Ice Climber: Information from Answers.com Mobile

Ice Climber

Release Date: 1985 10
Genre: Action
Style: 2D Action

Game Description

Armed with nothing but an ice hammer and a thick coat, your job in Ice Climber is to climb 32 multi-leveled mountains. Before you begin the game, you can choose the mountain on which you would like to start. Each mountain is basically a series of platforms, many of them covered in ice. To achieve your mountain-climbing goal, you must break holes in the floors above you so you can jump up to higher and higher platforms. When you make it to the top of each mountain, you will enter a timed bonus round in which you will gather vegetables while jumping up on platforms. If you make it to the top in the bonus round, you1ll get extra points.

While you are scaling the icy slopes (knocking holes in and jumping up on platforms), Toppies will sometimes fill in the holes you have made. Also, Polar Bears will cause avalanches, and Nitpicker birds and other pests will try to knock you off of the mountains. You can clock these creeps with your hammer to remove them from the screen.

You can play Ice Climber by yourself or team up with a friend. If you ascend a mountain too rapidly in the two-player mode, your partner is left behind, biting the proverbial dust.

~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

Your job in Ice Climber is to ascend 32 multi-leveled mountains consisting of a series of platforms. Since many of them are covered in ice, players use a hammer to break holes in the floors above so they can jump to higher platforms. While scaling the slopes, various creatures will try to fill the holes, cause avalanches, and knock you off the mountain. As an NES launch title, the graphics and sound effects are pleasingly simple and arcade-like, but the controls are sluggish at times, making the game more frustrating than it is satisfying.

The most unusual thing about Ice Climber is that you can choose which of the 32 levels you want to play without the aid of any secret codes. (Not to mention the fact that 32 levels is pretty big for an NES game.) This level select option is very important, because most people would otherwise never get anywhere near the end of the game. After the first few levels, Ice Climber gets pretty challenging. With lots of practice, a steady hand, and a healthy dose of patience, more experienced gamers will have at least a modicum of success playing the game, but younger folks and beginners may give up on the harder levels. If you couldn't select your own level to play, this would be a somewhat frustrating game. If you get tired of trying to get past level 16, simply start the game over at 17. Or, if you are determined to succeed, play level 16 again and again until you get it right, without having to repeat the earlier levels over and over.

The running, jumping, hammer-whacking action in Ice Climber is a challenge, but it's not overly exciting. I like the concept well enough, but the execution could use a little work. The character you control is uncoordinated and the controls are sluggish. It's difficult to scale many of the mountains, but playing the game feels more frustrating than it does satisfying, even when you make it to the top. In the later levels, victory occurs only after a series of frustrated attempts to reach each platform. I don't want the game to be easier; I just want it to be a little smoother and more entertaining.

If Ice Climber actually had some mountain climbing in it, it would probably be a better and more interesting game. Instead of just walking across and jumping on platforms, why not arm the Ice Climber with some mountain climbing tools and put him to work scaling Pike's Peak or Everest. What we've got is a sub par but challenging platform game with forgettable characters, less than mediocre game play, and a whole bunch of levels.

~ Brett Alan Weiss, All Game Guide