The way I started with the Ice Climbers was pretty interesting I think.
Around the time Melee came out, I was the N64 smash player in my town. I could play with anyone pretty well and knew a lot of things about the game. It was and still is my favorite game
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When one of my friends finally unlocked everything, he decided to have a tournament with people from my school. This was about 2 months after the release of Melee and I didn't play it much because I didn't have my own copy. (My mom was strict about the game ratings, and freaked out when she saw the ray gun shock people on the N64 version. She threw my N64 game out so I didn't have that either.
I was in the 6th grade back then.)
25 Characters were a bit overwhelming for me at the time and I didn't know who to use. I agreed on not using any N64 characters, so it made choosing difficult. I knew Game and Watch well enough but I didn't feel like using a character that no one else knew about, because I didn't think it was fair. Game and Watch games were my introduction to video games.
So I decided to use a character that none of us knew about, the Ice Climbers. And they only stage we played on was Mushroom Kingdom because we were noobs back then.
Everytime I started a match, I would end up grabbing the edge, and Nana would die. I didn't look at the match any different, because I didn't know any better, and I was able to defeat everyone I faced. In that match I figured out the side b recovery with them. I used that attack and saw that he spun around. I figured that if he spun like that, I could rise off the ground like I did with Mario and Luigi's tornado in the N64 version. Especially since I died using Up-b Solo.
A year passed since then and I finally had my own copy of Melee. My goal in that game was like any other game I owned, to unlock everything I could without cheating, and beat the game, because I only had one controller for a really long time. And my parents wouldn't let me go to my friends house that often. As soon as I started playing it, I tried the Ice Climbers out in Adventure mode on Normal. When I got to Mario and Peach, I beat them without taking any damage. And I still had Nana. I destroyed them because everytime I did an attack, Nana lagged, and would either do the same attack afterwards or do another attack in the same direction. I never knew it was called "desynching" nor did know that it was an advanced technique until last year. I also didn't think it was all that hard. I never tried to learn the wavedash because I thought and still think it was a discovered glitch. It would happen either from sidestepping an attack or from just attacking.
I also desynched through dash-dancing, because I though running back and forth would make my character run faster (it was true for Mario Party. Plus shaking the stick in Mario Kart 64 while drifting gave boosts.) And I didn't want to skid because the Ice Climbers have low traction. (I mained Luigi in N64 and had that problem.) And it confused my friend during the N64 era.
As for grabs, I love grabbing. I have a tendency to go overboard with grabbing probably because throws in N64 could kill. But I also learned from a Lv. 9 Ice Climber that Nana could attack while Popo was holding the opponent. I would usually just up-tilt for multi-hits at low percents, and smash at higher percents. I also found out about wobbling and block locking through down throw to meteor smash, and thought it was cheap to use against another person.
And like almost anyone else, people who didn't face me before hand told me that the Ice Climbers were the worst in the game and that I was a pansy (I was one of the strongest people in my school, and I had a full grown beard in 7th grade. Think about how that looks.)
But proving people wrong is always fun. They fear me now
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Later on that year, when I faced my friends, they would always be happy when they took out Nana. But I would still beat them. And when they went for me, they would still end up killing Nana first. That was because I would block on reaction, and Nana would end up running into the attack, or I would block and she wouldn't have her shield up in time.
And now I've gone from causal player in Smash to competitive wanna-be (I was a competitive Mario Kart 64 player back then.) I still use the Ice Climbers because my friends said they got better in Brawl. I don't necessarily agree with them, but I am still pretty good with them.
EDIT: I doubt anyone's going to read all of this.
