Ice Climber

Ice Climber is one of the cornerstones of the early NES era — one of those simple yet immensely characterful games that defined what fun looked like at the beginning of the eighties. The pair of mountaineers Popo and Nana climb ever higher up snowy mountains, floor by floor, toward the summit, where the flying bird Condor awaits them.

The gameplay is built on vertical progression: with a hammer you smash the icy ceilings above your head to break a way into the next floor, all while dodging polar bears, seals and falling ice blocks. The jumping is deliberately clumsy, and the precise timing of jumps onto disappearing platforms makes the game a real challenge — Ice Climber never spared the player's patience. There is also a two-player cooperative mode, which is as much about cooperation as about tripping each other up. Today the game is known mainly because Popo and Nana became fighters in the Super Smash Bros. series, winning over a whole new generation of fans. For retro gamers Ice Climber remains a fond reminder of a time when a simple idea and steep difficulty were enough to write a game into Nintendo's history.