1080° Snowboarding

Release Date - Feabruary, 1998 (JP)

Developer - Nintendo EAD

Publisher - Nintendo

Platform - Nintendo 64

Snowboarding games were not in short supply in the late nineties and early noughts, with every major platform hosting at least one and sometimes multiple snowboarding games. Many of them were good, some weren’t, but only a few were great. 1080° Snowboarding on N64 can be counted amongst the most special.

Snowboarding was a sport on the rise in the 90s, with growing levels of participation and recognition through the decade. Indeed, it was at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan where snowboarding became an official Olympic event for the first time. The sport had come to the world of video games in prior years with the much loved Steep Slope Sliders on Sega Saturn and Snowboard Kids on the Nintendo 64 (both in 1997). PlayStation also had their own snowboarding series with Cool Boarders releasing in 1996. The Nintendo 64 was about to receive another dedicated snowboarding game, although this one was significantly more impressive technically and more grounded in realism than the cartoony and whimsical Snowboard Kids.

Some of the tracks are downright vertigo-inducing.
(All screenshots taken from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdi0XKVOUlE)

The bulk of the gameplay in 1080° Snowboarding is focused on racing down slopes, with the added ability to perform tricks and spins. Players can choose from different courses that have increasing number of ‘runs’ per difficulty. Mastering both speed and tricks is essential to completing the game. All this could be done with one of five different characters available to the player, each with their own strengths and weaknesses to cater to different playstyles or different events (by cracking high scores, you can even unlock a handful of secret characters too!). Beyond the single player campaigns, there was an impressive two-player mode where you could race your friends and challenge for high scores with tricks in split-screen.

The characters all hang out in the ski lodge for the select screen. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

The game was put together by a skilled team of programmers and producers, having worked on titles such as Mario 64 (1996) and Tekken 3 (1997) prior to this project. Technically the game was also very impressive, sporting some slick graphics and a funky soundtrack with techno-inspired beats and even sampled vocals. Perhaps most notable was the impressive articulation and modelling of the snowboarders themselves. Great care was taken to get a realistic look to the models and for their animations to be detailed to provide a sense of realism.

You get a really nice sunset effect here, races can take place at different times of day.

The game looked pretty, even when suffering from the cringe-inducing accidents; characters would react differently depending on how hard they hit the ground and from which direction! Not only this, but when travelling at high speeds, the wind would cause the character’s clothes to ripple as they hurtled down the icy tracks. The bending limbs also would become part of the gameplay, with the Z-trigger on the controller being used to bend the boarder’s knees! This was crucial to do during landing from big jumps for example.

Note the ‘Best Time’ in the bottom corner. Get cracking and beat those high scores!

The snow itself was gorgeous too, as it gets thrown up in the air as you landed a jump, and even waves of snow gracefully arcing from the board as you carve your way through. All this takes place on a backdrop of different weather effects ranging from clear blue skies to foggy blizzards. Different types of snow would affect the player's handling too, so fresh snow would behave very differently to ice for example. It added further depth to the game, as players would have to react differently to the different surfaces they raced over.

Another example of the impressive attention to detail; check out that reflection on the ice!

Indeed upon release the graphics were highly praised by critics, but they also praised the technical and deep gameplay that rewarded player persistence and practise with better tricks and faster times. The game was a commercial success as well, providing a stand out ‘realistic’ title on the Nintendo 64 which to this point had a perception of mostly being filled with more anime or cartoon styled games. 1080° Snowboarding would go on to sell well over a million copies, and cemented itself as one of the best sporting titles on Nintendo’s console.

Ahhh, blue skies. 1998 was a great time for picturesque video game screens…