still remember when the cast of Smash Bros. Melee was being announced. Peach? Excellent.

Gannondorf? Please take my money. Mewtwo? Now we’re getting serious. Ice Climbers?

Who the hell are the Ice Climbers?

If you blinked - or weren’t born at the time - chances are you missed the Ice Climbers’

debut appearance in the mass of US launch titles for the NES back in ‘85. And the

N64 launched with... two? C’mon, Nintendo. Buried in that list - between Hogan’s Alley

and Kung-Fu - was this little nugget, detailing the trials and tribulations of one or two

parka-clad mountaineers on their daring quest to recover a payload of fresh vegetables from

a tyrannical condor-pterodactyl-thing.

See, back in ‘85, that’s all you needed. Some big bird, on the lam from Jim Henson,

swipes some produce from a couple kids and absconds up a strange, technicolor mountain,

inhabited by cute little Yeti fluffballs who meticulously repair the floors and pathways

of their home. Unfortunately, you’re not the cute little Yeti fluffballs. You’re

the kids what got their lunch swiped. But the bird didn’t take your mallets. IT’S

SCALING TIME.

That might’ve been some flowery lead-up, but here’s the net effect: You climb. You

go up. And after eight strata of enemies, the occasional divebombing bird, icicles,

and a particularly perturbed polar bear (complete with coolguy shades and pink boxers), it’s

Bonus Stage time! Which is like scaling time with more nutritional value. You slam your

way up to the peak, bouncing off of clouds, reclaiming your rightful foodstuffs, and preparing

to face off against...

… that feathered jerk. Who doesn’t actually do anything. He just flies around and waits

for you to sock him in the undercarriage. Do so and it’s a sizable bonus, fail (by

falling off the mountain during the bonus stage) and you have to deal with a crying

little Ice Climber during the entire score reckoning. You horrible, horrible person.

Here’s the problem, though... as could be expected from a game with “Ice” in the

title, the controls are stone-cold difficult. Jump timing is razor-thin, midair control

is painfully realistic (that is to say, there’s barely any), collision detection on ledges

is shaky at best, and your falls accelerate so fast it’d make Guts Man’s head spin.

This is by no means easy, but it is unspeakably unique. This is platforming taken to an almost

absurdly literal level. You need to burrow up through platforms, then establish yourself

on platforms, defend platforms, and ascend to the next platform.

While it’s pretty rare to come upon an NES cart of this classic, there are a number of

ways to experience the game itself, primarily in the wake of Nana and Popo’s reemergence

in the Smash Bros. Series. The original was made available as a series of e-Reader cards,

ported to the Game Boy Advance as part of the NES Classics series (viz the version you’re

looking at now), hidden within the bell-and-tree-stump-littered world of Animal Crossing, and finally, released

for the Virtual Console on either the Wii or 3DS. Of those 18 NES launch titles, Derek’s

already covered two: Super Mario Bros. and Excitebike. Ice Climber makes three. I think

all 18 should be represented here on Undertow, don’t you?