A Bit of Ice, Ice Baby: Kickle Cubicle

First, I would like to take the time to express how sorry I am that I haven't been keeping up with posts. While I know this is, by no means, everyone's favorite blog to read, I was doing a pretty good job there at getting regular content out the door at least every other day. Because my PAX East cosplay hit a lot of hinges (my fabric getting stolen by my neighbors, UPS marking my address as not a real address, FedEx losing packages, and so on), I have had to spend a lot of time working on getting that ready. Hopefully, after this weekend when I finish it, I will be back up and running and writing about all those good old games you know and love.

So, without further ado, I'd like to introduce or remind all of you of a little game called Kickle Cubicle for NES. While there isn't much of a plot to this game, the premise is that there is an evil ice king, and that he has taken over Kickle's home planet, the Fantasy Kingdom. The major driver of the game is to collect red "dream bags" in which the Wicked Wizard King has imprisoned all of the citizens of the planet. The dream bags look kind of like Santa's sack, and are strewn haphazardly around each of the many, many levels.


Gameplay centers around turning enemies to ice, and using those ice blocks to complete and navigate each of the levels (which are puzzles). Doing so enables you to collect red dream bags, and hence free your fellows Fantasians. There are four "lands" which are basically the levels: Garden Land, Cake Land, Fruit Land, and Toy Land. In each of these lands are 17-18 puzzles for the player to solve. After each of those has been solved, there are 30 harder levels leading up to the end of the game.

Along with turning enemies into ice cubes to fill the holes in the puzzles that you are solving, there are a few other items that show up:

• Rock: Good for stopping ice cubes from going to far. 
• Slippery Ice: A way to get away from enemies, because they can't walk over them.
• Base Rock: Where enemies generate from.
• Spring: Shoots ice cubes across the game screen.
• Water Hole: These are not able to be filled by the ice cubes that you make out of enemies.
• Breaker: Breaks ice cubes that hit it.
• Hammer: Changes ice cube direction and hits enemies. 
• Power Rock: Freezes all enemies in a puzzle.

Despite the fact that this game seems pretty simple, because there were so many levels, which is basically unheard of for other NES games from 1990, it kept me endlessly interested. I think that they also re released this for Wii, but I have not played it. Have you? Do you love Kickle Cubicle too? If you have never played it and are interested in doing so, you can do so here.