Short blog - Game review begining

Okay, this blog post is literally going to have the opening couple of paragraphs of my retro review in it - I've got myself stuck with a bit of writers block; I know what to write about but I'm having trouble getting it down so I thought I'd stop, think about it and put what I've got so far down here. It's not much and it doesn't even begin to go into gameplay, just introduces the game and my review.

So here it is:

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Ice Climbers is platforming developed and published by Nintendo made in 1985 for their Nintendo Entertainment System (commonly know as a NES). It is a game with 25 years behind it and as such can be considered a ‘Retro Game’ and in comparison to mainstream games that are made today can be considered very basic. However, despite this its development process would have been one that was well thought out and every gameplay aspect designed in relation to what the player could get out of it. It is with both these things in mind that retro games are for looking critically at how games are made and related design issues and this is the basis on which my review of Ice Climbers is written.

One way to look Ice Climbers is to break down the game and look at it in game defining terms as outlined in Greg Costikyan’s article ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design’ – the terms being interaction, goals, struggle, structure and endogenous meaning. The first thing to discuss in terms of gameplay is the basis of the whole game and its unique defining gameplay feature (at the time of its development) which is that it is a vertical platformer.

This one feature of the game essentially is the basis for the ‘goal’ of the game as the objective of the game is to get to the top of the mountain, avoiding enemies (though they are another element that will be discussed later) along the way.

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So, 'til next time - that's all folks!