Ice Climber turns the platform game on its side. Instead of running to the right, Popo, a small climber dressed in blue and carrying a hammer, goes up. Each floor of the mountain is a row of ice blocks, and the way up is to jump, smash a hole in the floor above and jump through it. Eight floors take him to the summit and a bonus round, and there are 32 mountains. A second player can join as Nana, in pink. The screen follows whoever climbs fastest, anyone left behind at the bottom is lost, and for Retro Gamer that race was “the whole fun of Ice Climber”. Nintendo released it on the Famicom in January 1985, and its two climbers have had a long second life as fighters in the Super Smash Bros. series.
Fast facts
- Maker: Nintendo. Masayuki Uemura, who led the Famicom’s design, was a producer; Toshihiko Nakago, of the programming company SRD, worked on it.
- Released: Famicom, January 1985; an arcade version, Vs. Ice Climber, for Nintendo’s Vs. System; NES in America in 1985 and in Europe in 1986.
- Players: one or two at once, as Popo (blue) and Nana (pink).
- Mountains: 32, each of eight floors plus a bonus round.
- Later versions: conversions for Japanese computers such as the NEC PC-88; a Famicom Disk System version based on the arcade game; the Famicom Mini and Classic NES Series cartridges for the Game Boy Advance in 2004.
How it plays
The American instruction booklet sets the scene in a paragraph: “It’s only you and an ice hammer as you make your way to the top of the mountain! If you can break through 8 levels of treacherous arctic ice, you’ll reach the top of the mountain.” The player chooses any of the 32 mountains from the menu; “the larger the number the more difficult the mountain is to climb.”
The A button jumps, and a jump under a row of ice knocks a hole in it. Thin rows break faster than thick ones. Some floors are unbreakable, some move like conveyor belts, and moving clouds carry the climbers between floors. Each floor wraps round, so walking off the right edge of the screen brings a climber back on the left.
The mountain fights back:
| Enemy | What it does, according to the booklet |
|---|---|
| Topi | Brings ice to fill in the holes in the floors |
| Nitpicker | A bird “always flying around Popo and Nana” |
| Polar Bear | Appears “after a certain period of time”, jumps up and down and pushes the screen down |
| Condor | Flies over the summit in the bonus round |
A climber loses a life by touching a Topi, a Nitpicker or the ice a Topi is pushing, or by disappearing off the bottom of the screen when the Polar Bear pushes it down. The bear is the game’s clock: dawdle on a floor and it forces the pace.
The screen only scrolls up and down, which suited the console’s video hardware. Like other games that scroll only vertically and have no status bar, Ice Climber sets the cartridge for horizontal mirroring, so the console’s two screens of video memory are stacked one above the other; the PPU entry explains how.
The bonus round
At the eighth floor the screen clears and the bonus round begins. At the start of each mountain the condor carried a vegetable up near the summit, and now the climbers race up a last stretch of moving platforms to collect it. There are ten kinds of vegetable, and “the first bonus round always uses eggplants”. An ear of corn adds a life. A climber who jumps up and grabs the condor’s legs at the very top earns bonus points. The round ends when that happens, when the timer runs out, or when everyone has fallen off; falling in the bonus round costs no life.
Two climbers
With two players, the booklet says, “the two players can either cooperate with each other and play together, or they can play against each other — bothering and tricking each other”. The rule that makes the second option work is the same one that makes the first one tense: “if the leading player gets so far up that the other player disappears off the bottom of the screen, the lower player is lost.” Retro Gamer remembered the “joyous multiplayer mode that saw you and a friend trying to reach the top of a mountain as quickly as possible”.
Arcade and home
Nintendo’s Vs. System arcade boards were built from the same chips as the Famicom. Vs. Ice Climber ran on the DualSystem, which paired two sets of that hardware, and like the system’s manual the game calls the two halves the “main” and “sub” sides. It used the memory the two halves share, kept alive by a pair of AA batteries, to count the coins put into both. The later Famicom Disk System version of Ice Climber was based on this arcade game rather than on the original cartridge.
In Europe
Ice Climber was one of the first NES cartridges in Britain. In October 1987 a mail-order dealer in Computer and Video Games listed it at £22.95 next to Super Mario Bros., Golf and Kung Fu, and in Nintendo’s catalogue the next month it cost £19.99, the lower of the two cartridge prices. In West Germany it came in the box: Club Nintendo’s first German issue, in April 1989, listed it in the NES’s basic package with the console, two controllers, the power supply and the aerial switch, and promised that “die 32 Level” would make players sweat despite the icebergs.
By the early 1990s British reviewers were less kind. Computer and Video Games’ guide to consoles in 1990 noted that it was “one of the very first Nintendo games” and found its gameplay “laughably” simple. Nintendo Magazine System’s game index scored it 58%: “This was one of the first NES releases and has primitive graphics, sound and gameplay. Even the simultaneous two-player action doesn’t stave off the tedium.” When the 50Hz European version reached the Wii’s Virtual Console in 2007, Retro Gamer still called it “a brilliant title”, but complained that it was “now looking mighty tired”, with the climbers “seemingly running through thick, sticky treacle”.
Popo and Nana in Smash Bros.
Nintendo brought the pair back as a single two-character fighter in Super Smash Bros. Melee for the GameCube, called Super Smash Bros. DX in Japan. Previewing it in July 2001, Edge noted among its guests the “super-cute lead character from the ancient NES title, Ice Climber”. When the Famicom Mini cartridge came out in Japan in February 2004, Nintendo introduced the game as the one with “Popo and Nana, familiar from Smash Brothers DX”. The Ice Climbers are fighters again in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate on the Nintendo Switch.
Sources
- Ice Climber instruction booklet (Nintendo of America, NES, ©1985), digital reproduction published by Nintendo for the NES Classic Edition (web): object of the game; 8 levels and 32 peaks; controls; Popo and Nana; Topi, Nitpicker, Polar Bear and condor; floors and clouds; wrapping floors; losing a man; the bonus round, vegetables, eggplants, corn and the condor; two-player co-operation and competition. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NAAUE.pdf
- Nintendo, Iwata Asks: New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Volume 2, part 1, “It All Began In 1984” (2009, web): Toshihiko Nakago on working on Excitebike and Ice Climber before Super Mario Bros.; footnote dating the Famicom release to January 1985. https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-New-Super-Mario-Bros-Wii/Volume-2/1-It-All-Began-In-1984/1-It-All-Began-In-1984-232825.html
- Wireframe issue 58, December 2021, p. 23: obituary of Masayuki Uemura, “producer on some games too, including legends like Ice Climber and Nintendo Golf”.
- NESdev Wiki, “Vs. System” (web, secondary): the main and sub sides, and Vs. Ice Climber’s use of the shared RAM to count coins.
- NESdev Wiki, “List of games with significant regional differences” (web, secondary): the Famicom Disk System version based on the Vs. System version.
- NESdev Wiki, “Mirroring” and “List of games by mirroring technique” (web, secondary): Ice Climber as an example of vertical-only scrolling with horizontal mirroring.
- Retro Gamer issue 35, 2007, p. 50: PC-8801 conversions of games including Ice Climber.
- Computer and Video Games issue 72, October 1987, p. 156: mail-order advertisement (Ice Climber £22.95).
- Computer and Video Games issue 73, November 1987, p. 132: Nintendo games catalogue (Ice Climber £19.99).
- Club Nintendo (Germany) issue 1, April 1989, p. 4: Ice Climber in the NES basic package; “Die 32 Level”.
- Computer and Video Games, Complete Guide to Consoles, 1990, p. 74: Ice Climber entry.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 1, October 1992, p. 106: game index entry (58%).
- Retro Gamer issue 37, 2007, p. 88: Virtual Console review of the PAL version (500 points; “serviceable back in 1986”).
- Edge issue 99, July 2001, p. 48: Super Smash Bros. Melee preview.
- Nintendo, Famicom Mini Ice Climber page (Japanese, web): released 14 February 2004; Popo and Nana “familiar from Smash Brothers DX”; one or two players. https://www.nintendo.co.jp/n08/fmk/iceclimer/index.html
- Classic Gamer Magazine volume 2 issue 2, July 2004, p. 7: the Classic NES Series for the Game Boy Advance, including Ice Climber, at $19.99.
- Nintendo, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighter page, “Ice Climbers” (web). https://www.smashbros.com/en_US/fighter/15.html