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1080 Snowboarding (Nintendo 64) artwork

1080 Snowboarding (Nintendo 64) review


"1080° Snowboarding is a racer and an extreme sports game, but it is never both of those things at the same time, and it doesn’t fare too well with either. "

1080° Snowboarding is a racer and an extreme sports game, but it is never both of those things at the same time, and it doesn’t fare too well with either.

It was touted at the time of its release as the most realistic snowboarding game ever, and I suppose that’s a moot point now. Two generations later, developers are still struggling with the whole realism factor, and it’s certainly unfair to go back to an N64 game and expect it to at least look at all lifelike. But as a guy who’s snowboarded on a couple of occasions in his life (albeit certainly not to this extent), it’s easy for me to recognize the sort of pinpoint accuracy that 1080° frequently nails – from the distinct swooshing sound the board makes as it cuts through the snow to the gentle bobbing of the boarder’s body in tune with the texture of the landscape, something about the experience just feels genuine. Then again, I don’t recall bouncing around my environments like a pinball every time I lost control.

That’s the problem with 1080°: It’s inconsistent. You can’t rely on your character to move the way you want him to, nothing will guarantee a smooth landing when you’re airborne, and good lord, don’t even get me started on the trick system. I mean, here’s how this works, Nintendo: If I tilt the analog stick left, that’s because I want to turn left. This may seem like common sense to us gamers, but 1080° seems confused with my controller inputs, as if taking them as suggestions rather than orders. I suppose 1080° is actually a rather exciting racing game when it’s working properly (and that is most of the time), but it’s a demoralizing feeling to know that you’re not always in complete control of what’s unfolding on the screen.

The stunt system is pretty shallow by the standards of all but the pre-Tony Hawk era (when people started taking extreme sports titles seriously). Players can pull off only a limited set of grabs and spins, but you can’t combine the two, and you’ve got to be airborne to pull them off, which introduces one of 1080°’s biggest issues: The odds of landing any sort of jump are completely out of your hands. Again, it’s an instance of 1080° being wildly inconsistent: I’ve seen my character stick some of the most ludicrous landings you could imagine, only to grab a face full of ice soon afterward when an indiscernible pebble sent him airborne.

But while you’ll be hurling through the air quite frequently in 1080° (often against your will, since the tracks themselves feel like a collection of bumps, ridges and crevices in practice), the game rarely gave me a good reason for actually putting the trick system to good use. Players will likely spend most of their time in the game’s racing modes, where pulling off stunts simply puts you at an unnecessary risk. There’s a trick attack mode that I never really bothered with, and a contest mode that is Nintendo’s messy and unsuccessful attempt to merge the racing and extreme sports aspects of 1080° into one coherent package, where you travel through the game’s courses weaving through flags and executing tricks as a means of beating the timer, all the while making a few trips to an air make and half pipe. It sound fun, but the trick system’s shallow nature (added with its awkward position as the most unpredictable element in a game that is altogether unpredictable) makes this area of the game negligible.

It got me thinking though: Can I really pan one aspect of the game if it can be ignored altogether? If I can manage to enjoy 1080° as a racing game, does that mean it’s forgiven of its failure as an extreme sports title?

As a racer, 1080° packs an undeniable sense of speed, and when play control is as tight as it’s meant to be, maneuvering through the game’s twisty, uncompromising (and surprisingly good-looking) environments poses a legitimate challenge. I’ve seen a lot of complaints that 1080° doesn’t have enough tracks, but yearning for more variety strikes me as an interesting gripe to have with a snowboarding game, since one way or another, you’re always going to be racing downhill through the snow. Some of the later tracks have you boarding over grass and bare macadam, and I’m thinking: Do we really need this? Furthermore, my patience runs thin for the instances in which I’m asked to maneuver through miniature forests and mountainside villages, because any scenario in which I’ve got to rely on precise control in 1080° is a slippery slope, indeed. The unusual controls and tricky terrain give me enough to worry about as is, which is why I preferred the more straightforward opening tracks.

(Though the first two are rather hilariously called Crystal Lake and Crystal Peak, which had me anticipating a surprise showdown between Jason Voorhees and the Terminator. That’s the kind of thing that would have added at least two points to the final score.)

The GameCube sequel, 1080° Avalanche, was met with a lot of critical panning since it essentially just took the framework of this N64 release, updated the graphics, and attempted to sell it to a crowd far more accustomed to the extreme sports genre. And they tried to compete with SSX 3. Can you imagine?



Suskie's avatar
Community review by Suskie (February 20, 2009)

Mike Suskie is a freelance writer who has contributed to GamesRadar and has a blog. He can usually be found on Twitter at @MikeSuskie.

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qxz posted February 20, 2009:

Amen, Suskie. I'm somewhat comforted that someone else is critical of the "realism" Nintendo attempted to emulate here. I haven't played 1080 in about nine years, but I certainly remember it to be a messy attempt at a snowboarding title.
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Suskie posted February 20, 2009:

Yeah, I don't remember exactly how much I enjoyed it around the time it came out, but it's weird to revisit a "realistic" game like this by today's standards. Makes me wonder how the current-gen games we consider realistic will fare ten years from now...

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