009 · ICE CLIMBER

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

00:00 Ice Climber, it's only you and an ice hammer as you make your way to the top of the mountain.

00:20 And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sam. And I'm Sean. Yeah, I'm Joe. We got two N's in there. Sean, I feel like you didn't want Joe to chime in. I didn't want him.

00:38 I read you loud and clear. I forgot he was here. I forgot he was coming. Joe, unfortunately, is still satellite here, but I heard the Winter Olympics are beautiful. Yeah, yes, they're great here. Okay, and what a timely thing to go to the Winter Olympics for. Are you there for Ice Climber? Yeah, the Ice Climber games are coming up. That's fantastic. You know, it's Ice Climber 1985, another one of those 17 launch games.

01:04 Iconic now, but really only because of Smash Brothers. Again, yeah. You know, like, Smash Brothers, yeah, like, well, Duck Hunt, we kind of, we landed on the side that that was an iconic game still. Joe, for sure, that was a game of, 2018 game of the year. I think Joe's still playing it. I'm down to talk about Duck Hunt again this episode. Fantastic. And welcoming back Sam here for a minute. Hey. And that was it. That was us welcoming back Sam. Now I'm back. But I do kind of want to get into Ice Climber real fast before we go into first impressions.

01:33 This is a Nintendo R&D 1 game. They're responsible for most of the NES launch games. It launched, and it was a big deal then, and it came out a couple different iterations and ports. It was part of the NES Classic series on Game Boy Advance and made its way into NES Remix. But I don't think any of this would have happened if, like, Smash Brothers didn't introduce Nana and Popo again. It's kind of, well, I guess let's talk about that. Let's get our first impressions.

02:17 Sean, you want to lead us through? Well, going back to just my conscious, like, understanding of it before Smash, I didn't know it existed. I didn't. And when, like, they were announced for the game, I'm like, I don't know who they are. And when you say the game, which Smash Brothers iteration are you referring to? Melee. Okay, yeah, yeah. Because I think that is, like, the big surprise. And it's kind of like that for so many entries in Melee, too.

02:41 Roy is another one I think about where it's like... Well, Roy, he debuted in Melee, right? Yeah, and it's like, what is this character? I mean, like, you might have seen Marth in an issue of Nintendo Power or something. But Roy was a reveal, and Fire Emblem as a series was never given any love outside there. But that's a whole other story. Unfortunately, we might never talk about a Fire Emblem game on this because... No, we can't just go until we're 40 years old, man. The NES games were Japanese only. No, no, Fire Emblem is an NES series.

03:06 I did not know. Yeah, very cool. But, okay, so let's get into first impressions again. Okay, my first impression of Ice Climber is this is, like, the whole, like, jump aspect. It's a very jump-first game. It's like proto-Mario, but... So you had a platformer vibe at all, or...? It felt platformy. Okay, yeah. I mean, it's definitely, you're jumping on platforms in this game. I hated the game.

03:33 Okay. I did not like... As a first impression. That's my first impression. Okay. Yeah, I was... I mean, even before first impressions, I mean, I love Smash Bros, and so I was really excited to see where the Ice Climbers came from, and it was just not fun. It felt like it was... Like, when I first got it and I beat the first level, I was thinking, is this... This is it? You just jump a little bit, and then you get to the top, and then... The concept doesn't really evolve.

03:58 Yeah. And that's it. And it's just harder to jump sometimes, and there's moving platforms, but you're still just jumping up, and it's just... I don't know. I was really disappointed just off the bat. And, like, if the game is all about jumping, the jumping feels terrible. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a good jump. Joe? So, I mean, I was kind of on the... In between with it. I thought it was moderately fun. I didn't think there was anything that made it great, but I didn't think there was anything that made it terrible either, so I think I'm the only one who didn't... Well, unless you have a different opinion, Mike. It was okay. The jumping was definitely one of my first things, though. The jumping does not work very well.

04:31 That's the whole game, though. Yeah, I agree. No, I agree. But it wasn't game-breaking for me. It got annoying every once in a while. There'd be a thing where I was like, eh, I should have landed on that. Right. I just want to chime in with one initial impression that's a little different, is that I thought the game was fun at first, and that I could get through the clunkiness of the controls. I felt the controls right away. I was like, wow, this is unresponsive, and I'm not that fun. But I thought, okay, the concept's cool enough. Maybe I can get through it. And by Mountain 4, that impression...

05:01 That first impression was gone. And now my real impression of the game had formed. Yeah. Okay, cool. So, since we're talking about the game, let's just go really quick into the objective. Anybody want to give this a stab? You're supposed to climb the ice to the top of the mountain where a, like... An aubergine. Is it an aubergine? Yeah. An eggplant. An aubergine bird. Oh, the condor. Okay, a condor. I thought it was a pterodactyl. Or a pterodactyl. It looks like an eagle.

05:27 That has stolen your eggplant or carrot or what have you. So, wait, wait. It really is a condor? Yeah. That's perfect. Wow. Is that a manual thing? It was... Sam the manual. I did read the manual for every game that we played. That's wonderful. So, we're going to have to do a little manual section later. But continue, Sean. So, you're climbing the top of the mountain to get this eggplant along the way.

05:50 Along the way, you break ice blocks with your hammer. And then there are these things that try to block you. There are many animals or puffy balls or ice particulates that try to stop you on your way. And, you know, just real fast, talk about enemies. It kind of bugged me that on the box, there's that polar bear. I never got to that level where the polar bear shows up. So, can I actually tell you my experience with that polar bear? Yes. I had forgotten that it was on the box. I mean, it's just kind of a background thing on the box. I just didn't really notice it.

06:25 And I was playing multiplayer, and we were maybe on Mountain 7 or something. And suddenly, out of nowhere, that polar bear in a Speedo or whatever that thing is comes running out. It comes running out. I don't think it's a Speedo. It's faster than anything else. I don't know what it is. But it comes running out. No, it's taller and faster than anything else. It's kind of frightening. Were you taking some time? What's that? I think that the polar bear only comes out if you're, like, taking too long. Maybe I'm just, like, maybe I'm wrong. It just came out. We dodged it. And it left. And it was gone. We never saw it again. That's like the polar bear is, like, its way of saying, like, hurry up. Yeah. Like, wow. No, I don't know. I never saw it.

07:06 Yeah. Okay. Where I wanted to go from there, though, because I don't want to get too far into the game before we just start talking about the mountains themselves. And I feel like the difficulty spikes very quickly in this game. Yeah. To the point where it's super easy to get through mountain one. Like, there's almost very little obstacle in your way. You get a taste for the bonus game. And then once you hit, like, mountain four, the platforming in the game is so tough where, like, you have to wait for the clouds to line up perfectly.

07:35 Yeah, that's... And if you miss one jump, you're falling all the way down. There's a lot of precision jumping, and they don't really give you the tools to effectively do it. Yeah. Like, I had noticed that if I had my back to the direction where I wanted to jump, I wouldn't jump as well, unless I was just imagining this, than if I was facing the direction I wanted to jump. Like, if I was facing right, and I wanted to jump left, and you jump and kind of try and drift left, it works. It doesn't work as well as if you had already been facing it. Yeah, no. Yeah, absolutely.

08:03 I noticed that in general, the horizontal aspect of the jump was terrible. Like, the verticality of it was fine. It was like, you know, I jump, and he jumps fast. I don't know why you move so slowly to the left and right when you move so quickly up and down. And you have to graze the platform that you want to land on to land on it. Like, there are times where you feel like you're about to, like, land it, and then you kind of just, like, fall through and go back down. Right. You definitely clip through the corners of the platforms. Well, you know, actual mountain climbing is a lot like that.

08:35 You know, I can't draw too many parallels between actual mountain climbing in this game, because I don't know. I don't know. Like, would you ever? Well, when you're actually climbing a mountain, the polar bears don't wear Speedos. That's true. Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. So that was their creative license.

08:53 That was a very informative answer. Also, they don't live on mountains. So there are no polar bears. But since we're talking about the difficulty spike, did anybody, like, did anybody feel about, like, enemies not really, like, meaning that much? The enemies really bugged me, just because I feel like at some points I could jump through them, and it would kill the enemies by jumping from underneath, like, the birds that would fly by. Oh, being able to hit them with your hammer. There's a little delay between. Yeah, if you jump up at them, it's like you're smashing the bricks. So if you hit them, you hit them with your hammer. Yeah. I didn't realize until, honestly, way well into my playing of this game that you can hit B to just smash your hammer.

09:35 I was ignoring one of the four buttons on the controller. That's why you got to read the manual. Yeah, Joe, I don't know how you could miss that. That's, like, a pretty important, like, how were you taking out the enemies? I was jumping up to them. I thought I could only jump up. I don't know. I mean, I don't know why I never thought to try pressing B, one of the two buttons. You made it into, like, a stealth game. Right. But it didn't make it that much easier. You know, I never really felt like I needed to kill something that was on the same platform as me. I always wanted to kill those that were above me so I could get to them.

10:03 Okay, so let's jump in. We talked about the mountains a little bit. Let's talk about that bonus game, though, where all of a sudden the different vegetable of the week shows up, and you just kind of have to collect them as fast as you can. Anybody got any thoughts on this besides the fact that music is pretty awesome? It was pretty difficult. It was pretty difficult to complete a bonus round, at least for me. And I kept getting tempted by the vegetables. I don't think I did one bonus round.

10:28 The ice tripped me up because there's, in the first levels anyway, I don't know about later on because I didn't make it that far, but there's no ice in it, like any of the first, on, like, the regular part of the stage. Right. And then you get to the top part, and it's all these little small platforms with ice, and you're not used to this friction, and the jump is bad. And so you just, I fell off, I think, after my second jump every single time. Yeah, and it's very cool that they were able to program that, like ice, you know, and, like, being slippery and stuff like that. I actually wasn't expecting that.

10:57 But Sean was my witness. I did do a bonus game round. I did touch the condor at the end, which I guess is the point. What happened to the eggplant is beyond us. I guess he dropped them all. If you were competing against someone in, like, a race to get through it, if you beat the bonus stage, if you're beating the bonus stage and the other person is not, you're probably going to win because I think it's, like, the easiest way to get points. Yeah, it is the easiest way to get points, but there's also, there's a lot of points for,

11:23 there's a lot of points for the vegetables, too, as you keep going through the levels. Pumpkins was worth, like, I think, like 1,000 on Mountain 7 or something like that. Sean, you had something to say? I completely forgot. Okay, great. Joe, you robbed him of a thought there. Well, that's good. I don't want any free thinkers in this podcast. Absolutely. But, no, can we talk about that music for a second? I mean, I thought it was pretty good. I thought that was some of the best NES music we've heard so far. I love, too, when you do complete the bonus stage, since it doesn't seem like a lot of you guys were able to hear it. It's like, I mean, I'll just play it right now.

12:04 And it's like, that's really cool. It's jazzy. It's groovy. And it feels victorious. But I also just like the Ice Climber theme in general. Like, I thought that that was, like, a cool, like, it was, it had its own feel to it. Yeah, it was jazzy, like you said. It's what, that's kind of what I got. It was, like, a very, like, jazzy soundtrack. It felt like all the parts of the game was there except for the gameplay. You know, the music was there. The visuals were there. Yeah. It just wasn't that fun. I do want to go back real quick to, like, just, like, the, again, the objective of the game. We basically said what the objective is. Like, hey, we want to go up and get your fruit. Or not your fruit. Your vegetables.

12:42 I'm sorry. But in what world does that make any sense? I mean, like, it seems to be, like, based in reality in some regard. But this bird, this condor that steals your vegetables. Like what? It sounds like it's based off of, like, some ancient myth. Yeah? Something like that. You know? I feel like that's way too much credit.

13:05 That or just, like, a bunch of really drugged out developers. Yeah. Definitely wasn't a plot heavy game. Right. Yeah. And one thing I was going to mention is the two player mode that Joe was talking about there for a second. I thought that was kind of cool because it makes it kind of co-op in a way until you get to the top. And then all of a sudden it becomes, like, oh, we have to, like, you know, now you have to fight to get to the vegetables. Right. And we played it kind of co-op at first because we were just both so bad at it initially.

13:35 And then after a while we kind of realized, like, we should probably be competing because it shows our scores at the end. I think it got a little more interesting when we were competing because if you go up too high above your competitor, they disappear off the screen and lose a life. So it's kind of like a race at that point, too. But the annoying thing about Call of Duty, I played with my roommate who was not very good. I mean, I wasn't good, but she was also not very good. If you lose all your lives, they're just out. For the rest of the game. Yeah. I think that's the case. Yeah. You just guys in there. But it's kind of like when you're playing any other two player games.

14:10 And it's like, once you lose your lives, it's like, what do you do? You just watch the guy. But, like, after the next level, like, you're still out. No, no, I am. I'm saying, like, think about it like this, too. If you're playing with, like, your older brother who's really good at that game, right? Not Ice Climbers specifically, but let's do, like, a Kung Fu or something like that.

14:27 If they're really good at the game, you have to watch them play a majority of the game, and then they might die. And then it's your turn to go. You have no idea what you're doing. You die, and then it's back to watching them for another, like, 10, 15 minutes. Yeah. Well, yeah, I thought that the way that that works with Ice Climbers would only really work if you're both equally as good at the game. So then, like, if I die, I don't have to watch the other person too much longer. They're just trying to rack up as many points to try and beat my score. But if it's, like, one person significantly better than the other, and, like, I lose all three lives, and then they go on for the next 10 mountains,

15:02 kind of defeats the purpose of multiplayer because there's not much of a chance that I got a higher score than them. Yeah, and Sean and I, Sean got a little aggressive with me when we were playing and figured out very quickly that you want to get to the top faster than the other player, and you don't necessarily help each other. Yeah, because I think I just disagree with you at a basic level of, like, your idea of it being co-op in the beginning. Like, this is not a co-op game. Like, yeah, it'll be faster because there are two players hitting the bricks to get up, so there's just more surface area available. And that ends up sort of helping both of us. But, yeah, I'm not trying to make a hole for you. I'm trying to push you off those ledges.

15:47 Any stray thoughts about Ice Climber before we move on? One thing I noticed was that you—so I think I got maybe to, like, Mountain 11 or 12 or something. Maybe it was more than that. I don't remember. But then once I died, I realized that you can just choose any level. You don't have to earn it. You can just skip to the, whatever, the 30th mountain or— Yeah, 30th mountain. You just select whichever mountain you want from the beginning.

16:11 So I thought that was interesting that there wasn't, like, a progression in that sense. That was something Sean just showed me before this podcast, actually. He was like, yeah, well, it doesn't really matter because we can just go to any level. I'm like, what do you mean we can go to any level? Like, it felt like—I don't know. It feels like a nice reward, though, if you don't want to, like, have to play through it all. You know? Yeah. If you think about 30 mountains, it's a lot. But also, like, you kind of don't want to play through it all.

16:37 You know? Yeah, but I did enjoy the taste. I enjoyed the taste of seeing what Mountain 30 was. Right, yeah, yeah. And we were like, oh, thank goodness we didn't try to get this far. We couldn't get off the ground floor. And I just think it's kind of weird on an NES game. Like, you don't see that very often because NES games are usually so much more punishing than, like, games now. It was weird that you didn't have to, like—you didn't have to get really, really good at this game to ever get to Mountain 30.

16:58 You could just start there. Right, okay. But it's kind of weird that they're not, like, unlocked or anything like that. I don't know. That's kind of odd. Well, this might be a good segue to talk about the verse system version of Ice Climber, which was the—you know, like, the arcade versions always had the verse system. Which kind of came out first in America, but they came after the Famicom versions. The verse Ice Climber, the difference there is that you kind of, like, you choose a selection of mountains out of—I think it's, like, 48 this time instead of, whatever, 30 or something like that. It might be 32 instead of 30.

17:30 But you choose, like, a selection of eight, you clear those, and then you have to choose—like, you choose another set of eight. But you get to kind of, like—you get to kind of, like, choose. And I didn't get to see it because it's very hard to see these systems.

17:40 But, like, that'd be kind of cool if it was, like, an overworld or something and you, like, chose a series of mountains or something like that. I'm not sure how it was done. It was probably just done through text. But I thought there was, like, a neat little addition to, like, choose your set of mountains. Yeah, and then, like, you could try to pick the mountains that you think you'll do better on than your opponent. I guess, like, you could pick each opposite one. Right, right. Yeah. A little bit of strategy to beat the other guy.

18:07 Yeah. So, guys, I kind of want to know, we had a lot of fun with that Duck Hunt and what would a modern Duck Hunt—what would Duck Hunt 2 on Nintendo Switch look like? And I just think that would be a fun thing to kind of keep bringing back, maybe. So, Ice Climber hasn't gotten a sequel ever. Probably won't. But if it did, what does that look like? I mean, the easy way, like, the lame, boring one would just be, like, open-world Ice Climber, and you're just trying to climb all these mountains that you're just in, like, you're just in a mountain range.

18:53 I know, but I see where you're going there, and I was actually thinking, like—so, I had two thoughts. And, Sam, I think one of them is going to impede with yours. But my first one was thinking Super Smash Bros. Melee had that level of Ice Climber where it was kind of like an event, you know, and it would just keep scrolling and you go through. And that's like, okay, that's kind of a cool way to handle it. But then when you started talking about, like, a progression or something, I was like, what if Ice Climber became, like, a Metroidvania? You know, where it was like you're going through this mountain and you have to, like, get certain new power-ups to, you know, to get to new parts of the mountain.

19:28 And, you know, like, you can kind of take on the mountain in different routes. What if it was also— But the objective is to get to the top. Do you ever play, like, SteamWorld Dig or anything like that? You play that one? Where you go, like, underground and you keep going down and down and down and down. As far as you can, and then you go back up.

19:44 Yeah, and that might be a cool way of exploring it. And what if it was a Metroidvania that was designed to be played in a co-op? So it is actually a co-op game this time, and there are certain ways or, like, puzzles in, like, the openings and you're not just digging that you can only get through if— Like, in a—sort of like a—I know that Brothers, like the new— Yeah, yeah, yeah. —is designed to be played one player but with, like, two. But you can play that with two players. And you had to get through these puzzles by having these two characters cooperate in some way.

20:20 I think that would be an interesting concept to explore. Yeah. I actually thought that this was going to be co-op because of Super Smash Bros. So it's interesting—because in Super Smash Bros., they work together, right? They're like a team. Yeah, they're a team. Right. And they're kind of tied together. Yeah. Right. So it would be interesting if it was that kind of mechanic, like two players that are tied together in some way having to climb these mountains, I guess. Honestly, I'd kind of play this game. Yeah. A co-op metroidvania.

20:54 Get to the top of the mountain. Like, there's no real, like—I mean, there might be a boss or something like that down the line, but there's no real story. It's just kind of like, you're the ice climber. Get to the top of the mountain as a team and use your, you know, newfound power-ups. And it's like, it doesn't matter how you get to—like, I could say it as a cool speedrunning game. Like, it doesn't matter how you get to the top of the mountain. It could even be like a roguelike or something where the mountain, like, generates— Like a Spelunky? Yeah, yeah. Like, it'll have different paths depending on—what's the word I'm looking for? Procedurally generated. Procedurally generated, yeah. Procedurally generated mountain, yeah. So is this 3D?

21:31 I see it as 2D. Well, I think it's like 2.5. 2.5D. So you're not actually moving in, like, Z space. Yeah, I think this could even work on, like, a 3DS level, kind of like how the Metroid Samus Returns went, where it was like, okay, this is, like, not too important, but we have the ability to make this, so let's put it out on 3DS. Like, I'd be fine with that, but I think this is a pretty cool game. Yeah. Ice Clammer 2, Breath of the Wild.

21:56 Is that what you're going to subtitle them all? No. Okay. I hope not. Oh, yeah, didn't we call Duck Hunt Breath of the Wild, though? Duck Hunt 2, Breath of the Wild. Yeah, I think that was thrown around at some point. All right, so I think it's time to move into the Essential Games list.

22:14 All right, so it's the Essential Games list. I'm sure you know by now. We're chilling in on, like, what is this, episode... Fridge. I don't really know. I don't know. I said Fridge, for the record. I just wanted everyone to know that. You're on episode 9. You should know by now, but basically, you got your PS4, you got your Nintendo Switch, you got your PS2 with Shadow of the Colossus on, and you're like, oh, I want to get that PS4 version of Shadow of the Colossus, and it's like, wait a minute, Ice Climber on NES exists. Should I play that?

22:42 Well, that's what the Essential Games list is here to tell you. Is it worth playing right now when you can play Shadow of the Colossus on PS4 instead? You know, I didn't see the similarity until right now, but you climb. You climb. Yeah, you do climb, yeah. And maybe that was part of the Ice Climber's modern version, too. You just climb a Colossus instead of mountains. Right. It's just Shadow of the Colossus.

23:03 Anyway, let's kind of go around. For those of, again, if you're not acquainted, we do a vote here, and basically you need at least two to get into the Essential Games list, because there's four of us. Sean, take us through Essential Games list. You should just play Shadow of the Colossus. Um, I know that this game has a lot of importance in just the history of the NES, but don't go back and play this unless you want a lesson in frustration between janky jump mechanics and hit detection and all that stuff. All right. Well said and shortly spoken. Joe? Yeah, so I definitely agree that the jump mechanics and the hit detection were both, like,

23:46 big flaws in this game. I don't think I had as bad an experience as everyone else seemed to. I thought it was fun. I had a good time playing it, but definitely not essential. Definitely not worth going out of the way to play. Uh, yeah. Nah.

23:59 I, this one's not it. Nah. It's just, it looks good, it sounds good, but it's just not fun. I don't know. I just, it's not going on the list. But the jump, it's just, is the main point of the game. And it's, it's really hard and frustrating to jump. And it's just, I mean, we were talking about this before. I mean, Super Mario Brothers eclipses this so, so much. But Mike was telling me, uh, well, yeah, you can say it. The main programmer, yeah. The main programmer for Super Mario Brothers is the programmer here on, uh, Ice Climber. Yeah. And so that's just weird. And I also noticed the jump kind, like, it sounds a little bit like the Mario jump too. Right. It has that little, like, boah.

24:38 Right. Which I guess is like, yeah. I've always thought that Super Mario Brothers obviously has, like, the best jump mechanics on, you know, Super Mario Brothers and Super Mario Brothers 3 have great jump mechanics. But the actual, just original Mario Brothers, which kind of looks a little bit like this game, jump mechanics I thought were kind of janky in that too. It's actually what this reminded me of. Are you skipping ahead, Joe?

24:56 No, but I, I, I. Well, no, we're talking about Super Mario Brothers. That's ahead as well. Right. I think, I think I understand what Joe's saying though. And I actually, you bring up a great point that a similarity I didn't really notice is like the idea of, you know, hitting the blocks in Ice Climber and hitting the Koopas from below you by hitting the platforms in Mario Brothers. They are kind of similar. And you are right. The Mario Brothers controls very much like the Donkey Kong controls too.

25:21 It's a very tight system when it comes to the jump. I'm just so surprised that these games launched together, Ice Climber and Super Mario Brothers. But you, you know, you don't really like, they're two totally different games because, you know, forget the fact that Ice Climber is more arcadey. It's, it's the jump. The jump changes this game. And that's why I'm also a no on the essential games list here. Because the concept is pretty fun and simple. Get to the top of the mountain. I like the music, which is like, you know, it's way ahead of its time, I think, in terms of like having an actual song to identify the Ice Climber as.

25:55 But the gameplay, I, I thought I was going to be able to get over it. Couldn't. And it never made me want to go back because every time I was like, oh, I'm sure this game is good. Let me play it again. And I go play it again. And I immediately remember. Yeah. You jump once. And all of a sudden it's like, oh my gosh. Like someone release a ROM hack that fixes the jump. So like going back to one of our earlier episodes, like when I was playing Clu Clu Land, like I, I had some nice things to say about that game, but while I was playing it, I'm just like, man, I can't, I can't wait until we get further into like the library of the system.

26:29 So there's just more to do because I mean, it was, it's a very basic game. There, there is some depth to it, but you're really just going left, right, up, down. And then fight, like, this is one of the first just like character based action games that we've played and there's a lot to do, but the execution is just so frustrating.

26:50 I was, honestly, I was really excited for this one. It just didn't, that's it. I was really excited. It just was not as fun. Can I ask you guys a question just out of curiosity? If, if the, the jump mechanics and the kind of clipping through walls were fixed, would you guys find this fun?

27:06 This would be a totally different game. Yeah. I would love this game. Yeah. Maybe, I mean, you're still just jumping though. Right. Yeah. There's still not much to it. Maybe if the jump was better, it would also be easier to get through the mountains and it would feel better. And I would want to continue to climb up those mountains. Right. When you get to mountain seven and you get game over and you have to start back at the beginning, unless you do the mountain cheat, but even just like starting back at the beginning, it's like, I don't really want to climb these mountains again knowing what I'm up against with my own controller.

27:31 I think the important thing for me was, was playing two player because playing one player, it was very frustrating because I'm like, ah, like what's, what's, what's the point of going through this and like having all this trouble and like, oh, it's not working in this way. But when I'm playing against someone else, we're both trying to overcome, it's almost like the bad controls are part of what makes it work. Yeah. Would that be a jank folder? It might be the jank folder. Like take a sip, take a sip every time you, uh, your partner, you know, like doesn't make it up to your level or something like that and they get work to you. It might go in the jank folder, but I don't know. It's, it's not full jank, you know?

28:05 All right. So, so it's not essential and that's where we land off. The game is Ice Climber. It's a 1985 launch title. One of the 17 that launched with the system. And that's all the time we have for this episode of Nostalgia.

28:19 Join us next time for Kung Fu Asterisk. And be sure to play it yourself if you can. The asterisk was a joke. For more Nostalgia, please subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen and be sure to check out NostalgiaCast.com. That's N-E-S-T-A-L-G-A-C-A-S dot com. There you'll find links to the show and show notes as well as our other platforms such as Twitch, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Thank you so much for your support of Nostalgia. We thank you for spending time with us. I'm Michael Esposito. You can find me on at Esposito Film on Twitter and I'll talk to you soon.

28:57 See you soon.