Ice Climber Review

Tonight we'll be taking a look back at a game that many people had long forgotten prior to 2001 when the Ice Climbers, Popo and Nana, were thrown into Super Smash Brothers Melee. That game's name is Ice Climber!

Ice Climber is an arcade style vertical platformer that was developed by Nintendo and released on January 30th, 1985. The game was one of the launch titles of the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States. The game can be played by either one or two players and the objective of the game is to scale 32 frozen mountains while reclaiming stolen vegetables from a condor. 

In order to scal a mountain you'll need to make use of the Ice Climbers hammers. When playing solo you will control Popo and when playing two player, the second player will control Nana. Both characters play the same. If you jump and hit a block from underneath, you'll knock it out.

Once you scale the 9th level of each mountain you will be thrust into a bonus stage where you collect eggplants or other vegetables to nab bonus points.

There are a few types of ice blocks that the climbers will need to get around. The first is just a basic ice block that poses no threats and the climbers hold plenty of traction on them. The next is a square block of ice that the climbers cannot break through, so they need to go around them. The third and most challenging type is the hatching ice block which acts like a conveyor belt. Also standing in the way of the Ice Climbers are several enemies. The Topi will push out an ice block and fill a hole that the Ice Climbers make with their hammer.

The Topi

The next enemy is not confined to the floor of the mountain levels. It is a small mountain dwelling bird called the Nitpicker. This bird will swoop from side to side and travel between the levels of the mountain.

The Nitpicker

The last enemy, besides the condor, is the White Bear. This enemy appears only when the player takes too long to advance. Once he appears he will occasionally jump, causing an earthquake that ends with the screen moving up (part of the mountain crumbling?). If the Ice Climbers are too low and are dropped off screen, they die. 

The White Bear wears both sunglasses and a pink bathing suit...

I have had a decent amount of fun with this game. It is certainly far better to play this game with a friend in my opinion, but the single player still offers a good amount of arcade style fun. The biggest complaint I have with this game is the jump itself. In a game where you rely on jumping an incredible amount I often found myself frustrated as I put do the proper thing to jump and move to the right or left, but sometimes just wind up jumping straight up into the air. This hasn't resulted in many deaths for me, but it has been simply frustrating. The soundtrack isn't anything special, but you will get it stuck in your head as you hear the same music throughout the game. Graphics wise, the game is actually pretty impressive. Seriously, keep in mind when looking at the game that this was an NES launch title. Given that, the game actually looks pretty good!

Overall I'd give Ice Climber a 7 out of 10. Playing with 2 people is a ton of fun and the game is actually a very good arcade style vertical platformer. For a launch title, the game is actually quite visually appealing and even features a polar bear wearing sunglasses to add in some visual humor. The biggest downside to this game in my opinion is the occasional issue with the jumping and a soundtrack that just keeps on repeating over... and over.... and over...

Final verdict: 7 out of 10. Ice Climber is a fun 2 player game that was one of the first games on the NES and one that still can be quite the challenge to this day!

As always thank you for reading. Remember my ratings are by no means fact, but rather my opinion on the games I blog about. My next blog is going to actually be a blog about a Majora's Mask soundtrack remix that I have not been able to put down for over 2 years! More on that later though!

R.I.P. Satoru Iwata

Just a couple days ago the president of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata tragically passed away from complications involving a bile duct tumor. I just want to take a few moments and look back at how much of an impact this man had on the gaming world. While he became the president of Nintendo in 2002, his impact on the games we know and love today started much earlier. Personally speaking I am especially thankful for Iwata helping to bring life to both the Kirby and Pokemon series. Had it not been for this man, the games of these two series as well as the Super Mario series and others may not be anywhere near what they are today.

All in all Mr. Iwata helped to make some of the best games that have ever existed. He did so with a basic, yet outstanding philosophy. As he once so brilliantly said "Video games are meant to be just one thing. Fun. Fun for everyone". That is a statement that I find to be 100% dead on accurate. Sadly the days of the majority of video games being purely for fun seem to be fading out quickly. Sure, for many people, the games that Iwata created are still heavily played, but less and less it seems like games are for fun and it's a sad thing to see. Today it feels more and more like games are becoming more and more competitive in nature and less and less as a means of relaxing fun. Iwata was a true gamer at heart and knew just how fun a video game should and really could be.

The loss of Satoru Iwata I feel also brings about a potential loss of future fun for gamers. If you take a look at the latest E3 lineup presented by Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft, you'll see that only one of these companies focused on pure entertainment and fun this year. That company was Nintendo. Yes Sony has a slew of great games coming out and Microsoft has the whole backwards compatibility thing coming, but neither of those companies focused on the entertainment factor nearly as much as Nintendo lead by Iwata. Without Iwata at the helm a cloud of mystery has formed over the future of Nintendo. I hope the company will continue to focus on creating the most entertaining games it can and not get sucked into the whole graphics war and the battle of who can create the most emotional or violent game.

Thank you Satoru Iwata for everything that you've done for the world of video games. Thank you for always keeping the fans in mind and becoming a real icon in the industry. You literally made countless children's childhoods (including myself) something really special through your games. Had it not have been for you we may never have had Earthbound, the DS, the Wii, the Wii U, and other franchises of games that we have come to know and love. Age 55 is far to young for this sort of thing to happen and you will be deeply missed and never forgotten by gamers around the world.