For those of you following these daily posts as they come in you surely HAD to expect SSX to make the list, right?
For a good decade or so we used to live in an age were Snowboard games were a common sight.
The original PlayStation had it’s “Cool Boarders” series. Nintendo had “1080 Snowboarding” both on Nintendo 64 and GameCube, and the XBOX had “Amped”. Plus like with any popular game genre you had your fair share of ‘poor mans…’ attempts at some snowboard gaming recognition.
It wasn’t until “SSX” (for PlayStation 2) and it’s multi-platform (style over new substance) sequel “SSX Tricky” came along that the gaming world as a whole seemed to all agree it was favourable, similar to how the world as a whole fell in love with the Tony Hawks series a few years prior to this.
SSX really nailed the balance of fluid controls, some great mountain stages, and plenty of air time. The latter took away from any claims the game had to call itself realistic, but handed that over in favour of letting you (the player) feel creatively free to find your own ways to make the mountain your own, be inventive with your trick options, and asking you to push for the most of every little or big opportunity you could make.
Similar to game series like ‘Burnout’ and ‘Tony Hawks’ people would and will to this day argue debate which of the SSX games is actually the best version.
- SSX – PlayStation 2 [2000]
- SSX Tricky – Multi-Platform [2002]
- SSX 3 – Multi-Platform [2003]
- SSX On Tour – Multi-Platform [2005]
- SSX Blur – Wii [2007]
- SSX (reboot) – Multi-Platform [2012]
I want to say personally I spent the most time on; Tricky, SSX3, and then Blur. The original I only ever played at a friends house a handful of times, and the reboot I bought, but sold it not long after with intention to re-buy and re-try it once the price had dropped. Then just 2 weeks ago I picked it up off Amazon for £6 used.
A good thing to note for people who were aware of it at the time is that in 2012 a lot of EA and other companies games started using one time use codes to give the original purchaser of a game access to the online portion of the game. SSX [2012 reboot] was one of these games but all these games now have changed so that you can unlock the online for free.
I haven’t got round to putting in some time on the 2012 reboot yet to really give it a fair comparison from a personal perspective, but compared to it’s predecessors it has a decent review average online, and given that it’s also cheap to get hold of you have an easy way to answer your fix. SSX is backwards compatible so can be bought or played through an XBOX One, doesn’t seem to be stream-able on PSNow at present though, so PlayStation 3 is your go-to for Sony.
Nintendo has had some good fortune with the series for it’s exclusive SSX Blur game which had a pretty interesting way of using the controller and being a decent sort of “best of” hits of the series formula. Going back further to GameCube and SSX On Tour actually has playable Mario, Luigi, and Peach in the game, along with character audio and a “Nintendo Village” stage too.
Pretty much any game you pick up will give you a great amount of fun single player. The Multiplayer is usually a blast too if you have an equally skilled friend to pit yourself against. It would be nice to see a HD remake of one of the older games, or even a new entry in the series to try and bring the genre back to life though for the multiplayer front.
Other than getting into SSX [2012] I could easily be tempted to pick up the recently released “Steep” for one of the next gen systems over the next year and give that a spin if I hear good things, or see it at a more irresistible price. If so, that could potentially get some spotlight next December if this feature comes back in 2017, along with some of the earlier Snowboard game name drops from this article for their own merits.
