I spoke about Battle City before, one of the few games of the time that could be played co-operatively on the NES. Nintendo’s own Ice Climber was one of the others that you could enjoy, but wasn’t always sunshine and roses.
I find the difficulty spike to be a little steep after the first few levels, going from really easy to dodging icicles and sliding around on tiny ledges over pitfalls all at once. 3 lives get eaten up pretty quickly.
Fortunately, you can select the mountain you want to start at on the start screen, so if you don’t feel like replaying the easy ones you can jump right in to the more difficult ones.
The controls, as was usual of the time, were simple – you could run left and right, jump, and strike with your mallet. The goal was to climb each mountain, and catch the condor flying around at the top. Obstacles included badly timed jumps, badly executed jumps, slippery ice, falling objects and little yeti monsters.
Once you got to the bonus stage, there were no more enemies, just bonus items to collect. These were usually fruit or vegetables, players also didn’t lose a life by falling off the mountain in the bonus stage but didn’t respawn until the next mountain, and so lost the chance to catch the condor on that mountain.
This was my aunt’s favorite game, she was a beast at it.
I’ve always tried to imagine a modern Ice Climber game, and I think a puzzle platformer could be perfect. Maybe throw in a bit of a story, a good reason for the ice climbers to be ascending the mountain, I don’t know.
All I know is, Ice Climber is one of those Nintendo IP, along with F Zero, that has been on ice far too long. (lol)
I’d love to see these characters be reimagined, maybe not to Breath of the Wild levels but maybe as one of those games like Captain Toad which isn’t necessarily Nintendo’s big budget stuff, but could be a good game in spite of that.
Did you like Ice Climber? What do you think a modern Ice Climber game would look like? I’m interested to know, so drop a comment!
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