Ice Climber facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Ice Climber
North American NES box art
Developer(s)	Nintendo R&D1
Publisher(s)	Nintendo Hudson Soft(PC-8801)
Director(s)	Kenji Miki
Producer(s)	Masayuki Uemura Shigeru Miyamoto
Programmer(s)	Kazuaki Morita Toshihiko Nakago
Artist(s)	Tadashi Sugiyama
Composer(s)	Akito Nakatsuka
Platform(s)	Arcade (Vs. System), Famicom/NES, PC-8801, Sharp X1, Famicom Disk System
Release date(s)	October 1984 Arcade (Vs. Ice Climber) October 1984 JP NES January 30, 1985 NA PC-8801 JP October 1985 Sharp X1 JP November 1985 Famicom (Vs. Ice Climber) JP November 18, 1988
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer
Arcade system	Nintendo VS. System

Ice Climber (called Aisu Kuraimā in Japan) is a fun platform game created by Nintendo. It first came out in 1984 for arcades and then for the Famicom and Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) in 1985.

In this game, you play as two characters, Popo and Nana. They are known as the Ice Climbers! Their mission is to climb 32 tall, icy mountains. They need to get back their stolen vegetables from a giant bird called a condor. In some parts of Europe, Ice Climber even came with the NES console when people bought it!

The arcade version, called VS. Ice Climber, had some extra features. It had a cool animated title screen and a menu to pick your stage. It also had 16 more mountains, sometimes with blizzards and wind. There were more enemies and special items that gave you extra points.

Popo and Nana are so popular that they also appear in the Super Smash Bros. fighting game series. They first showed up in Super Smash Bros. Melee in 2001. Nintendo also released the NES version of Ice Climber for the Nintendo e-Reader in 2002.

How to Play Ice Climber

Popo scales Mountain 1 surrounded by Topis and a Nitpicker.

In Ice Climber, one player controls Popo, a boy in a blue jacket. If a second player joins, they control Nana, a girl in a pink jacket. Their only tool is a wooden mallet. They use it to break holes in the ice above them and to hit enemies.

Each mountain has eight layers of colorful ice and a special bonus stage at the top.

• Normal ice blocks are easy to break and act as platforms.
• Stronger ice blocks cannot be broken, so you have to find another way around them.
• Hatched ice works like a conveyor belt, sliding you left or right.
• Many mountains also have unbreakable platforms that look like moving clouds.

The bonus stage is at the very top of the mountain. You have 40 seconds to climb it without enemies. This stage often has tricky jumps and many moving platforms. It's also where you can get back the stolen vegetables, like eggplants! If you collect a piece of corn from the fifth bonus stage, you get an extra life. At the very peak, the Condor flies by, and you can try to grab it for bonus points.

Enemies You'll Meet

As you climb, you'll face different enemies:

• Topis look like blue seals in the Japanese game or small yetis in other versions. They can fill holes in the ice with new ice blocks.
• Nitpickers are small birds that fly down from caves on the sides of the mountain. They can fly across many layers of ice, making your jumps harder.
• White Bear only appears if you take too long to climb. This bear wears sunglasses and pounds the ice, forcing the screen to move up. If you get pushed off the bottom of the screen, you lose a life!
• You also need to watch out for falling icicles that can form on the bottom of platforms.

As you climb more mountains, all the enemies get faster!

Arcade Game Differences

The arcade game, VS. Ice Climber, had some unique features:

• Players could choose from 24 mountains to start.
• After clearing eight mountains, there was a "Super Bonus" stage.
• The Condor was sometimes replaced by a giant butterfly.
• Some cloud platforms moved diagonally, and strong winds could blow you around.
• A purple bee with a spear was a rare fourth enemy.

Scoring Points

After each bonus stage, your score is counted. You get points for:

• Every ice block you break.
• Every ice block a Topi pushed that you smash.
• Every Nitpicker you defeat.
• Every vegetable you collect.
• A big bonus if you reach the top of the bonus stage and grab the Condor!

The game keeps track of the highest score, but you can't save it on the NES version.

One or Two Players

You can play Ice Climber alone or with a friend. In two-player mode, Popo and Nana race to the top. You can work together to climb, but during the bonus round, it's a competition to see who can reach the peak first!

Game Creation and Release

Ice Climber was directed by Kenji Miki, a long-time Nintendo producer. It was the first video game programmed by Kazuaki Morita. He later became a main programmer for many famous games like the Super Mario series and The Legend of Zelda series.

Ice Climber was one of the first games released for the NES in North America. It has been re-released on many Nintendo consoles over the years. For example, the VS. Ice Climber arcade game was later released for the Famicom Disk System. The NES game can even be unlocked in the 2002 GameCube game Animal Crossing!

Here's a list of some of the ways Ice Climber has been released:

Ice Climbers' Legacy

The Ice Climbers in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Popo and Nana, the Ice Climbers, are famous characters in the Super Smash Bros. fighting game series. They fight as a team! They first appeared in Melee in 2001 and then in Brawl in 2008.

They were planned for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U, but there were some technical problems. The game director, Masahiro Sakurai, decided to remove them so both versions of the game would be the same. He also thought that a new Ice Climber game was unlikely at the time. But don't worry, the Ice Climbers returned in 2018's Ultimate!

You can also find references to Ice Climber in other Nintendo games:

• Music and themes from Ice Climber appear in the WarioWare series.
• In Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land and Kirby Air Ride, when Kirby gets the Freeze ability, he wears Popo's parka.
• An Ice Climber background appears in Tetris DS.
• The bonus stage music theme is in Daigasso! Band Brothers.
• The Ice Climbers appear as an unlockable costume in Super Mario Maker.

See also

In Spanish: Ice Climber para niños