Ice Climber
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 It's only you and an ice hammer as you make your way to the top of the mountain!
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Ice Climber is a platform game developed and published by Nintendo. It was released in 1985 for both the arcade VS. System and the Famicom / Nintendo Entertainment System console. The characters Popo and Nana, collectively known as the Ice Climbers, scale 32 vertically scrolling, ice-covered mountains to recover stolen vegetables from a giant condor. In some European countries, Ice Climber was bundled with the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Good Qualities
- For the time, the gameplay was pretty original, as it involve jumping to get to the top of a mountain, which wasn't done that much in video games.
- Better yet, the gameplay is simple yet addictive. All you have to do is control your Eskimo and reach the top of a mountain while avoiding enemies. In other words, the gameplay is easy to understand.
- Popo and Nana only have one weapon but it's useful. They use a wooden mallet to carve openings in the ice above them as well as attack enemies.
- Good graphics that are simple but very good to look at for it's time, this is easily Nintendo graphics at their purest form. The graphics here are colorful to look at such as its colorful characters and layers of ice. Both the arcade versions and the NES versions still do well for their times when the game was released. The sprites of the characters do replicate the ones in the arcade.
- Good soundtrack for its time. While this is 8-bit music from an old game, it still feels so charming and lively. Also catchy as well. This is especially when you go to the bonus stage and you hear this music that plays during the level. During the main stage, the song that plays when you attempt to go through the layers of ice feels so relaxing.
- Each stage has a bonus stage where it consists of different vegetables on each level. Many veggies include eggplants, cabbages, zucchinis, ears of corn, turnips, pumpkins, lettuces, carrots, potatoes, and mushrooms.
- Fair amount of obstacle and enemy variety. The Eskimos face Topis (seals in the Japanese versions while they are portrayed as abominable snowmen outside of Japan), polar bears, nitpickers, condors, bees (arcade version only), butterflies (arcade version only), and falling icicles.
- The levels use different types of ice seen in the game just for the sake of variety and challenge.
- Dull ice blocks are no threat other than an easily disposed-of barrier and platform.
- Square ice blocks have more detail and are indestructible. The best thing is that you need to go to another path.
- Hatched ice acts like a conveyor belt for the Eskimo.
- Challenging difficulty, the game may appear easy but it isn't easy for most of the game since after some levels, it start to be very challenging and will require skill to not die for the longest time until you get a game over, much like Dig Dug 2.
- Good characters designs, one notable exemple are Popo and Nana themself.
- Has multiplayer where two players get to play as Popo and Nana during the game. As a result, the game turns out to be fun to play with much like Mario Bros. so all you just have to do now is compete with whoever gets to the top!
- Decent controls for it's time, although they didn't aged well because of BQ#1.
- Very fun gameplay, and as stated in GQ#1, the gameplay is quite unique, making this even better, another good thing about it is that it had bonus stages like in most Nintendo 80s games, and the game will never be boring to play quickly.
- The arcade version has more gameplay than the NES versions (well only a few). There are only 24 mountains and players would need to pick from the set. After eight are done, a Super Bonus stage occurs where it consists of your Eskimo reaching a high platform. After that, you need to pick a second set in which a condor is replaced by a butterfly. The game can keep track of whether the mountain was claimed by an Ice Climber or still a Topi territory.
- Some new mechanics are present like cloud platforms that move diagonal or strong gusts of wind that occur.
- The scores are tallied once the game is complete. You can get points from every brick of ice destroyed, every Topi-pushed icicle smashed, every Nitpicker killed, and every vegetable collected. There is also a bonus score for those who grab the condor.
- On the NES version, you get to pick which mountain you want to start at and you will go by that mountain. The order of the mountains will change due to the mountain number that you pick.
- Although this game didn't got a sequel, Popo and Nana would later be even more famous because of their apparition in the Super Smash Bros. series.
Bad Qualities
- While for the time they we're decent, the controls had badly aged over the years because they aren't that tight and responsive, and sometime because of them, you might get cheap deaths at times.
- For some reason, eggplants, zucchinis, corn, pumpkins, and mushrooms are seen as veggies in the game when they are not. Eggplants, zucchinis, corn, and pumpkins are fruit while mushrooms are a fungus.
- Popo and Nana's jump is pretty awkward to get used to. They get even worse when you try to jump on slippery ice. In other words, the controls are tough.
- There's only one way to get an extra life. The only way to do this is by getting one piece of corn from the fifth bonus stage.
- There is no way to save a high score on the NES version
- Bonus stages give the Eskimos trickier jumps so it's easy to fall off.
- Stages are trickier in the arcade version.
- For an unknown reason, the bees were removed on the Arcade Archives version seen on the Nintendo Switch.
- Difficulty Spike: When you put aside having to get the hang of the stiff jumping mechanics, the first few mountains aren't so bad. However, around mountain 8 or so, they get increasingly puzzle-like with walls blocking off certain areas, and the clouds, conveyor belts and Nitpickers pick up speed.
Reception
Ice Climbers received mixed to positive reviews by critics and gamers, in which it was considered to be a pretty fun game and received a sort of cult following.
In Japan, Game Machine listed VS. Ice Climbers on the April 1, 1985 issue as being the eighth most successful table arcade units of the mount. On Computer Entertainer, the game was seen as "addictive" for fans of climbing games.
Trivia
- Originally the Topi enemies were seals but due to the fact that it's almost like seal clubbing, which is frowned upon, Nintendo changed the design to a miniature version of a yeti.
- The reason as to why Topi was an abominable snowman in other versions of the game was because Nintendo of America wanted to avoid animal cruelty and offending parents who were sensitive to attacking seals. The abuse of seals was a controversial topic at the time of the game's release.
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