Ice Climber

"Dude! It's the little people from Super Smash Brothers Melee! Sweet!"

Having played this game years ago, I recently found another copy after playing through the Game Cube version of Super Smash Brother Melee. Working with an old Nintendo Entertainment System interface and the fact that this game is nearly twenty years old, you’ll find that there are some pretty fun points to the game. Most of what you find here is a scrolling action game that moves upwards instead of to the side. You control one of two Ice Climbers {depending on whether or not you play two-player mode} and make it up the hill bashing seals and anything else that gets in your way!

The story line really doesn’t apply here, but for the most part, you’re simply trying to make it up the mountains and bash out the different enemies that come your way. As usual, you’re on a time limit that will either help you, or kill you depending on how fast you can work. Through about thirty one stages, you’ll have to make your way up through the mountain by bashing enemies and going through ice that gets in your way. At certain points, you may have to bash through ice above you to continue on, because some of the enemies reform the floor and cost you some time.

The mountains themselves are split up into two different areas in which you have to go through the normal mountain and kill off anything in your way while working against the time limit. The time limit is your worse enemy because if it runs down too far, you’ll have to get away from a huge polar bear that will kill you anyway. The difficulty that you find in the game is nothing that you have to worry about because it is one of those graduating scales in which the first stage is easy and it gets progressively hard as you move along. If you like games like that, then the game play here is perfect!

The two-player option is pretty fun to play with once you’ve gotten into the game and with a friend, you can do some pretty impressive things. Team work is ultimately important in this option and if you and a friend can get into synch with each other, you’ll fly through the mountains with no problem. To make matters a little better, you’ll find that the game offers you a stage select which is saved in the battery for later use and can be pretty useful if you want to tackle a particular mountain later on down the road. However, with the age of the game, the battery may not work and you may have to run through the game all in one sitting!

Control really isn’t a problem here in which you move from side to side and up. Swinging your hammer is nothing more than just getting close to an enemy and hitting one of the two NES controller buttons to swing the hammer. What you’ll find is that jumping and moving can be a little tricky in the later stages because you have to work with the Ghost Control that the NES control pad has to offer. From time to time with the different stages, you may have to time your jumps accordingly and beginners to games like this should have no problem working with the game and the way that it functions.

Visually, the game offers some pretty clean and crisp visuals, although they seem to be extremely basic, there are some pretty cool effects that you’ll find. There isn’t anything like reflecting blocks or lighting effects, but for an ancient NES game, you really shouldn’t expect it. As far as this game goes, you’ll have the feeling of a mountain platforming game and you shouldn’t have a problem seeing the what the enemies are and the like. For an older NES game, it seems pretty polished and you won’t find much in terms of visual break up or slow down in the game action at any point!

Musically, Ice Climber has some decent musical tracks that come by with the game. It keeps the pace of the game at a steady rate, but it doesn’t go too far overboard with the way that it is presented. You may find that Ice Climber is basic to the point simply because there isn’t any sort of rock music or dance pop music to find anywhere in the game. The sound effects that you hear in Ice Climber are also pretty basic with your usual assortment bleeps and bloops in different parts of the game that will match the cartoon like action in the game!

Ice Climber isn’t a bas game by any means, although it isn’t the premier visual presentation not does it have anything exceptionally important that you have to learn in order to complete it. With a graduating scale of difficulty and the simple to learn control, platform fans shouldn’t have a problem simply picking up the game and working with it in any sense of the word. The sound matches the action of the game without going too far into extraordinary and with the ability to save the game at certain points, it makes for a pretty impressive package.

Featured years later in Super Smash Brothers Melee, the Ice Climbers are actually what made me want to go and find this old gem of a game. While it isn’t the greatest game that I’ve played on the NES, it is one of the better ones with the mindless, simple action that a good game of this genre should have. If you can find this game in a used game shop, then you should probably look into getting the game and adding it to the rest of your collection. However, if you’re looking for a game with futuristic weapons and non-stop action, then you’d be better off to look for Contra and leave this for the true NES affectionados!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 01/27/02, Updated 01/27/02