Fire & Ice: The Daring Adventures of Cool Coyote is a Platform Game released in 1992 for the Amiga and later ported to the Atari ST, MS-DOS, and the Sega Master System. It was developed by Graftgold, and the lead programmer was Andrew Braybrook of Paradroid fame.
Not to be confused with the NES puzzle-platformer Fire 'n Ice (a.k.a. Solomon's Key 2) or Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice.
This game provides examples of:
- Bamboo Technology: The boss at the end of the level "The Mechanical Wonder" (the last jungle level).
- Bigfoot: Probably what the first boss is supposed to be.
- Bonus Level: The whole sixth group of levels, which serves as a reward for making it through the extremely-difficult previous group of levels (the temple area).
- Brown Note: One special weapon lets Cool Coyote bark, dealing damage to all enemies in front of him.
- Build Like an Egyptian: The seventh "group" of levels in the game, which actually only has one level (which is where you encounter the final boss).
- Collision Damage: Both you and the enemies can deal collision damage. If you touch a frozen enemy, it kills them and you are unharmed; if you touch an unfrozen enemy, you lose a life and the enemy takes some damage (which might freeze it depending on how tough it is).
- Copy Protection: In the retail PC version (at least), between levels, it prompts you for copy protection codes that you must find from cross-referencing the game manual with a codesheet. If you get it wrong, there will be no key pieces in the next level, which prevents you from progressing any further.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: The title screen features Cool Coyote playing the theme song on a piano and singing (well, barking) along.
- Directionally Solid Platforms: There are some of these, including the invisible ones.
- Floating Continent: The bonus levels consist of lots of floating pieces of land, with several trees and waterfalls. (It looks suspiciously similar to something from a Roger Dean painting.)
- Funny Animal: The player character, the puppy NPCs that you rescue, and some types of enemies are depicted as cartoon animals that walk upright on their hind legs.
- Green Hill Zone: The second group of levels qualifies as such; it follows a Scottish highlands theme, with bagpipe-style background musicnote to match the theme. The first level in this group takes place in a green hilly area; in subsequent levels in this group, you proceed across a castle's moat; and the last levels in this group take place within the castle itself.
- Invisible Block: There are invisible ice blocks which when shot will become visible and emit special weapon powerups (similar to how power-ups are obtained in the Turrican games). They're directionally solid platforms, so that you can't hit your head on them while jumping. Sometimes it's necessary to stand on them in order to reach some places. There are also some platforms which will only appear when certain conditions are met.
- Kill It with Ice: Your standard attack is to shoot ice spheres that freeze the enemies, then touch them.
- Level Goal: It's a locked door that requires all the parts of a key to open, which you must get from enemies.
- Made of Explodium: The skier enemies can explode upon hitting the ground or the sides of the level.
- Mercy Invincibility: As a consequence of the usual collision-damage mechanics of this game, you can defeat enemies by touching them while mercy invincibility is in effect.
- Mook Maker: The magician enemies conjure up blowdart-shooter enemies every few seconds while they're onscreen; you can be totally swarmed with the conjured enemies if you don't beat the magician quickly. The "mechanical wonder" boss also spawns blowdart-shooters during its final attack pattern.
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Nintendo Hard: The Amiga version features no ability to continue or save at all, and has somewhat unresponsive controls (specifically, a slow rate of left/right acceleration). The PC port has more responsive controls, and the shareware PC version by Streetwise Interactive has a save-game system (although there is another PC version which does not). - Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: Some pits lead to secret areas, or are secret exits leading to the next level.
- Nostalgia Level: The bonus levels are an homage to Andrew Braybrook's earlier game Gribbly's Day Out (for the Commodore 64, released in 1985), having similarites in their overall level designs, music, NPCs, etc.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Although you respawn at the last place where you were touching the ground (not including moving/temporary platforms), so effectively "lives" in this game are much like hit points.
- One-Winged Angel: The final boss starts out as a hooded and cloaked figure that throws fireball-chains and teleports between the two thrones in the boss room, and then becomes a scary face made out of flames with a tail of fireballs that chases you around.
- Personal Rain Cloud: The game has three different types of these:
- The first type floats around randomly (though never going too far away from its starting point), and will drop snowflakes (which can be collected and used as smartbombs) and then lightning (which is a hazard) after being shot enough times. (A few of these even have key pieces hidden in them, which will be released along with the snowflakes when the cloud is snowing.)
- The second type acts like the first, except that it is permanently in lightning-mode (shooting it has no effect).
- The third type isn't an environmental feature of levels, but rather is one of the special weapons available to the player. When this special weapon is used, a stationary cloud will appear and begin to rain, and the raindrops deal damage to any enemies they hit.
- Playable Epilogue: After defeating the final boss, you then proceed through an enemy-less "level" with eye-catching brightly-colored background graphics and upbeat 1990s-style rave/techno background musicnote as part of the ending-credits sequence.
- Reformulated Game: The Sega Master System version has major differences from the original Amiga version, such as different level maps and different game mechanicsnote , to the point where it hardly even qualifies as being a port.
- Sequential Boss: Other than the final boss (see above), both the "mechanical wonder" boss in the jungle area and the dragon/eyeball boss in the temple area require you to first hit specific parts of them until they fall off, at which point they change their attack patterns and you can then hit them anywhere that remains.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The first group of levels. (The levels progress from cold to hot, explained by Cool Coyote having an elemental affinity to ice.)
- Stalked by the Bell: When the level timer (represented by a slowly-melting snowflake) runs out, fireballs will constantly appear and fly at you.
- Stock Ness Monster: It's present in the last one of the "Scottish castle" levels, and acts basically as a group of moving platforms and hazards rather than as an enemy.
- Turns Red: Similar to in Rainbow Islands / Bubble Bobble, if an enemy remains frozen for long enough, it will thaw out, and re-freezing it requires hitting it more times than it took to freeze it the previous time.
- Updated Re-release: The Amiga CD32 version of the game featured slightly more detailed graphics in places, some additional visual effects (such as a giant snowflake appearing in the background when you use a bomb), and a redbook soundtrack consisting partly of arrangements of the original music and partly of completely different music (the tracker music soundtrack from the original version is still present and can be enabled from a menu).
