I do love it when a retro game makes an unexpected comeback, and games don't get much more retro than Beyond the Ice Palace. It's been decades since the game—so old one version of it was sold on tape—made its debut, and now a sequel's appeared, boldly calling itself Beyond the Ice Palace 2 as if anyone outside of the development team or people who think 64KB is plenty of RAM still remember the first one ever existed.
I'd be lying if I said the original was some beloved lost wonder of the '80s. It's not. Not even close. The most generous reviews from the time could politely be called "middling" (imagine how rough a game had to be if it scored that badly back when some of us still thought pushing up to jump was a perfectly reasonable idea). It didn't light up the charts. It wasn't some obtuse masterpiece that only became appreciated and understood years later either, the sort of thing gamers with extremely good taste might name drop to prove their impeccable credentials.
The truth is it was a game where a nameless barbarian-like hero wearing a stunning pair of lime green boots climbed a lot of ladders somewhere disappointingly ice-free, dropped dead the instant anything sneezed in his general direction, and after too much hardship the only reward was an ending that did nothing more than print (spoilers incoming) "WELL DONE YOU HAVE VANQUISHED EVIL FROM THE LAND" in a simple box.
But even with all that against it, I could still tell, even way back then, that there was something about it, a glimmer of a good idea lurking under the surface. It was there in the enchanting promise of fantasy adventure scribed on the scroll shown on the back of its box. It was there in the unusual landscapes and bizarre monsters. Just sometimes, when I was in the right frame of mind, I could imagine the various dead-ends and patience-testing enemy spawns were something more than irritating, that I was bravely fighting my way through dangerous territory to right some magical wrong, hounded by a relentless stream of enemies as I went.
This sequel is the game I used to pretend the first one was all those years ago.
It's not quite a metroidvania—there's no labyrinthine mess of connected hallways to deal with, and certainly no map with an endless supply of doors and other points of interest to refer to—but, like the original, it's much more expansive than a linear left-to-right adventure. There are secret treasures buried in hidden alcoves and tucked away in shadowy corners or behind timed switches. I might pass by some huge area I need to come back to later (made easy thanks to the teleporters scattered around), and there are plenty of smaller side rooms I may never find at all unless I choose to go exploring.
The old memories of a game where death was swift, merciless, and frequent, have been repurposed into something more interesting that another disheartening trip back to the title screen. The environment now looks as harsh as it used to feel, old struggles now manifesting as piles of skulls, casual conversations with people who aren't quite as dead as they should be, and rotting bodies swinging from long abandoned nooses. Stiff platforming segments have been reborn as true tests of skill, expecting me to swing across gaps, avoid floors covered in spikes below and chandeliers crashing down from above, and nimbly dash through the air.
There's a brutal but balanced physicality to all of my interactions with this intimidating landscape. Many doors are pulled off their hinges rather than politely opened. Skeletons and crawling zombies must be quickly crushed underfoot if I want to truly finish them off. An enemy shield is something to shatter or rip out of its owner's hands, and a protective mask can be torn off a monster's face, leaving it vulnerable to attack.
Combat feels familiar. Like in the original, enemies can and do swoop in from all sides with little warning, and thoughtless leaps into the unknown are a great way to get into a lot of very painful trouble, but now I have the tools to deal with anything that comes my way. The hero's chains are a versatile weapon, able to viciously tug at a boss' weak points, attack from any angle, and even defensively whirl around to destroy incoming projectiles. Ledges can be grabbed and hooks latched on to, even while I'm in mid-air. I feel confident and capable—just the way I wanted Beyond the Ice Palace to make me feel the first time around.
This isn't just the game my younger self imagined I was playing as I waggled a Quickshot joystick (suction cupped to the table, as the gods intended) in front of a CRT monitor that weighed as much as a baby elephant. No, this is the game I want everyone else to think of first when they see the words "Beyond the Ice Palace". This unbelievably late sequel offers so much more than another dose of vapid nostalgia or a slightly patronising tour of Comfortably Familiar Things I'm Supposed To Remember: The Game. It's never "retro" by design. It never deliberately does something weird and abrasive just because that's how the '80s did it, and it never shies away from being fun or fair for fear of being too modern either.
The developers took a rare and precious chance to really analyse all the ways the original almost worked and then finally made them a reality. It's a great sequel that fits perfectly into what little lore the original had, but it's also more than capable of standing on its own merits too, as deserving of anyone's time, attention, and funds in an increasingly overwhelmed space as any other.
I just hope I don't have to wait another 37 years before Beyond the Ice Palace becomes a trilogy.
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