You’ve either never heard of the game “Ice Climber” nor who the “Ice Climbers” are… or you heard about them from playing Super Smash Bros.
I kid, there are some true Nintendo veterans out in the world that may remember this prior to Smash Bros waking people up to it.
So how does this game relate to winter? – said nobody
The game stars 2 characters ‘Popo & Nana’ whom are perfectly dressed for the winter season. Armed with hammers to smash rocks, they must climb mountains, not succumb to Polar Bears (named as seen), a small Yeti like creature (Topi), and a bird known as Nitpicker.
Released in 1985 for the NES. A relatively early platform game, and as such a very straight forward one. We mostly associate platformers as being left to right affairs, but instead Ice Climber has you climbing vertically up a ‘mountain’ to reach your goal. After Ice Climber Nintendo revisited vertical space in games like Metroid, Kid Icarus, and parts of Super Mario Bros 2 (well technically in the Japanese only game Doki Doki Panic).
However after it’s release it would take Nintendo 16 years to shed any mainstream light on the Ice Climber franchise, that being with their placement in Super Smash Bros. Melee on Gamecube (and then again in Smash Bros Brawl on the Wii).
I finally played Ice Climber (NES) in 2003 when I eventually got the NES game for my house in Animal Crossing on Gamecube. It’s a game you’d only play for a short span of time to aim for a high score. Once grander adventures like Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Metroid, Mega Man, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and so forth started hitting the NES, the bar was set much higher for what you’d come to expect from a home game. Ice Climber and several other early 1st party Nintendo made games sort of fell behind as a dated arcade experiences that would’nt of succeeded in actual arcades had they been heavily marketed for it.
Thanks to the beautiful gift to Nintendo fans that was Smash Bros, obscure games and their characters were free game to become relevant again in Nintendo’s party fighting hybrid. Credit is due to Mr Sakurai or whomever came up with the unique play style of the Ice Climbers, because they ended up being a great advanced character choice for those willing to put in the time. We also got an Ice Climber themed stage and a modern remix to the original games jingle, along with Topi and Polar Bear as stage hazards. As of 2016 the Ice Climbers were unfortunately left out of the most recent Smash Bros entry.
Fingers crossed they will return in a future Smash Bros game. On the plus side they did see a revisiting and remixing of their original game in the inventive NES Remix game for WiiU and 3DS, and if you’ve gotten or are looking to get yourself an NES classic you can expect to find the game on that.