Ice Climber

Pokemon Black and White 2.

That is all.

...oh wait, Ice Climber!

Show that chillin' polar bear who's the real bipolar bear!!!

Most people weren't as familiar with Ice Climber outside of Smash Bros. Melee, myself included. It wasn't until '07 that I eventually bought it the Virtual Console and played it on my Wii. The story, as with most NES titles, is simple and basic: the Ice Climbers, controlled by Player 1 and Player 2 (Popo and Nana respectively) are armed with mallets to climb an icy mountain in order to recover stolen vegetables from a condor. the 32 Mountains/Stages are made of eight sections and a bonus stage. Score is kept from destroying ice blocks and enemies. Some blocks cannot be destroyed, tasking the player to take alternate routes and to not go score-crazy and create a much more difficult ascension.

Of particular note are the game's two most distinguishing trademarks: a sunglasses-wearing and pink shorts-sporting polar bear and the eggplant that is frequently coveted by the titular protagonists. The polar bear appears when players are lagging and shoves the stage further down, attempting to speed up the player's progress or to kill them if they reach the bottom. I suppose there's crazier things for a goal than vegetables (let alone eggplants and corn that represent extra lives) but you need something to strive for, right? Regardless, they're distinguishing enough to note their eccentricity.

Ice Climber is definitely more entertaining with a second player racing you to the summit, if both of you can get a handle on the physics. I personally can't control Popo and Nana as well I want to, but that's more to do with my personal preferences. Their jumping mechanics are almost too vertical and momentum-based for my tastes, perhaps a side-effect of my Mario upbringing. Half of my jumps fail as I barely miss the edge of a platform or smack the underside of a rock-solid cloud, as they're undestroyable moving platforms and not transparent until landed upon like most gamers are now accustomed to. Had I grown up playing this game I wouldn't have such a difficult time with it (or perhaps be more forgiving than I am) but I do have trouble with the core jumping mechanics.

I would recommend Ice Climber only to hardcore Nintendo fans; the kind, like me, who love the Smash Bros. series for the first half of its Best Fanservice Award appeal of showcasing Nintendo's history. I would otherwise tell people that they could pass up Ice Climber for the telling reason that it never turned into a proper series. It was much more of a warm-up to the far superior Super Mario Bros. It's a decent arcade-style platformer, but at $5 for slightly-wonky platforming physics I would ask the person to demo the game before buying it.

Ice Climber
1 Ice Climber

Next week, we continue with another 8-bit arcade classic.