Ice Man is a rail-shooter arcade game developed by Superwing and distributed by Coastal Amusements in the United States and Europe. It was originally released in 2018. The game is infamous for stealing several assets from Plants Vs. Zombies and being surprisingly widespread for a bootleg game. Though it has since been altered, hacked and recalled several times.
Gameplay[]
In Ice Man, you control Ice Man (Snow Pea) as you freeze zombies that are headed towards your direction. To do this, you must move Ice Man to mechanically spray water out of his mouth and into the screen at the opposing zombie to freeze it. You need to point Ice Man at one of the zombies for around half an second before it dies. Killing a zombie gives you both coins and stars which are later used to calculate your grade at the end of the stage. You can also spray multiple zombies at the same time. The game has a powerup which sprays more water at the enemies for a few seconds. Around halfway each stage, there is a bonus plant that spews coins when you spray it. As well as the mechanical water, the game is played over fake grass featuring fog machines which create fog over the game. The game has a total of 6 stages: Island, Desert, Cemetery, Street, Volcano and Iceland. It allows you to play any stage after you beat the first level. Though it seems that the game doesn't have an ending and just loops with all the stages unlocked.
Variants[]
Ice Man is known to of received various alternate versions of itself that either attempt to make the game distance itself from Plants Vs. Zombies. Or others that are "sequels" with new levels. The version by Coastal Amusements suffered many revisions from removing the Snow Pea on the title screen to replacing the zombies with gnomes/trolls. Parts of the cabinet such as the snow peas were changed to look more generic.
Alternate versions and "sequels"[]
- Ice Man/Bing Feng Xia (Original Chinese Cabinet) Calls it Bing Feng Xia in-game but Ice Man on cabinet.
- Ice Man (Early) Original Coastal Amusement cabinet.
- Ice Man (No Snow Pea) Removes the Snow Pea on the title screen.
- Ice Man (Gnomes) Replaces the zombies with gnomes.
- Super Ice Man/Ice Man 2/Bing Feng Xia 2 (Original) First "sequel" featuring new levels. Some versions have 4 player.
- Water Shooting (Unknown) Alternate version of Bing Feng Xia 2.
- Ice Walker (Original) Possibly a localization of Bing Feng Xia by Coastal Amusements.
- Ice Walker (Gnomes) Replaces the zombies with gnomes like the version with Ice Man.
- Zombie Water Shooting (Original) Another "sequel" to Ice Man.
Rebranded[]
- Wild Island (Changes everything to be island themed.)
- West Flood (Themed around "Journey to the West".)
- Crazy River (You shoot kids with water instead of zombies.)
- Super Water Jet (Plants instead of zombies.)
- Pirates (Changes the zombies into pirates)
- Colorful Park (Changes the scenery to be more colorful)
- Water Shooting Water Monster (Seems to be some sort of multicade featuring different minigames)
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The game uses the Plants Vs. Zombies Credits Theme as the Attraction Mode
- Ice Man is infamous for running at a very low framerate.
- Various rumors of the game originally being developed as a Plants Vs. Zombies game were passed around but this is almost certainly false.
- Earlier cabinets seem to use either stolen or edited Plants Vs. Zombies artwork.