Customer Reviews

Ice Climber

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"Ice Climer", like "Donkey Kong" and "Mario Bros." before it, is as simple arcade title that stars two Eskimos, Popo and Nana, who must climb vertical scrolling ice levels by shipping away at platforms in order to regain frozen vegetables that were stolen by a giant condor. Nana and Popo are better known to modern games as they appear the wildely popular "Super Smash Bros." franchise. Along the way to regain their vegetables (perhaps a possible source for the vegetable themes in "Super Mario Bros. 2/Doki Doki Panic", as both games had the same programmer, Kazuaki Morita), the two Eskimos fight three main enemies: apolar bear, a Topi (a seal in the Japanese version and a Yeti in the Western version), and the Nitpicker.

Ultimately, the most interesting thing about "Ice Climber" is that the programmer, Kazuaki Morita, considers this game a "programming warm-up" for his next project, which would turn out to be the immortal "Super Mario Bros." Morita went on to be a major programer for the "Super Mario" series, the "Legend of Zelda" series, and "Star Fox. After developing "Ice Climber", Morita was assigned as one of the main programmers for the original "Super Mario Bros." The characters from "Ice Climber" would go on to feature in the "Super Smash Bros." series.

According to Morita, the famous turtle cheat where you can get unlimited lives in "Super Mario Bros." was actually an accident. He is also the principal reason why fishing was introduced into the "Zelda" series, as one of his passions is fishing.

Both "Ice Climber" and "NES Open Tournament Golf" were directed by Kenji Miki, a long time producer for Nintendo.

Although the game worked well if you look at it in the context of arcade games in the early 1980s (with simple titles like "Defender", "Space Invaders", the aforementioned "Mario Bros." and "Donkey Kong", "Pac Man", "Pong", etc), today modern players will find the title rather simplistic. Like several other early games in the video game canon, "Ice Climbers" would be a flash game in today's market. The game does feature 32 levels, which does give some replay value and needed length.

Nintendo also released "Ice Climber" as part of the Classic NES series on the Gameboy Advance. Although the game is undeniably fun, the initial listing price of twenty dollars for an NES game that is this simple is rather steep. There are better titles in the Classic NES series. This game would have been better served to be released in a complation of early NES classics featuring several other titles in conjunction with this, if Nintendo wanted to bring this to newer systems and still give consumers more bang for their buck.

The video game website IGN rated this title as the 79th greatest game on their top 100 NES games of all time.

(For those looking for great unknown NES/Famicom games, you simply MUST play "Moon Crystal", a criminally unknown Famicom exclusive. The graphics are astounding with cutscenes that even outdo "Ninja Gaiden", amazing music, in depth gameplay, and a fantastic storyline. Absolutely amazing! Had this been released in the US for the NES, I feel it would be as revered as the other heavy hitters in the NES canon)
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As bonus content to the review proper, here is a portion of an interview with Morita from the official "Zelda" website from Nintendo around the time "The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess" came about:

"The programming behind Nintendo's games, and my own approach to it, has changed vastly since the mid 1980s. The first game that I programmed, Ice Climber, was my warm-up on the NES, then I dove into the fascinating task of working on the code for 'Super Mario Bros'. And I had a real scare related to that project, which really taught me the importance of flawless code. Ever hear of the "unlimited Mario" cheat? The exact way to do it is a little complicated, but it involved the player setting up a scenario that allows Mario to bounce up and down on the same Koopa shell again and again and again. Points go up and up, leading to a steady flow of 1-Ups. I remember when we first heard about that cheat. We got a phone call from some kid, and Mr. Miyamoto and I both thought the call was a hoax--that such a thing was impossible! The programming was perfect . . . wasn't it? Well, we verified that the cheat worked. Fortunately, very fortunately, the "unlimited Mario" cheat had a ton of PR value as word spread, because I sweated bullets over what might happen!"

"Speaking of other groundbreaking projects, I still fondly recall how games like 'Doki Doki Panic'--the foundation for 'Super Mario Bros. 2' in North America--really stimulated my imagination as a programmer. That game was released for the Famicon Disk System in Japan, which--back in the day--was a truly fascinating system from a programming point of view. Of course, disk systems are common now, but then we were just exploring how the disk worked as an immense memory reservoir, which let me toy with many programming methods that I couldn't do with ROM. Working with my design partner, and getting very little guidance from others, we developed 'Doki Doki Panic' in ways that really pushed my skills. I really matured as a programmer during that time. Very interesting work.

Looking back, I'm very fortunate to have been one of the main programmers working on almost every game in the 'Zelda' series since it first began, since my programming has helped make 'Zelda' such a part of history. Now it's interesting to see how things have changed. While I used to do all of the programming for NES games, now I supervise a whole programming team, though I still do code myself, too, since I believe that staying very close to the art of programming is extremely important. Sometimes I feel myself thinking--when I see what some of the newer faces around Nintendo are conceiving--that such-and-such concept isn't true 'Zelda'! Listen to me! I have 20 years of experience here! But, really, having the fresh thoughts of young talents working on 'Twilight Princess' has really opened my eyes, and that makes me remember those first days working with Mr. Miyamoto on the first 'Zelda'. It's always essential to keep your mind open and learn from new ideas. I've known Mr. Miyamoto for many, many years. It's fascinating to watch him work now. On the surface, he looks like a perfectly pleasant middle-aged guy. But watch him make decisions! His words are extremely precise. His explanations carry a lot of weight. I never fail to be impressed by how he helps people grow and learn about game development. Which brings us back to 'Twilight Princess'. As I prepare to cook in the kitchen, I'm seeing extraordinary ingredients coming my way. If our programming can bring all of these flavors together, and with our help also add a touch of light-world zest and dark-world grit as needed, you can bet that 'Twilight Princess' will be the kind of memorable dish that will live up to the entire history of 'Zelda'."

This is a classic nes game that is still rememberd today. It has regular nes graphics but exelent sound. The pourpose of this game is to climb to the top of the mountain without getting hit by enemies or falling down. Well its not as much as a mountain but it is a series of vertical bricks that u have to break through in order to get farther. It is an fantastic game but it gets rather boring after a while, and it is very hard too. What i dont get is why they r on the ssb series. They have only been on one game becides the one on the GBA but its the exact same but on the go unstead.

Its kind of funny how there sellin this for windows 98 when you can just download it for free from the internet. They have every NES game out there in the open. You just need to know about emulators and roms. Just go on youtube and pick a tutorial about an NES emulator and you'll know what I'm talkin about.

I hope this was helpful.