BeefJack Presents: The 25 Days Of Games – Day One
BeefJack loves video games. BeefJack also loves the holiday season. When you combine the two you get lots of free time, lots of fun and possibly a much higher gamerscore. As a result, we have put together our favourite 25 seasonal video game levels and maps to celebrate when snow meets pixel and Warthog meets ice.
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Is there any better way to kick off December than a look at quite possibly the ultimate in winter based level design that is the Ice Cap Zone? No, I don’t really think there is. Sonic The Hedgehog 3 was a game of epic proportions in every way imaginable. As a young boy when I first saw Sonic dart out of the side of the screen and snow board down a slope into the level’s entrance, my mind was forever blown.
Sonic and Mario were the big hitters back when, and Sonic The Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles was quite possibly Sonic’s finest hour. And for many Ice Cap Zone was a highlight of that experience itself. Since then, and along with Mario, snow levels in platform games became a must have; to this day you’ll be hard pressed to make your way through any side scrolling or even 3D adventure without hitting the white stuff at one point or another.
And while Ice Cap Zone wasn’t the first of its kind, it was for the main Sonic series. The level contained all the usual Sonic suspects, including the necessary high speed and the loops. Along with the Batniks, everything took on a more arctic approach.
There were penguin robots, boxes and springs encased in ice, those weird ball things that used to shoot fire at you now shot ice balls, and even the loops were made out of ice. Machines that froze Sonic in place, spikes replaced with icicles, bridges made of ice that shine as you move across them, and sections on top of a moving snow platform that smash through ice walls.
To this day it’s a treat to the eyes; the atmosphere portrayed here was also replicated to a certain degree in the recent Olympic Winter Games, although omitting one key factor: the music.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles will be remembered for years by many, but for most it was the haunting and majestic soundtrack that will keep ringing in gamer’s hearts. And if any the tune to Ice Cap Zone will be the one playing the loudest; for a soundtrack that is considered the height of its generation, this song is the height of that soundtrack.
A few years later Sonic Team even recreated the experience in full 3D in the Dreamcast launch title Sonic Adventure. But since its introduction, the original Ice Cap Zone has become a fan favourite, and for good reason; while snow levels were nothing out of the ordinary by this time. None had really captured the atmosphere of a snow layered landscape so perfectly like Ice Cap Zone did, by blending the existing Sonic mechanics cleverly into snow based terrain. Sonic Team gave gamers a level to remember.
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