[LGR Theme plays]
[fizz, sip]
Aahhh!
[typing]
When I think of classic Amiga and PC platform games,
I inevitably end up remembering Fire & Ice:
The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote.
It's known to a wider audience in Europe, I would say,
since it was a superb game for the Amiga.
But here in the U.S., I played the
crap out of the MS-DOS PC version.
This copy is still sealed, but I
owned a shareware disk back then
and beat it over and over.
And then a friend got the full
version and I never got to play it.
But now I'm a loser with money,
so I went out and bought a boxed
Amiga version to play on my Amiga 500,
and I never looked back.
"The best platformer since Rainbow Islands."
That's a bold statement.
I always found this odd since I
never saw much of a fair comparison
between the gameplay of
Rainbow Islands and Fire & Ice,
but I suppose they're both
platformers and they're awesome,
and the same designer, Andrew Braybrook,
was involved in ports of both.
Whatever. Marketing.
Inside, you get some disks,
a freaking awesome poster,
and a manual with all sorts of information,
including a rather lengthy but forgettable backstory
involving evil forces taking over the world
and Cool Coyote being chosen to save the day.
You also get a copy protection sheet
which is 100% required to play the
game in its uncracked, original form.
It's worth noting that this game does
not play on an American NTSC Amiga,
at least on the machines that I've tried it on,
but on my PAL machine here it works just fine.
The game starts off with some nice graphics
and a cool animated scene of Cool Coyote
playing the piano, barking along to the theme song.
[Amiga sound chip piano music plays]
[dog barking]
It's a pretty memorable theme song, too.
Whether you like it or not, it will get stuck in your head.
Nice and upbeat and really sets the
tone for the rest of the game to come.
[Amiga music plays]
In Fire & Ice, a coyote is you.
Cool Coyote, to be exact.
Because he's awesome.
And because he is literally cool,
with the ability to shoot balls of ice from his mouth.
[Duke Nukem voice]
Balls of ice...
[laughs]
Okay, I'm kidding.
This is your primary defense
against the bestiary of the game,
which changes from level to level.
The thing that separates Fire & Ice from
other platform games is the key mechanic.
You'll have to freeze enemies and shatter their remains
and there's a chance that they
will be holding a key fragment.
But you'll need to do so quickly
because they'll soon thaw,
becoming more resistant to your attacks.
And you die instantly if you're
touched by something deadly,
so you really need to be careful breaking enemies.
Break enough enemies, get enough key parts,
and then go towards the end of
the level to unlock the keyhole,
which will turn into a door.
You can also gain power-up weapons,
which last for a limited time.
These are often contained in different ice cubes
which are revealed when shot.
You'll get things like a spread shot,
ice grenades and several other goodies
which have a limited amount of ammo
and are activated by holding fire.
This can be odd, since you'll often
accidentally use a special weapon
by holding the button too long or
pressing it too fast in succession.
It's made even more awkward since
there's no dedicated button for jumping,
instead having to press up to jump.
I found that playing this game
with a joystick was a real pain,
so playing with a Genesis controller was awesome,
and the keyboard isn't too bad on the PC version.
Occasionally, you will run into low-flying midget clouds.
These can be shot and frozen,
producing snowflakes which can
be used as screen-clearing bombs,
by crouching and firing.
But watch out for the cloud getting too dark,
as it will start to shoot lightning, and that's never fun.
The final main game mechanic is the puppy,
sometimes referred to as Pouch.
This little guy doesn't look very much like you
and actually I think his sprite
is left over from when the game
featured a doofy-looking dog insted of Cool Coyote,
but whatever.
He serves three purposes:
to act as a secondary fire,
since it will shoot whenever you do,
to act as an extra life,
if you can get him to follow you through
the keyhole at the end of the level,
and to act as an annoyance,
since getting him there is an aggravation and a half.
The little dude just acts bizarrely,
jumping around at various speeds,
sometimes not following you across platforms,
and getting stuck off-screen,
so you'll need to keep him in
sight at all times to follow you.
But I guess since the little guy is pretty
much a walking, barking extra life,
he needs to be a pain.
Otherwise, you'd be getting extra lives really easily.
And the only other way you'll be
grabbing extra lives in each level
is the occasional giant blue dog bone.
Since you die after one hit,
obviously lives are a huge necessity.
So you'll need to keep those
little puppies following you around,
but of course this is a pain
because of all the enemies.
And although there's no timer shown,
each level has a time limit.
This is really creepy, even to this day for me.
The time of day changes several times in each level,
and eventually the time will stop
and this... thing will appear,
chasing after you until it touches you
and ruthlessly murders you.
You'll notice the map across the bottom of the screen.
Well, instead of doing something useful like
showing the current level's map,
it shows you how far along you are in the whole game.
It looks nice and is nicely animated, sure,
but it is kind of pointless.
It pretty much just shows you what you already know.
That each level is going to look sightly different.
There are several levels in each world,
each requiring you to do the same enemy-freezing,
key-collecting, puppy-thieving
routine over and over again,
with a boss at the end of each world.
Thankfully, I never got bored of
any of the game's environments,
because even as the levels'
themes in each world are the same,
there's always some new
environmental puzzle to get through,
or some small variation on the look of things
or the enemies that keep things interesting.
The problem is it's just frickin' hard.
I may have had patience to get through this as a kid,
and, yeah, I did. Several times.
But now?
No, there's no way I'm touching
this game without a trainer.
Call me a pansy. I don't care.
It's not a long game,
and in fact it's only about 45
minutes if you just grind through it,
but there's no way you're just going
to get through the whole game
in that amount of time without cheating
or being incredibly Jedi-like in your actions.
The combination of slightly floaty controls
and deadly enemy and trap placement
is, simply put, evil.
You really need to take your time and
learn these levels and enemies to survive.
Otherwise, you're not making it past Scotland.
I'd love to just show the rest of the levels
and the cool stuff that you'll find in each of them
because there's some truly memorable stuff here,
including several hidden and warp areas,
but that would turn into more
of a longplay than a review,
and those are already on YouTube.
But I just have to mention the jungle world
because of how good it looks,
the floating islands world where you
simply collect presents kind of as a bonus,
and the underwater world because...
well, dang it, I love underwater worlds
and this one is spectacular.
Plus it has some of the coolest
underwater music that I've heard,
apart from Donkey Kong Country.
[Amiga chiptune music plays]
I'd also really love to show the ending of the game
because it's one of the coolest, most pleasant
and absurdly trippy endings I've ever seen.
But seriously, it's worth playing
through and finding it for yourself.
Or just look up a playthrough online,
if you really wanna spoil it.
Fire & Ice has its share of annoyances,
but it doesn't matter.
The gameplay is unique, varied and solid.
The controls are a bit bizarre at first,
but you get used to them,
and then although you'll be cursing them a few levels in,
I don't think it's any fault of the controls.
It's just that the game is meant
to be stupidly challenging,
like so many old-school platform games
and you can't fault it for that.
It's the arcade difficulty seeping
into home games yet again.
But the payoff is worth it,
due to the fun gameplay and the
cool stuff you'll see and experience,
and this is especially true of the Amiga version.
Now, I've been showing the OCS version on this video,
but I'd also like to mention the PC version,
since that's the one I played a s kid.
In comparison, it's pretty lackluster,
since it utilizes a low-color VGA mode
and simplistic Sound Blaster effects and music.
Although if you have a Roland MT-32,
you have that as an option.
But the solid gameplay is there.
You also get a nifty little jukebox
feature in the dropdown menu,
as well as a training mode,
the ability to save and load your game,
and the ability to change the game's speed.
And minus the map at the bottom of the screen,
it seems to have all the elements of the Amiga version.
So while some technicalities might
be a little lesser than the Amiga,
it has some extra features
which really make it worth a look.
The Atari ST version kind of sucks, though,
with slower gameplay and choppier frame rates,
on top of the lower-quality graphics and sound.
That, and I couldn't get the
Genesis controller to work with it.
There's also a version for the Acorn
Archimedes, which I've never seen,
and the rare Master System version from Brazil.
This one was developed for the
European market, but it was canceled
and then released in Brazil where
the Master System was still thriving.
There are also the Amiga AGA
and Amiga CD32 versions.
The CD32 version in particular may
just be the best version out there,
although I haven't actually played it on a CD32.
Playing in WinUAE, you can notice the
incredible graphics in the background
and a CD audio soundtrack.
And that's Fire & Ice.
If you're wanting some classic
and enjoyable platform fun
with awesome everything, then check it out.
It may be tough as nails about halfway through,
but it's all good if you just keep your cool.
And who knows? You might end up like me
and consider it one of the best
platform games of the time.
[Amiga piano music plays to the end]
