, and Rawlings' harmonies. Similar to Revival, Welch was praised for reflecting influences such as the Stanley Brothers, but still managing to create an original sound, while Chris Herrington from Minneapolis's City Pages criticized the songs' lack of authenticity. He wrote "Welch doesn't write folk songs; she writes folk songs about writing folk songs."

### O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Welch sang two songs and served as the associate producer for the Burnett-produced soundtrack to the 2000 film of the same name. She shared vocals with Alison Krauss on a rendition of the gospel song "I'll Fly Away." Dave McKenna of The Washington Post praised their version: the singers "soar together." Burnett and Welch wrote additional lyrics for the song "Didn't Leave Nobody but the Baby," sung by Welch, Emmylou Harris, and Krauss. The song is an elaboration of an old Mississippi tune discovered by Alan Lomax, and was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Country Collaboration with Vocals. The platinum album won the 2002 Grammy Award for Album of the Year. The surprise success of the soundtrack gave Welch a career boost. Welch also made a cameo appearance in the film.

### Time (The Revelator)

When Universal Music Group purchased Almo Sounds, Welch began her own independent label, Acony Records (named for the Appalachian wildflower, Acony Bell, subject of the song of that name on Revival). Rawlings produced the first release on Welch's new label, the 2001 album Time (The Revelator). All but one song on the album was recorded in the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville. "I Want To Sing That Rock and Roll" was recorded live at the Ryman Auditorium in the recording sessions for the concert film Down from the Mountain.

Welch has said the album is about American history, rock 'n' roll, and country music. There are songs about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the Titanic Disaster, John Henry, and Elvis Presley. Time continues Welch and Rawlings' style of mellow and sparse arrangements. Welch explained, "As opposed to being little tiny folk songs or traditional songs, they're really tiny rock songs. They're just performed in this acoustic setting. In our heads we went electric without changing instruments."

Time (The Revelator) received extensive critical praise, most of which focused on the evolution of lyrics from mountain ballads. For Michael Shannon Friedman of The Charleston Gazette, "Welch's soul-piercing, backwoods quaver has always been a treasure, but on this record her songwriting is absolutely stunning." Critics compare the last track, the 15-minute "I Dream a Highway", to classics by Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Zac Johnson of Allmusic described I Dream ... as akin to "sweetly dozing in the [river] current like Huck and Jim's Mississippi River afternoons". No Depression's Grant Alden wrote, "Welch and Rawlings have gathered ... fragments from across the rich history of American music and reset them as small, subtle jewels adorning their own keenly observed, carefully constructed language." Time finished thirteenth in the 2001 Village Voice Pazz & Jop music critic poll. Time (The Revelator) appeared in best of decade lists of Rolling Stone, Paste, Uncut, The Irish Times, and the Ottawa Citizen. The album was nominated for the 2002 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album, but lost to Bob Dylan's Love and Theft. Time peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Independent Album chart.

The Revelator Collection DVD was released in 2002. It featured live performances and music videos of songs from Time, and some covers. The concert footage was filmed in 2001, and the music videos included Welch and Rawlings performing three songs at RCA Studio B. No Depression's Barry Mazor praised the DVD as an accompaniment for Time, calling it "one last exclamation point on that memorable and important project."

### Soul Journey

For the 2003 release, Soul Journey, Welch and Rawlings explored new territory. Welch said: "I wanted to make it a happier record. Out of our four records, I thought this might be the one where you're driving down the road listening to it on a sunny summer day." Rawlings again produced the record. The album also reflected a change in the typically sparse instrumentation: Welch and Rawlings introduced a dobro, violin, electric bass and drums, and Welch later said, "Everything's not supposed to sound the same, you want it to reflect change and growth."

In three songs of Soul Journey, for the first time Welch and Rawlings recorded their own versions of traditional folk songs.

Soul Journey also garnered significant acclaim. John Harris of Mojo magazine described the album as "pretty much perfect", and Uncut's Barney Hoskyns favorably compared it to Bob Dylan and The Band's The Basement Tapes. Will Hermes of Entertainment Weekly wrote that Welch has "never sounded deeper, realer, or sexier." Soul Journey peaked at No. 107 on the Billboard charts, and reached No. 3 for Independent Albums.

### David Rawlings Projects

In addition to their work released under the name “Gillian Welch,” Welch and Rawlings have continued to build upon their partnership with several releases under Rawlings’ name. The Rawlings releases generally feature a larger string band and more lush arrangements than their “Gillian Welch” material, and have usually been released under the band name Dave Rawlings Machine. Andy Gill of The Independent described the band’s 2009 debut album A Friend of a Friend as "akin to one of Welch's albums, but with the balance of their harmonies swapped to favour Rawlings' voice". Welch co-wrote five of the songs with Rawlings, and provided guitar and harmony vocals. Although ostensibly Rawlings' first solo album, Alex Ramon of PopMatters noted the similarities to Welch albums. Paste Magazine's Stephen Deusner praised A Friend of a Friend for incorporating "a wide swath of traditional American music," comments echoed by Rolling Stone's Will Hermes and in the PopMatters piece.

On September 18, 2015, the duo released their second album under the band title Dave Rawlings Machine, Nashville Obsolete. The band includes Willie Watson, Paul Kowert, Brittany Haas, and occasionally includes Jordan Tice.

Released on August 11, 2017, Poor David’s Almanack was the first Welch/Rawlings collaboration to be released under the name David Rawlings, dropping the previous Dave Rawlings Machine moniker. The song “Cumberland Gap,” which features on the album, was nominated for the 2018 Grammy Award for Best American Roots Song. It was also utilized in the opening sequence of the 2019 Guy Richie film, The Gentlemen.

### The Harrow & the Harvest

In a 2007 feature in The Guardian, critic John Harris expressed frustration that there had not been a Gillian Welch release in four years. Creation Records founder Alan McGee showed optimism about Welch and Rawlings testing out some new songs while opening some concerts for Rilo Kiley, and wrote in a 2009 blog entry "the long gestation period signals nothing less than a perfect album". In 2009, Rawlings said that recording for the next Gillian Welch album has started, but did not give a release date.

The Harrow & the Harvest was released on June 28, 2011. Welch attributed the long time period between releases to dissatisfaction with the songs they were writing. She explained: "Our songcraft slipped and I really don't know why. It's not uncommon. It's something that happens to writers. It's the deepest frustration we have come through, hence the album title." The writing process involved "this endless back and forth between the two of us," Welch said, stating that "It's our most intertwined, co-authored, jointly-composed album."

The album received praise from publications such as The Los Angeles Times, Uncut, and Rolling Stone. Thom Jurek of Allmusic wrote that the album "is stunning for its intimacy, its lack of studio artifice, its warmth and its timeless, if hard won, songcraft".

The album peaked at No. 20 on the US Billboard 200 and No. 25 on the UK Albums Chart. It was nominated for a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, as well as Best Engineered Album.

### Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg

Boots No 1: The Official Revival Bootleg, was released on November 25, 2016. It received the status of 'universal acclaim', receiving a Metascore of 79, based upon eight critic reviews of the album. The album celebrates the 20th anniversary of Welch's debut album, Revival, and includes outtakes, alternate versions, and demos of the songs featured on the original, as well as eight new unreleased tracks.

### All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone)

In July 2020, Welch and Rawlings announced All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone), an album of covers and traditional songs recorded at their home during the COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020. All the Good Times is notably the first album in their decades-long history of collaboration to be released jointly in both of their names. The album won the 2021 Grammy Award for Best Folk Album.

## Musical style

Welch and Rawlings incorporate elements of early twentieth century music such as old time, classic country, gospel and traditional bluegrass with modern elements of rhythm and blues, rock 'n' roll, jazz, and punk rock. The New Yorker's Alec Wilkinson maintained their musical style is "not easily classified—it is at once innovative and obliquely reminiscent of past rural forms".

The instrumentation on their songs is usually a simple arrangement, with Welch and Rawlings accompanying their own vocals with acoustic guitars, banjos, or a mandolin. Welch plays rhythm guitar with a 1956 Gibson J-50 (or banjo), while Rawlings plays lead on a 1935 Epiphone Olympic Guitar. The New Yorker's Wilkinson described Rawlings as a "strikingly inventive guitarist" who plays solos that are "daring melodic leaps". A review in No Depression by Andy Moore observed that Rawlings "squeezes, strokes, chokes and does just about everything but blow into" his guitar.

### Themes

Many songs performed by Welch and Rawlings contain dark themes about social outcasts struggling against such elements as poverty, drug addiction, death, a disconnection from their family, and an unresponsive God. Despite Welch being the lead singer, several of these characters are male. Welch has commented, "To be commercial, everybody wants happy love songs. People would flat-out ask me, 'Don't you have any happy love songs?' Well, as a matter of fact, I don't. I've got songs about orphans and morphine addicts." To reflect these themes, Welch and Rawlings often employ a slow pace to their songs. Their tempo is compared to a "slow heartbeat", and Cowperthwait of Rolling Stone observed that their songs "can lull you into near-hypnosis and then make your jaw drop with one final revelation".

### Reception

Geoffrey Himes of The Washington Post described Welch as "one of the most interesting singer-songwriters of her generation". In 2003, Tom Kielty of The Boston Globe observed that she was "quietly establishing one of the most impressive catalogs in contemporary roots music", and a 2007 piece in The Guardian by John Harris called Welch "one of the decade's greatest talents". Critic Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "At every turn, she demonstrates a spark and commitment that should endear her to anyone from country and folk to pop and rock fans who appreciate imagination and heart."

When Welch's first two albums came out, critics questioned the authenticity of her music, as she was raised in Southern California, but performed Appalachian themed songs. For Revival, Welch was criticized for "manufacturing emotion", and a review of Hell Among the Yearlings by Chris Herrington of City Pages stated, "Welch is someone who discovered old-time music in college and decided that her own sheltered life could never be worth writing about", and that she is "completely devoid of individuality". Other critics rejected the notion that her background affects the authenticity of her music. Music critic Mark Kemp defended Welch in a New York Times piece:

> The first-person protagonist of Ms. Welch's song ("Caleb Meyer") may be a young girl from a time and place that Ms. Welch will never fully understand, but the feelings the singer expresses about rape, and the respect she displays for her chosen musical genre, are nothing if not poignantly authentic. Likewise, it matters not whether Ms. Welch has ever walked the streets of "the black dust towns of East Tennessee" about which she sings in "Miner's Refrain" because the sense of foreboding that she expresses for the men who once labored in coal mines with futile hopes of a better life comes through loud and clear.

The Wall Street Journal's Taylor Holliday echoed this: "Stingy critics give Ms. Welch a hard time because she's a California city girl, not an Appalachian coal miner's daughter. But as Lucinda or Emmylou might attest, love of the music is not a birthright, but an earned right. Listen to Ms. Welch yodel, in a tune about that no-good "gal" Morphine, and you know she's as mountain as they come."

On September 16, 2015, the duo was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award for Songwriting by the Americana Music Association.

### Influences and collaborations

Welch emphasizes music from a previous era as her major influence. She said that "by and large I listen to people who are dead. I'm really of the tried-and-true school. I let 50 years go by and see what's really relevant." Welch has acknowledged inspiration from several traditional country artists, including the Stanley Brothers, the Carter Family, the Louvin Brothers, and the Blue Sky Boys. She explained her relationship with traditional music by saying, "I've never tried to be traditional. It's been a springboard for me and I love it and revere it and would not be doing what I do without the music of the Monroe Brothers, the Stanley Brothers and the Carter Family. However, it was clear I was never going to be able to do exactly that; I'm a songwriter."

In addition to the strong country influence, Welch also draws on a repertoire of such rock 'n' roll artists as Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground. She has noted alternative rock bands Throwing Muses, Pixies and Camper Van Beethoven "don't directly inform my music, but they're in there." Her cover of Black Star by Radiohead became well-known and was released as a single in 2005.

Welch has recorded songs with a variety of notable artists, including Ryan Adams, Ani DiFranco, Emmylou Harris, Jay Farrar, Alison Krauss, Old Crow Medicine Show, Bright Eyes, Robyn Hitchcock, Steve Earle, Ralph Stanley, Sara Watkins, The Decemberists, Solomon Burke and Mark Knopfler. Welch and Rawlings' contributions on Hitchcock's album Spooked was described by Christopher Bahn of The A.V. Club as "subtle but vital". She later created the cover art for Hitchcock's 2014 album The Man Upstairs. Mark Deming of Allmusic wrote that their work on Ryan Adams' album Heartbreaker "brought out the best in Adams".

Artists who have recorded songs written by Welch include Jimmy Buffett, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Trisha Yearwood, Joan Baez, Brad Mehldau & Chris Thile, Allison Moorer, Emmylou Harris, Miranda Lambert, Madison Cunningham, Kathy Mattea and ZZ Top.

### Performances

Welch and Rawlings have played many music festivals, including The Newport Folk Festival, Coachella Festival, The Telluride Bluegrass Festival, The Cambridge Folk Festival, Bonnaroo, MerleFest, The Austin City Limits Festival, and Farm Aid. They have toured North America extensively, and have played in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Concert reviews have praised the chemistry between Welch and Rawlings on stage. Tizzy Asher of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote "there was a startling unspoken intimacy between them. They anticipated each other's movements and shifted when necessary to fit each other." On August 6, 2022, they performed on the Grand Ole Opry.

The Dave Rawlings Machine have toured North America, with the band originally composed of Rawlings, Welch and three members of Old Crow Medicine Show. The band is currently composed of Rawlings, Welch, Wilie Watson, Paul Kowert, and Brittany Haas. Welch and Rawlings also participate in group tours with notable musicians. In 2004, they were part of the Sweet Harmony Traveling Revue, a three-week US tour with Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller and Emmylou Harris. In 2009, The Dave Rawlings Machine joined Old Crow Medicine Show, the Felice Brothers and Justin Townes Earle for the Big Surprise Tour, a US tour described as a "roots-music extravaganza". In 2011, Welch was a support act for Buffalo Springfield, who reformed and toured that year.

## Discography

- Revival (1996)
- Hell Among the Yearlings (1998)
- Time (The Revelator) (2001)
- Soul Journey (2003)
- The Harrow & the Harvest (2011)
- All the Good Times (Are Past & Gone)'' (w/David Rawlings) (2020)

## Awards and nominations

American musician

Singer-songwriters from New York (state)

University of California, Santa Cruz alumni