Icicle Mountain

Icicle Mountain
File:IceClimbersSymbol.png
Universe	Ice Climber
Appears in	SSBM
Availability	Starter
Tournament legality Melee Singles: Banned Doubles: Banned

Icicle Mountain is a stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Due to its random nature and high vertical scrolling speed (rendering slow jumpers at a severe disadvantage), Icicle Mountain is disliked by most players and generally banned in tournaments.

In Adventure Mode, the mountain path is dominated by Freezie-pushing Topis and Polar Bears that force the stage to "jump" upward when they hop. Players can jump along the top of the stage to force their way higher to quickly face-off against the Ice Climber team, or climb higher to reach the two platform summit.

In All-Star mode, this stage is played on when the player faces the Ice Climbers and any of their teammates.

Origins

A level in Ice Climber featuring two icicles.

This stage comes from Ice Climber. The goal of Ice Climber is to try to get to the top of the level while dodging obstacles and enemies. In Ice Climber players would have to jump to break through blocks in order to progress through the stage. This stage also have destructible blocks that can be destroyed to get through. Also in Ice Climber are icicles that would form and fall. If the player got hit by the icicle he or she would lose a life. Icicles can be seen in this stage, but they do not damage players. If the player takes too long in a stage in Ice Climber a Polar Bear would appear and jump to make the screen scroll up. This stage scrolling down in this stage could be a reference to the Polar Bear being up to move the stage down (considering the levels don't move on their own in Ice Climber like it does here). [1]

There are two songs for Icicle Mountain. One is the title screen of Ice Climber (which is also the same song used for the bonus stages) mixed in with the music used for the mountain stages. The other song is the music for the Balloon Flight mini-game of Balloon Fight. [2]

Description

Unveiled at E3 2001, Icicle Mountain is a stage that constantly moves up or down (mostly up), therefore making it a sidescroller. It moves infinitely up/down, although the speed varies. It has platforms that are flat as well as diagonal. There are ice blocks that can be destroyed with one hit, both large and small ones. Many sections of platforms are slippery as they are made of ice. There are also platforms that drop if one stands on them too long. If playing as Pikachu or Pichu, once using Thunder, it is instantly rendered useless, due to the fact that floors are constantly generated, permanently blocking the move.

Tournament legality

Icicle Mountain is banned at tournaments, primarily due to the fact that it favours characters with good jumping prowess; additionally, its primary focus for players is to survive, rather than actually fight. The upper blast lines and horizontal blast lines are also close to the stage and the frequent blocking of the lower blast line gives a disproportionate advantage to vertical and horizontal killers, while undermining spikes and meteor smashes.

IceTop

When the game is hacked in the Debug Menu with cheat devices such as Action Replay, the stage IceTop is found on the list of hackable stages. However, it is only Icicle Mountain without any music. Some people simply edit the audio settings through normal play, disabling the music before playing the Icicle Mountain stage, allowing the same stage mechanics. It is possible that IceTop simply was a test stage to test that function. It could also be related to reaching the top of the vertically-scrolling Adventure Mode version.

Trivia

• Any AI character tends to die easily when the stage starts scrolling quickly upwards. This is due to the fact that the AI will only ascend one platform at a time. Frequently, this leads to the character not moving quickly enough to escape the lower blast line, resulting in an SD.