Retro Achievement Mastery 133 - Fire n' Ice
SHOULD be more well known
I love how god awful this cover is. What the hell is this. This is supposed to make me buy your game? No wonder this sold poorly here.
So I was watching a friend, Mister Radon, play some games, and someone made him play this for a bit. I was like “WOAH. THIS LOOKS LIKE IT’S EXACTLY MY JAM WHY HAVE I NEVER SEEN THIS”? So I played it the following day and DEVOURED it.
Fire n’ Ice is the sequel to classic Tecmo title “Solomon’s Key”. Known in Japan specifically as Solomon’s Key 2, it’s actually a prequel, showing the first adventure of the great wizard DANA! An evil fire wizard is attacking the peaceful ice island, and Dana has been chosen by the fairies who rule the island to stop him!
It’s a single screen puzzle game. You get into a level, and then your goal is simple. Push ice onto the fire. Once all the fire is gone, you move onto the next level! Complete all 100 levels and you’re good! You can push ice, or climb up on it if it’s already up against something else. You can also create ice, but ONLY down and diagonal from you. So it can be pretty difficult to go upwards, you need to prepare ahead of time if you want to climb back up. But using these tools, you can get through all the puzzles, creating ice blocks, then clearing the way so you can push them onto the fires.
It’s really rewarding, and honestly, AMAZING for the NES? It’s a late NES game, but honestly it feels more like an itch.io puzzle game, or a modern NES homebrew. The animations are fantastic. Dana has a lot of personality, like his little shimmy when he’s up under a ceiling (or ice block). The fire is constantly wiggin’ out, and the music is really chill and fun. And every now and then you get a BOSS LEVEL, which is a screen that’s constantly scrolling and looping, which makes for some interesting gameplay, cause you often need to build a way up, but without blocking yourself on the second loop.
After you beat the 100 levels and the final boss, you can sit through the credits and get a code to unlock 50 more bonus levels. This game has SO MUCH CONTENT. It is CHOCK FULL of puzzles, and there’s really no stinkers in here! There were no puzzles I played and went “wow that fucking blew?” They can be challenging, but very rewarding to push through.
All in all, this is a FANTASTIC NES game, that frankly more people should know about. I HIGHLY recommend it.