Icicle Mountain

Icicle Mountain
Universe	Ice Climber
Appears in	Melee
Availability	Starter
Tracks available	Icicle Mountain Balloon Fight (Alternate)
Tournament legality Melee Singles: Banned Doubles: Banned

Icicle Mountain (アイシクルマウンテン, Icicle Mountain) is a stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee.

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 still 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.

Stage 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, one should be aware that Thunder is completely useless, due to the fact that floors are constantly generated, permanently blocking the move.

Tournament legality

Icicle Mountain is universally banned at tournaments, primarily because its focus for players is to survive rather than actually fight. Additionally, it heavily favours characters with superior jumping prowess. The upper and horizontal blast lines are close to the stage, allowing for some very early KOs, and there are impassable platforms throughout the stage that can block a potential KO. The frequent blocking of the lower blast line also undermines spikes and meteor smashes, as well as minimizing edge guarding skills.

Origin

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 has 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, causing the player to lose a life if this caused them to be forced offscreen. The screen 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).

Trivia

• Any AI character tends to SD easily when the stage starts scrolling quickly upwards. This is because the AI will ascend only 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.