Nerd Mentality

Retro Revival: Ice Climber

Posted January 9th 2005 by Ben Wood.

The Scoop

What do you do when a giant red condor steals your village's vegetables? You send someone to retrieve them! And when the condor hides out atop the land's highest peaks, you send out the best mountain climbers in town to get the job done.

Ice Climber puts the player in the shoes of Popo, an expert climber, who works his way from base to summit of dizzyingly tall mountains in order to recover stolen vegetables. Armed with a mallet and insane jumping abilities, he must stave off dangerous mountain fauna and avoid falling icicles in order to climb through the game's 32 vertical-scrolling levels.

Iterations

Ice Climber, NES, 1985

Vs. Ice Climber, Arcade, 1985

Ice Climber, FDS, 1988

Ice Climber-e (e-card), GBA, 2002

Ice Climber (NES Classics), GBA, 2004

Notable Appearances

Super Smash Bros. Melee (GC): Not only are there Polar Bears and Topis to speak of in the Adventure mode, but Nana and Popo are dusted off and tossed into the fray as a fighting duo. The Ice Climber inspired stage, Icicle Mountain, is arguably the most difficult level to fight on, as it pans upward and downward quickly enough to break up a fight and turn it into a race to survive. The break the target level for the Ice Climbers is designed to look and feel much like the classic NES game, with the final target clutched in the hands of the insideous condor.

Animal Crossing (GC): Ice Climber is a collectable NES game.

WarioWare Inc,: Mega Microgame$ / Mega Party Games (GBA/GC): An Ice Climber inspired microgame has Popo trying to reach the condor before time elapses.

WarioWare: Touched! (DS): In the microgame "8-bit Hero", you must find the pixel that is different from the otherwise identical image on the top screen. One of the images is a scene from Ice Climber.

WarioWare: Twisted (GBA): A microgame features Topis and Polar Bears getting hammered the ice climbers.

411

It's a little-known fact that the Japanese version of Ice Climber featured a seal as one of the standard enemies. Nintendo changed the seals to a nondescript yeti-like creature called a Topi to avoid animal cruelty issues. This change was also implemented when Ice Climber hit the Famicom Disc System. The seals made a return in the Icicle Mountain adventure stage and as trophies when Super Smash Bros. Melee hit Japan, but versions of the game in other regions kept the Topi enemy and trophy.

In Vs. Ice Climber, player one controls Popo, the blue-suited Inuit boy, and in multiplayer the second player gets to control the pink-suited Nana. The relationship between these two characters wasn't established until the development of Super Smash Bros. Melee, where the head designer ultimately decided they were lovers. Nana and Popo were chosen over the characters from Urban Champion, Excitebike, and Clu Clu Land to represent the NES era in Melee.

Revival Potential

In an era of rabid 2D platforming rebirth, anything is possible.

Super Smash Bros. Melee, in conjunction with Animal Crossing not only pulled Nana and Popo out from under a tundra of video game obscurity 15 years thick, they also made the Ice Climbers known to modern day gamers. This alone betters the chances of seeing those cute little mountaineers ascend new peaks with new challenges. The Game Boy Advance seemed to be the logical platform to spice up for this aged game with better graphics, tighter control, and deeper gameplay, but if it were going to happen, we would have heard about it by now.

That leaves us with the DS. The system's ability to use both screens as one large vertical display is perfect for the scrolling nature of the game. The touch screen and advanced graphic capabilities of the system would allow for new mountain climbing elements like rappelling and rope climbing. Maybe the ice climbers could explore crevices and mine shafts to find vegetable stores and shortcuts.

Ultimately, the important question is whether the gameplay could be expanded enough so that modern day gamers would take an interest in the title. Having to control two characters through treacherous platforming obstacles does sound promising. The premise of Ice Climber may have to change, but look at Kirby. He started his career by collecting stolen food, and now he's one of Nintendo's most coveted mascots.

Sources:

Nintendo Database

Planet Gamecube

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