Ice Climber
Ice Climber is a vertically-scrolling platformer. Built as an arcade action experience, the playfield always exists within the horizontal bounds of a single screen -- a single screen that scrolls up, a level at a time, as your climber climbs each mountain. Running to the left or right simply makes you appear again at the opposite edge, meaning there's no escape from your destiny. You are doomed to climb.
Ice Climber is another classic NES title for the Virtual Console — and thankfully, it's decent enough to be worth considering for download. Ice Climber is a fantastic little game, if somewhat basic. Graphically it's exactly what you'd expect an 8-bit game from 1985 to look like — simple.
The premise of the game is pretty bizarre. A giant condor has stolen your vegetables, and you've got to climb a mountain to get them back. In the single player game, you play as Popo, a boy armed with a hammer and an impressive jumping ability. You use your hammer to break through layers of ice and then jump to the next plane.
Millions of people have played as the Ice Climbers in Super Smash Bros. Melee, but very few have played the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System game where the duo got their start. Like most other games of its time, Ice Climber is simple but quite challenging. However, unlike many early NES games, it holds up well and is still a lot of fun.
Occasionally in video game history, a game proves that it is a prime time player in the current market that it continues to be a reminiscent focal point and oozes nostalgia. Unfortunately, though, Ice Climber really didn’t hit it home back during the third generation of gaming. Whether it was a lack of availability or lack of interest, the game didn’t fair well on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Despite its inherent flaws, however, it has managed to remain one of the many centre pieces for video game discussion, perhaps, in part, due to the main characters’ inclusion in the fighter blockbuster hit Super Smash Bros. Melee and later Super Smash Bros. Brawl. So, is Ice Climber a compelling game that has withstood the test of time? Let’s climb the icy mountain and examine this frigid game!
Ice Climber was released on 18 October, 1985 on the NES as a launch title in the US markets, and was created by the Nintendo R&D1 development team. Due to it being a launch title, I’m fairly confident that the reason why it didn’t do too well was because of it being a launch title. In addition, another game in the launch lineup proved it was a better game than all of the launch titles combined. Super Mario Bros. was the star of the lineup and, therefore, there was no way that Ice Climber could have competed for glory. I will say, though, it was a close third or even fourth in terms of greatness.
You know how the Ice Climbers aren’t exactly the best characters in Super Smash Brothers, but they’re still better than say, Pichu? Well, the same holds true for Ice Climber and all the other black box NES launch titles. It’s certainly not the best, but it’s far from the worst. At least here you don’t have to worry about getting falcon punched off the mountain then not having Nana around to jump back.
Ice Climber was one of the original 30 black box launch titles for the NES in 1985. The game features the ice climbers Popo and Nana, who are perhaps better known these days for their appearances in the Super Smash Brothers franchise. The extent of the story is this: a condor has stolen your vegetables and taken them to the top of a mountain. You must recover your vegetables or else face a slow, gruesome death of starving in the harsh polar climate (ok, that part isn’t in the manual). Sounds simple enough right?
It's a forlorn and frigid fate, as the platform surfaces get colder, slicker and more ice-encrusted as you progress toward each mountain's peak. That progress is made by force, with your hammer. You leap into the air, hammer held overhead, and break away a hole in the ceiling above you. Then, hole created, you jump through and make that ceiling your new floor. Rinse and repeat the process all the way to the top, avoiding or attacking enemies along the way with your mighty mallet.
It's a simple design, but a challenging one. Moving cloud platforms and conveyor belt surfaces, unbreakable sections of block and more conspire to make the going tougher the further you get, and there are 32 mountains to conquer altogether. Ice Climber's a game you can play and enjoy alone, but it's much more fun to play with a friend. In the two-player co-op mode, you and a pal play as both Popo and Nana simultaneously. You can either work together to both reach the top of each level, or you can compete for the peak -- jumping quickly up the mountain and forcing a screen scroll is a great way to kill off your too-slow friend, lagging behind on a lower level.
The stages consist of eight levels that scroll vertically as you progress from level to level, and if you fall where there's no platform, you die. The game starts off easy enough, but you quickly find yourself fending off such creatures as yetis and birds with your hammer, avoiding falling icicles, and jumping on moving clouds to advance to the bonus stage that lies atop each level. Once you reach the bonus stage, you're given 40 seconds to collect vegetables and make it to the top, where you then must jump and grab the talons of the condor that flies overhead.
The premise of the game is pretty bizarre. A giant condor has stolen your vegetables, and you've got to climb a mountain to get them back. In the single-player game, you play as Popo, a boy armed with a hammer and an impressive jumping ability. You'll use your hammer to break through layers of ice and then jump to the next plane. The stages consist of eight levels that scroll vertically as you progress from level to level, and if you fall where there's no platform, you die. The game starts off easy enough, but you'll quickly find yourself fending off such creatures as yetis and birds with your hammer, avoiding falling icicles, and jumping on moving clouds to advance to the bonus stage that lies atop each level. Once you reach the bonus stage, you're given 40 seconds to collect vegetables and make it to the top, where you then must jump and grab the talons of the condor that flies overhead. The game controls well with the Wii Remote, but the jumping can be frustrating because of the ease with which you can pass right through the ice if you don't jump far enough onto a ledge. The multiplayer game plays like the single-player, but there's a greater sense of urgency because you die if you get too far below the other climber.
Ice Climber isn't a great-looking game, but it certainly doesn't look bad when compared to other early NES games. Popo and Nana wear blue and pink parkas, respectively, and are fairly detailed. While the backgrounds aren't much of anything, the levels have a lot going on, and there's plenty of color variety. The sound effects aren't too hot, but the music is catchy and will be familiar to Super Smash Bros. Melee fans.
The gameplay in Ice Climber is a mixed bag of precipitation. The concept of the game is fairly straightforward. You ascend what is essentially a mountain by breaking ice chunks above you with a sledgehammer and jump up to continue your journey to the top. You reach a certain height and you’re given a timed bonus stage upon which you collect various fruits or vegetables which are later added to your score. In most games, the object of the game is to follow a compelling storyline and learn about the characters. However, in Ice Climber there’s not much in the way of story. The goal really is to get a high score and boast about it with your friends. Ice Climber supports two player co-op. Player One plays as the blue Eskimo named Popo while the second player plays as the pink Eskimo named Nana. You could add variables on your own to the gameplay with your friends to make it more challenging such as seeing who could break the least amount of blocks to get to the top, kill no monsters on your way up or even get the lowest score amongst your friends.
It’s not quite that simple though. Play takes place across 32 different mountains, each consisting of 8 layers and a bonus round where you can recover your precious vegetables. You must break through each layer with your trusty hammer and work your way towards the top of each level, fending off the vicious creatures that inhabit the mountain. If you make it past the first 8 layers, you enter the bonus round, which allows you to recover your stolen vegetables and attempt to reach the summit, where you can find that asshole condor. If you manage to grab the condor, you get a large amount of bonus points and then go on to the next level. Failing at any time in the bonus level merely puts you on to the next mountain. At it’s core, this is a score attack game (albeit one that can’t save your high score) – so anything you can do to boost your numbers is beneficial.
The controls of the game are exceedingly frustrating, as is the game field. While you can break the blocks with great efficiency, jumping on them can be a trifle of a task. Sometimes you think you’ve landed a jump, but you merely slip right through the block. A tactic for succeeding in jumping is to control your jump after the arc is finished. It can make you utter a few choice curse words as you traverse the mountain. Not only do you have to do battle with breaking blocks, but silly white puffballs known as Topi make your job a lot more difficult. They wander across each level of the mountain and, if they spot a hole in the ice, they rush back off the screen to collect a chunk of ice and push it towards the hole in an effort to fill it. It can be especially challenging in mountains that contain conveyor belts and other nuances as you have to re-break ice blocks. It should be noted that in the Japanese version, the white puffballs are blue seals. The reason for the change in the US version was likely to avoid heat from anti-seal clubbing groups complaining about it and due to Nintendo of America’s policies against gratuitous violence.
It was Ice Climber's merits as a two-player experience that first brought it prominence, back in the '80s, where in Europe it was actually the pack-in game for an introductory NES set for several years. Here in the States, it served as one of the 18 NES launch titles that debuted with the system in 1985. It made a fairly good impression here, and also in Japan; enough that its heroes earned the call back to action and the primetime limelight in the Smash Bros. arena.
Another type of creature that makes your life harder are birds that fly around vertically and diagonally which add to the chaotic nature of the game. Sometimes, a polar bear will come out to cause mischief. He sports a rather fashionable pink bathing suit and a pair of sunglasses. Unlike the other two creatures in this game, he does not do damage to you. Instead, he pushes you along and causes you to fall through holes you’ve already made. You can’t even kill him with the hammer! A couple of other things he does is causing the game to speed up and make the camera pan upwards. If you are on the lowest level, you’ll die and appear on the highest non-cloud level.
it works out to be a little more complicated than even that. In addition to having to break through the different layers, the mountains are full or perils, including Topis, Nitpickers, and Polar Bears as well as the occasional falling icicle. The Topis in particular are frustrating because they will bring out icebergs that they will use to patch holes in the levels that you have made. Combine this with levels that require you to be on a moving cloud platform to reach the next layer, and you will have to devote an extra amount of time to breaking through to the next layer. While you’re trying to scale your way up the mountain, the Nitpickers will lazily fly at you, but in general they are predictable enough to avoid. The Polar Bears only come into play if you have taken to long on a given stage, at which point the force the level to scroll. Combine this with levels that require you to be on a moving cloud platform to reach the next layer, and you will have to devote an extra amount of time to breaking through to the next layer.
The graphics of the game are very simplistic and not very visually appealing, unlike some of the other games that came out in that time. It is very blocky and the colours aren’t that exciting. The Eskimos are very adorable for their 8-bit nature, though. When you die, your character turns into a snowflake and falls off the screen. I find that amusing because, well, it’s Ice Climber!
The music and sounds in the game are actually pretty basic. The music is pretty much the same in every single mountain. I really wish they had made different songs for each of the colour schemes that appear in each mountain. That would have made it interesting. The sound effects that the Eskimos make while breaking the blocks of ice is pretty decent for a system that harbours 8-bit sound. I think my favourite sound effect has to be the score tally screen when the Eskimos are crying. It’s so cute!
In addition there isn’t much variety to this game. Some of the mountains introduce slightly different mechanics, and they certainly get more difficult as you go along, but at the end of the day you are just jumping through the different layers of each mountain. Sure, there are the occasional conveyor belts, and the slippery ice (this may be the first example of reduced traction on ice in an NES game – feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), but at it’s core, you’ve just jumping from layer to layer over and over. The graphics are what you would expect from a black box game, but they could have mixed up the palettes a little more from mountain to mountain to help things look different.
More frustrating though that even the Topis is the edge detection of this game. It would appear that every platform only triggers a collision when the player sprite touches the very center of the outer most block of each platform. Often times you will find yourself passing through the outer edge of a platform and falling down below, when a different game (all the Marios for instance) would allow you to safely land on a platform. This becomes especially frustrating in the bonus levels, when the platforms are small, far apart, and require pinpoint jumping.
The game contains only 32 mountains, which might not sound like much, but, due to the repetitive nature of the game, it would appear that game might never end. Once you reach 32 and complete it, you are given a 33rd mountain, which is essentially the first mountain that you encountered earlier in the game. So, once you’ve reached the 32nd mountain, it’s safe to say you can call the game conquered. If you die in the game and lose your lives, your score is wiped. You can continue where you left off by choosing the mountain you died on from the main title screen, but, as I stated earlier, the object of the game is to accumulate a high score, so dying isn’t something you want to do a lot of.
At the end of the day, Ice Climber is a game that is for the nostalgia fanatic. Newcomers to the game will find that there isn’t much replay value as, once you’ve completed the 32 given mountains, any further gameplay you do is purely for bragging rights in terms of a high score. Ice Climber is definitely a game that people need to play at least once in their lives. It’s a worthwhile playthrough because you’ll be tickled by how far game creation really has come since the third generation.
Gameplay: The repetitive mechanics combined with the poor edge detection make for a lackluster experience. Sure, you can put in the time, perfect your skills, and crush the game, but there isn’t really anything here worth putting in the time for.
Sound: The sound is exactly what you would expect for an NES launch title. Simple bleeps and bloops come together to form a decent musical score, but nothing memorable or noteworthy really results.
Nostalgia X-Factor: I had only played Ice Climber once or twice before this review.
Worth Playing? I’d give this one a pass. The jumping mechanics are really frustrating, and the gameplay gets repetitive quite quickly. Get your Ice Climber fix in Super Smash Bros. Melee instead (or Brawl, whatever your preference is)
As with many of the NES games we've seen so far on the VC, the suitability rests on two key factors — if you were a fan of the game back in the day then you will probably want to play this. If you weren't, then we'd recommend that you try some of the other games out there before buying this.
Ice Climber was part of the "NES Classics" series chosen for re-release on the Game Boy Advance in 2004. It was also hidden in the GameCube game Animal Crossing a few years before that, and was one of the games released on the e-Reader card format around the same time. Through those three releases, or even with the original NES cartridge, it's entirely possible that you've already had the chance to experience Ice Climber. But for those who've missed out on it over the years, and for those who might be looking for another fun two-player co-op experience, it's definitely worth consideration.
