When the ending cinema finishes, after a while the fairy queen pops up to give Dana a final challenge: a code that has to be entered on the title screen to unlock a gauntlet of super-hard levels from 101 to 150, in order to prove that he’s really a wise and brave magician. These stages play a little differently from normal ones, in that there’s either a number of roaming monsters that must be crushed with blocks or avoided, or some fire/lava rising from below that makes solving puzzles more hectic, not too unlike the original game.Įven after having defeated Druidle at the end of world 10 the game still isn’t over, though. The scene when Dana enters the fortress always plays the same way: he confronts the enemy, who after a little speech opens a trap door that makes the wizard fall into the stage. The tenth stage in each one is the boss’ fortress, which isn’t accessible until all the other nine screens in that world have been completed. There are ten worlds divided into ten stages each, for a total of a hundred screens. As a puzzle game it’s still quite tough in latter levels, but at least, being not an arcade title, gives you time to think and plan every move.
#Ice bros sprite full#
The game also eases players into understanding how the mechanics work instead of just dropping Dana into rooms full of angry monsters. Interestingly, the original Japanese version also had the option to press the Select button to undo one move, a feature that was removed from all subsequent versions. The devs however understood that the original game was too frustrating, so made this prequel much more user-friendly: there are passwords (save states in the original), unlimited continues, a clock instead of a time limit, and you can choose to start from every world and every stage within them, outside of boss levels. Naturally, as far as these games go, things start easy enough but become increasingly complicated, with other elements like pipes that Dana can use to move around, burning jars that melt ice and so on. As you can see, the gameplay becomes more in line with those block puzzle games a la Sokoban. There are pushable rocks too in some levels, but they can be pushed for only a single space. The cubes, unlike the first game, can only be conjured in the diagonal spaces below Dana, but he is able to push them to make them slide on the ground and also create ice bridges by sticking cubes together. However, Dana can’t place the cubes directly in the spot occupied by the flames and call it a day: he has to push or drop them over the flames. Dana can conjure blocks, though these are now ice cubes and the goal is to extinguish every flame on screen, thanks to said cubes. The game is again a single screen puzzle-platformer, with the emphasis on the puzzle part this time. The queen of the winter fairies, Coolmint’s ruler, entrusts novice wizard Dana with her ice wand, in order to defeat the enemy before he completely melts the island down. The story is about the frozen island of Coolmint, which is being attacked by the evil wizard Druidle and his army of flame creatures. Still, they could at least have put Dana on the cover like the Japanese and European versions did, with a somewhat Disney-esque design for the latter. The distributors technically weren’t wrong, however: being a prequel, the story has nothing to do with King Solomon, and the main themes of the game are indeed fire and ice. North American NES users know it under the name Fire ‘n Ice, with an abstract cover, complete with humorous disclaimer about the supposed addictiveness of the cartridge. Solomon’s Key 2 is a follow-up that came out in 1992 but only for Nintendo’s 8-bit console.
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