Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom

Snow Bros. - Nick & Tom is a 1990 Arcade Game by Toaplan, starring the eponymous guys made of snow, who trap enemies in big snowball that are then used to crush other wandering enemies with. The game is divided into 5 stages made of 10 floors each, with a boss every 10th floor which can be damaged either by pelting it with snow (but it takes a long time) or by bashing it with the snowballs made with its minions.

There's nothing more to be said, it is a simple but addictive game that received a few ports, a couple of obscure sequels and that gets often compared to Bubble Bobble, even if it's not really the case.

The game and its sequels provide examples of:

 * Big Red Devil: Well, more like Small Red Devil (for the Mooks) and Big Green Devil (for the bosses).
 * Boss Arena Urgency: The final boss of the original arcade is a very interesting example. There are two giant stone heads on each side of the screen, a small platform surrounded by flames in the middle and a descending ceiling full of spikes right above that. The heads continuously blow bubbles which can have enemies or power-ups inside, and these pop if they touch the spikes. The player has very little space to move, and the more the ceiling goes down, the faster the enemies can get him... of course, this also means that he can throw many more snowballs against the heads, but he is forced to think and act much more frantically.
 * Breath Weapon: Some enemies breathe fire.
 * Cue the Sun: The ending of the first arcade.
 * Distressed Damsel: The princesses Nick and Tom have to rescue. In a funny twist, after you defeat the final boss in the Genesis version, Nick and Tom get kidnapped and the girls (who have the same snow-based powers as them!) have to go through another 20 floors (present only in this version) to reach and defeat the true Final Boss.
 * Dual Boss: The birds in floor 30, the devils in stage 40 and the last boss. Chameleons in SB2. Cacodemons in SB3.
 * I'm Melting: What happens to the bros if they touch fire (it goes without saying).
 * An Ice Person: The bros.
 * In Name Only: Snow Bros 3 is a typical Korean rip-off with a new hero, a horribly ugly dwarf or something that turns enemies into giant footballs and rolls them. The game seems to be made about the 2002 Korea-Japan World Soccer Championship, but has nothing to do with it either.
 * Invincible Minor Minion: A sumo fighter that appears in stage 3 in unreachable parts of the floor, shoots some fireballs from his hands and disappears when all the other monsters in the floor are defeated. It can't be hit, so it is unclear if it's actually invincible.
 * Actually you can use a frozen enemy to allow yourself to reach the unrecheable platform and hit the sumo enemy a few times. It will then dissapear and leave a japanese-card-thingy that can be collected for points.
 * Lightning Can Do Anything: The intro of the Amiga version shows that the Snow Bros were regular snowmen brought to life by a bolt of lightning.
 * Name and Name: Nick & Tom.
 * Rise to the Challenge: A couple of stages in Snow Bros 2, making it even shorter.
 * Shows Damage: Every boss in the first game starts to spurt blood (!) after having been damaged enough.
 * Snowlems: In the end, that's what the bros are.
 * Spiritual Successor: The most likely one is Nightmare in the Dark, an obscure coin-op that came out 10 years after Snow Bros., featuring a hunchback who engulfs enemies in balls of fire instead of snowballs (other than this, the gameplay is exactly the same). Tumblepop is also pretty similar.
 * Stalked by the Bell: If you take too long to complete a floor, a jack o'lantern will appear. If you still don't kill all enemies, the evil pumpkin will spawn an invincible ghost relentlessly tracking you.
 * A Winner Is You: The game spells "Thank You : Game End", and then cues to the same shot of laughing enemies you get after having lost all lives.
 * World Map: In Snow Bros 2.