Masahiro Sakurai's busy at work with Super Smash Brothers 4 after finishing up the magnificent Kid Icarus Uprising (beat the game last week, really fun times, still playing it too). I imagine among other things they're trying to get a video together for E3 to hype the game, despite the fact it will probably be three years before we see it.

After he's done with Smash Brothers 4, I think it'd be really nice of Nintendo to let Sakurai either do what he wants to for an entirely new game, or give him the chance to revive Ice Climber as an eShop title.

My thinking is this: 1.) As an eShop title it can be compact yet deep (similar to Rolling Western and Pushmo) and be widely available to all audiences, and 2.) The small size will give Sakurai a chance to eat and sleep.

I know Ice Climber happens to be one of Sakurai's favorite games, hence why the Ice Climbers pop up in Smash Brothers (and I'm so glad they do, they're among my favorite characters!), so it'd interesting to see his take on putting in a new entry for the series. I picture it as a mixture of high speed precision platforming and attacking to rocket up to greater heights. Basically timing pinpoint jumps, wall jumps, belay jumps and so on, combined with mallet strikes used to smash through floors of ice and enemies. And the better your rhythm is at jumping as soon as you land, the faster you go. So if you can keep up a solid pattern of jump-smash-land-jump, you'll go up quicker and quicker.

As a two-player game (and I'd make this an eShop title that allows for WiFi and Multiplayer, since the original Ice Climber was a great multiplayer game) I'd have the two players pair off, pulling one another along. So you'd have, "Jump-Smash-Land" and the moment player 1 landed, player 2 had to quickly jump from where player 1 landed, smash through something, plan a landing, and then back to player one. So the game could become even more unpredictable.

And of course, sprinkle a few vegetables around to influence jumps. Sure you could jump ANYWHERE, but aim for the veggies and you get bonus points. Keep going without missing any to get bonus points. As the game goes on, it could get more intense with Popo and Nana leaping to avoid avalanches or flash floods. And if you play right you'd be able to keep moving the entire time. I really think it could be a great revival and the Ice Climbers could really use one. After all, Little Mac and Pit both got upgrades in the forms of Punch-Out!! and Kid Icarus: Uprising and both of those games were glorious.

Anyhoo, just an idea. Working on some new sketches for SSB4.