So the Ice Climbers did pretty well in the Melee tournament at Evo 2013 last month. They made it all the way to the Grand Final match! And as I watched the daring duo rampage through a collection of fan-favorite franchise characters, a thought occurred: how does a pair of such fearsome cold-blooded killers go nearly thirty years after their debut without another game?


Escape an infinite grab? Can’t let you do that, Star Fox.
It’s high time the Ice Climbers made a comeback. But in what form? Their debut was an arcade platformer; with Mario and Luigi and Donkey Kong and Yoshi already set for sidescrolling on Wii U, the last thing Nintendo needs right now is more 2D run-and-jump.

The obvious alternative, then, is a 3D platformer. We've been buzzing about N64’s best platformers lately, and it just dawned on me...Ice Climber could be the perfect groove for that jazz. Specifically, Ice Climber should take over as Nintendo’s mainstay in the Super Mario 64 style adventure-platformer genre that's fallen by the wayside.


Miss you, baby...
This could seem like a strange move at first glance. But let me assure you, in glorious top ten fashion, that it is the perfect idea.


First thing’s first, however: we have to start on a somber note and consider the probability that...

...



...



Just then Uncle Mario burst into the castle, huffing and puffing. “Mamma mia, you guys! Bowser has teamed up with Ganondorf and Dark Samus to invade Ylisse! Many Toads died to bring us this information...”

Just then, a blue blur appeared on the horizon. Could it be? Yes! Sonic the Hedgehog sped into the castle at the speed of sound! “We’ve got to go find Goku, Zorro, and The Great Gatsby if we’re going to stop them in time for Fonzie’s surfing contest!”

Nana ran back into her room and grabbed her lucky penny. Only it wasn’t ACTUALLY a penny, it was a fully armed and functional Gundam fighter that could SHRINK to the size of a penny! Surely she would need all her strength for the battle ahead, but could she keep her identity as an heroic mecha pilot a secret from her family and all the other kids at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters?!

TO BE CONTINUED
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You know what? You make a compelling case for Nana and Popo. Fun read!

You also hack up some masterful fan fiction. I love how your continuation just goes haywire. I laughed out loud.

Also, I want Nintendo to port Kid Icarus to the Wii U. I LOVED the game, but the controls were rough on my wrist.

I'm disappointed that the fan fiction was so PG.

More importantly, I want to mention that fanfiction.net has a mere seven entries for Ice Climber. Seven. Watch Dogs isn't even out yet, and it has eight. Friggin' BLINX has ten.

Do your part to right this wrong, guys. Give Nana and Popo the fanfic attention they deserve.

Whoa! I'm convinced. Seriously, I want this game now. I absolutely love the Ice Climbers in Smash and have been wanting a sequel for awhile. In my mind, I pictured a 3DS 2.5-D sidescroller with big bosses and fantastic music and the Sakurai touch, but I'd certainly be onboard for a massive 3D exploration game. I think #7 really drives home the point of how the duo could be differentiated in motive from other Nintendo heroes. Great job!

Nice! I was with you up until point #3, if its another Uprising count me out! Platformers need precise controls, and when I think of Uprising all I can think of was how painful the platforming sections were to play due to the exact opposite of precise controls, probably the worst control scheme ever IMO. I'll probably never buy another Sakurai game based on that, so yes to Ice Climber, yes to a SM64 style game, but no to Sakurai developing it.

Other then that I totally agree.

@deathly_hallows I'm sure a dedicated platformer wouldn't have the crappy context-sensitive dash-jumping stuff from Uprising. After all, Uprising was a shooter, and the shooting was SUPER precise. Kinda painful...but precise!

@nate38
Well the aiming was great in the flying sections, I have no beef with that control scheme. It's the platforming on the ground that turned me off, and we're talking about a platformer here.

Not to say he couldn't do it, especially if Miyamoto or someone was overseeing the project and forced him to not use insanely weird and convoluted controls, but I fear that left to his own devices he'd do something insanely weird just for the sake of being weird.

I don't trust the man, before I ever buy another game of his he will need to prove himself to me!

deathly_hallows said:

@nate38
Well the aiming was great in the flying sections, I have no beef with that control scheme. It's the platforming on the ground that turned me off, and we're talking about a platformer here.

Are we? I think of Kid Icarus Uprising as a third-person shooter first, a rail-shooter second, an action game third, a loot-RPG fourth...really there's a pretty good list of stuff before "platformer" comes to mind.

Sakurai does have a history of bucking control conventions, but it usually works out great. Kirby Air Ride's auto-gas worked fine, and the Sakurai-directed Kirby games and SSB have AMAZING controls. Uprising is the least successful, I'd say, and that's mostly just because it hurts my hand. It has a few other issues (I wish dodging had its own input so I didn't accidentally dodge when I meant to dash and vice-versa) but overall I thought it was a good solution for a fast shooter on 3DS.

@nate38
Well I'm not a Smash Bros. fan, so there's that. I never thought the controls in that game were anything special, and the gameplay Subspace Emissary literally hurt my soul (although the cinematics were awesome).

But for Uprising I definitely consider it a platformer because there were many sections where you had to "jump" (hesitate to call it jump since there was no jump button) from platform to platform (sometimes rotating or moving, often over bottomless pits) and in those sections I found the lack of precision infuriating. Maybe if I had put 100 hrs. into Smash Bros. and was used to the "smash" move of thrusting your analog stick it would have been easier, maybe if the camera would have followed the player better or been mapped to the 2nd slide pad of the CPP, but I found it to be utterly painful and incredibly un-fun, the very opposite of fun (but something I had to do if I wanted to get tot the next flying section).

Even if it had been purely a 3rd person shooter I think the controls could have been much better, they way Pitt moved was awful, the camera was awful, it just wasn't good. It's like Sakurai had never played a 3-D game before or something, just truly bizarre.

If he were to make an SM64 style game I'd want him to play SM64 and study the controls, how easy and intuitive they are, how if you push the analog stick slightly mario walks slowly (how he actually walks like a normal human being and doesn't do some utterly bizarre and awkward side trot gallop) and how if you gently increase the pressure Mario gently speeds up, how there is a jump button, a simple button, and when you press it your character jumps, there are no weird "pads" you have to "smash" onto that will launch you out of control off a cliff and down into a bottomless pit.

If he could actually just do those things, follow those conventions (or break them in a meaningful way that improves that makes things easier, more intuitive, more precise), then I say sure give it a shot. But if he's like... hell no, let's get crazy, you thought spin the globe was nearly impossible to get used to? well you're going to need to spend 200 hrs learning how to control this camera: I call it "shake the upside monkey while standing on your head and eating a banana", and to jump? well how are you at quickly scribbling maps of ancient China on the touch screen and then whistling the first 12 bars of The Rites of Spring and then blowing super hard into the mic for 20 seconds like they did in The Right Stuff every time you want to jump? Its gonna be great! (and Oh btw while you're looking down trying to scribble that map there are going to be 1,000 archers shooting at you and if they hit you you're guy will get knocked back 200 feet and the camera will spin wildly out of control for 20 seconds and/or get lodged in a corner staring and 6 giant pixels while 10,000 more enemies instantly spawn and staring piling up on you. Fun for the whole family!

Whoa, Ferdinand!

KIU absolutely had unconventional controls, like all of Sakurai's games, but I really respect the guy for doing that. The game does have a very steep learning curve because it doesn't use a control scheme that's everyone's used to, and I had to use the stand for playing it, but...after 140 hours of KIU, I can absolutely say that the controls are very responsive and precise, and they work beautifully for me. The only sections where I feel they're a problem are in the strict platforming sections, since it's difficult to know the exact difference between walking and dashing and you can fall off. But those are in maybe every fifth level or so for just a few moments.

Otherwise, I think they work great, and I applaud the guy for actually making his own control scheme instead of just sticking with whatever's worked for other games. I can honestly say that I'd rather have KIU control the way it does than any alternative. It was my GOTY 2012, after all, because it was friggin' brilliant.

Now bring on the Ice Climbers!

@TriforceBun
Theoretically I want to get behind someone who wants to be innovative and creative and break with tradition. But it's not enough to just be "different" if what you're going isn't an improvement over what previously existed. Some things are tried and true and work well, like stairs in a house, sure if you were an architect you could be "everyone does stairs, so boring, no stairs in my house, instead there are trampolines and you have to launch yourself to the next level of the house" but then the people who move into the house end up breaking their necks just trying to get upstairs and go to bed, maybe it's not so great of an idea and sticking with what works is best in that scenario.

Certain things in gaming, like pressing a button to jump, aren't broke and don't need to be fixed, and Sakurai's idea of "smashing" to jump was not an improvement, IMHO. If he was going to develop a SM64 style game I wouldn't want to see stuff like that in the game just for the sake of doing things differently.

I am all for it. I would rather see it as an eShop game by IntSys or something. So not necessarily in 3D, but just really expand on the gameplay of the original, and also make it not broken. Could be really fun.

This was a surprisingly fun read. Nice work.

Ice Climbers should be the name of this 3D sequel.

I missed this before, but just wanted to say I love this Top Ten, Nate. You paint a vivid picture of what the Ice Climbers could bring to the table, and it sounds very good! It's not exactly a franchise I would have thought of necessarily 'worthy' of a revival, but yeah, it could be done, I think. I miss the Mario 64 type games, I really do.

LOL at your closing fanfiction section.

And thanks for linking to my Top Ten in reason #7!

@roykoopa64 Still one of my favorite top tens, so I had to include it as shamelessly as possible.

Upon reading the title of the top ten, I disagreed. What do the ice climbers have to do with Mario? After reading the top 10, I'm convinced you're 100% right. I was playing Super Mario 64 DS today, and it felt like I spent almost as much time climbing as I did exploring horizontally. Even in flat levels like the the desert and lava world, they seem to find some way to sneak in a climbing segment (inside the pyramid and volcano in this case). It seems like a perfect fit. Especially after replaying Tall Tall Mountain.The concept of the ice climbers and the verticle emphasis of the levels in Mario 64 go together so well that I'm surprised nobody has thought of it sooner. Great job, Nate.