There I was, staring at a frozen platform about three feet above me in the air. The wind was blowing like a freezer blasting in my face at the RIDICULOUS level of cold and my partner, Popo, trailed me. Suddenly, a polar bear wearing shorts and sunglasses comes out of nowhere. His appearance signals I’m running out of time, and a Toppy is fast approaching. The bear pounds the ground, and I’m forced upward. Too far up, it seems, because I’m dead. It’s back to the beginning of the level for me. And I still don’t have any vegetables.

This, folks, is the travesty called Ice Climbers. It’s a game that I despise more than most on the NES. The concept of the game is cool: You play as a mountain climber trying to reach the summit to recover your stolen vegetables from a condor. It’s simple and it could be fun. But where Nintendo ruined the magic of this adventure is in the terrible mechanics. No amount of climbing and cute music can save you from the fact that the jumping mechanics are some of the worst ever put into a game. Popo and Nana jump straight up with no arc to compensate. Trying to complete stages is like playing a worse version of Mario Bros., and we’re not talking Super here.

Every time I attempted to jump, Popo looked at the ledge as if to say, “Really, you want me to do what now?” I was continuously frustrated by the lack of development in the mechanics other than the ability to break bricks and hit enemies on the top of the head. It’s as if the development team got the hitting mechanics done first and then forgot to fix the jumping.

Throw in the fact that the game seems to go on forever and you have a recipe for disaster. I have never played a game that I wished ended faster than Ice Climbers. If the controls are as terrible as they are, why subject people to an endless game? There’s not much to the underlying game to start with and dragging the controls out as far can be done is torture. I’d rather put hot sewing needles in my fingers than play the game more than about five minutes. It’s that bad. And for some reason, Nintendo keeps trotting this mess out for gamers — even as late as 2007 on the Wii’s Virtual Console — as if it’s some kind of success. No, Nintendo, this is no success. It’s a crime scene, and one of the worst games I have ever had the unfortunate pleasure of playing in my gaming career.

Thankfully, Popo and Nana have been slightly redeemed by their appearances in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, but I’d be hard pressed to say I even enjoy the Ice Climbers stages presented there, solely because of the tragedy perpetrated 27 years ago with the original game. The fun in Ice Climbers actually can be had in Melee and Brawl, and I recommend you indulge your ice mountain climbing fancy there instead.

Stay off the mountain and away from Ice Climbers

Photo by Lyndsey Mosley / Gaming Insurrection

Score: 0.5 out of 5