Icicle Mountain

Icicle Mountain
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. Unveiled at E3 2001, It 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 (SSBM), once using Thunder, it is instantly rendered useless, due to the fact that floors are constantly generated, permanently blocking the move. Due to its random nature, Icicle Mountain is disliked by most players and rarely used in tournaments.

In Adventure Mode, the mountain path is dominated by Freezie pushing Topis and Polar Bears that force the stage to scroll 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

The design of Icicle Mountain was heavily influenced by the original Ice Climber game. The game itself was based on the idea of making one's way up the mountain by breaking tiles, riding moving "escalator-like" platforms, and catching clouds as they zipped by while attempting to collect vegetables on the way to the top. These infamous details were removed from Icicle Mountain stage. The only aspects that remain in the level are the moving stage and the bottomless pit.

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. Alternatively, it could also be the case that this was a fully separate Ice Climber stage in development, perhaps influencing their stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Summit, which would be the top of Icicle Mountain.

Trivia

Any AI character tends to die easily when the stage starts scrolling 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.