Over the course of my vacation in Ocean City last week, I played a lot of 1080: Avalanche. I’m not a big fan of extreme sports games like this, but I really liked the original 1080 Snowboarding for the N64, so I had been wanting to play NST’s sequel. When the reviews for Avalanche came out, I remember reading that it didn’t measure up to the competition, and I kept this in mind when I first played it. I haven’t played any other snowboarding games like SSX3 to compare to, but you know, after playing through most of Avalanche, for what it is, I found it fairly good, and it satisfies me for a snowboarding game.
1080: Avalanche plays much like the original, with the standard match race mode where you race against a computer opponent down slopes on various difficulties, a gate challenge, trick attack, and time trial modes. Controlwise, you still use the control stick to control and turn the board, L (Z on the N64) lets you land safely by pressing it right before hiting the ground, and holding down L makes your character crouch to move faster while decreasing your ability to make sharp turns, perhaps moreso than the original 1080. A new addtion is a recovery system where if your character is about to wipeout from a bad landing or collision, the game gives you a chance to recover by rotating the control stick quickly while your character is put into slowmotion with a “Ooohhhh nooooooo!”.
Other additions include an improved trick system, and a power bar that fills up with each trick you do. So the more tricks you successfully pull off during a race, the faster you’ll be able to go, you’re character eventually being covered in ice with the power to slam into your opponent and knock them down should youget close enough. This condition will protect you from wiping out on painful collisions at the cost of emptying your power meter. The tricks in this game are much easier to pull of than in the original. Where in the original I remember there was many different button presses to rotate the character to get spins 540 degrees and higher involving the B button, where in Avalanche, all you have to do is hold R and rotate the control stick to continue the character’s rotation, even pulling off a quick back or front flip by moving the control stick up and down. Tricks can also be combined, such as doing a grab with B, X, or Y while in a spin. On certain parts of the courses, there are rails that you can ride on by holding L, and to stay on them you have to move the control stick to keep your character balanced.
The time trial and gate challenge modes play a more important role this time, requiring you to play through the courses to do some coin collecting in time trial and and earn trophies with high scores in gate challenge in order to unlock additional boards for the characters and secret boards, such as the NES controller. Other unlockables include secret characters in the vein of the original’s pandaman and a second costume for each of the five characters. Although tedious, playing through gate and time trials will help spot out and learn the various paths and shortcuts as you look for the coins and gates.
A first for Nintendo, they acquired licensed music for Avalanche from bands such as Cauterize who provide the title theme for the game. I don’t listen to much music outside of “game music”, but the addition of liscensed music with lyrics added to the personality of the game and racing down the courses. “Choke” is the theme to 1080 Avalanche. The song used for the ending theme really added to the mood of conquering the avalanche and watching your replay. I also liked “Don’t Stop Now” by Squidd (was this done in-house?) because of its mellow feeling that’s relaxing to listen to while going down the course.
Going with the whole Avalanche theme in the title, there are small events in some courses that provide obstacles such as falling boulders, collapsing bridges, and snowmobiles that impede your way. As the title suggests, the last great obstacle of the game is an Avalanche itself, pitting you in a frenzy to get down the mountain as a tide of snow comes tumbling down behind you with rumbling sound effects blarring. A danger meter on the screen alerts you to how close you are to wiping out and loosing, being safer of course ahead of the tumbling snow. The courses in the sequel are much bigger and wider than the original, with several shortcuts and paths to take along the way. The last stage of the original 1080 was a huge slope with so many ways to get down the mountain, and one of the courses in Avalanche builds off of the original course’s design to be much larger and extravagant with long thin paths that over shadow the ground below that you may fall upon to continue your descent.
Like the original 1080 though, I’m kinda disappointed that there are only 6 tracks, and that they didn’t do at least one more. The avalanche effects on the one stage are really good but I wonder if they could have gone further and used this theme for a few other stages? I just like having lots of stages to play through, but I guess its quality over quantity that counts.
A personal gripe of mine to the character roster, where is Kensuke Kimachi, my character of choice from 1080 Snowboarding? Did he get so absorbed with the Nintendo Gamecube and playing video games that he’d rather be playing 1080 Avalanche than be in it? Kensuke Kimachi, will you ever snowboard again?
1080 Avalanche may not be the premiere snowboarding game, but I’ve enjoyed it so far, and find it relaxing to play at times. I don’t know how much further Avalanche could go besides the mentioned short amount of stages, but I feel that it’s about as a good as the original. I really enjoy how the game controls, the emphasis on racing as opposed to tricks, and the neat stuff you can do like jumping over a large rock or leaping over the side of a cliff to take a shorter path down the mountain. Now all I have left to do is unlock the rest of the character’s second costumes and get the rest of the secret characters. I wonder if LAN play is any fun?
For info behind the development of the game, 1up.com has an interview with the staff of NST.
1080: Avalanche plays much like the original, with the standard match race mode where you race against a computer opponent down slopes on various difficulties, a gate challenge, trick attack, and time trial modes. Controlwise, you still use the control stick to control and turn the board, L (Z on the N64) lets you land safely by pressing it right before hiting the ground, and holding down L makes your character crouch to move faster while decreasing your ability to make sharp turns, perhaps moreso than the original 1080. A new addtion is a recovery system where if your character is about to wipeout from a bad landing or collision, the game gives you a chance to recover by rotating the control stick quickly while your character is put into slowmotion with a “Ooohhhh nooooooo!”.
Other additions include an improved trick system, and a power bar that fills up with each trick you do. So the more tricks you successfully pull off during a race, the faster you’ll be able to go, you’re character eventually being covered in ice with the power to slam into your opponent and knock them down should youget close enough. This condition will protect you from wiping out on painful collisions at the cost of emptying your power meter. The tricks in this game are much easier to pull of than in the original. Where in the original I remember there was many different button presses to rotate the character to get spins 540 degrees and higher involving the B button, where in Avalanche, all you have to do is hold R and rotate the control stick to continue the character’s rotation, even pulling off a quick back or front flip by moving the control stick up and down. Tricks can also be combined, such as doing a grab with B, X, or Y while in a spin. On certain parts of the courses, there are rails that you can ride on by holding L, and to stay on them you have to move the control stick to keep your character balanced.
The time trial and gate challenge modes play a more important role this time, requiring you to play through the courses to do some coin collecting in time trial and and earn trophies with high scores in gate challenge in order to unlock additional boards for the characters and secret boards, such as the NES controller. Other unlockables include secret characters in the vein of the original’s pandaman and a second costume for each of the five characters. Although tedious, playing through gate and time trials will help spot out and learn the various paths and shortcuts as you look for the coins and gates.
A first for Nintendo, they acquired licensed music for Avalanche from bands such as Cauterize who provide the title theme for the game. I don’t listen to much music outside of “game music”, but the addition of liscensed music with lyrics added to the personality of the game and racing down the courses. “Choke” is the theme to 1080 Avalanche. The song used for the ending theme really added to the mood of conquering the avalanche and watching your replay. I also liked “Don’t Stop Now” by Squidd (was this done in-house?) because of its mellow feeling that’s relaxing to listen to while going down the course.
Going with the whole Avalanche theme in the title, there are small events in some courses that provide obstacles such as falling boulders, collapsing bridges, and snowmobiles that impede your way. As the title suggests, the last great obstacle of the game is an Avalanche itself, pitting you in a frenzy to get down the mountain as a tide of snow comes tumbling down behind you with rumbling sound effects blarring. A danger meter on the screen alerts you to how close you are to wiping out and loosing, being safer of course ahead of the tumbling snow. The courses in the sequel are much bigger and wider than the original, with several shortcuts and paths to take along the way. The last stage of the original 1080 was a huge slope with so many ways to get down the mountain, and one of the courses in Avalanche builds off of the original course’s design to be much larger and extravagant with long thin paths that over shadow the ground below that you may fall upon to continue your descent.
Like the original 1080 though, I’m kinda disappointed that there are only 6 tracks, and that they didn’t do at least one more. The avalanche effects on the one stage are really good but I wonder if they could have gone further and used this theme for a few other stages? I just like having lots of stages to play through, but I guess its quality over quantity that counts.
A personal gripe of mine to the character roster, where is Kensuke Kimachi, my character of choice from 1080 Snowboarding? Did he get so absorbed with the Nintendo Gamecube and playing video games that he’d rather be playing 1080 Avalanche than be in it? Kensuke Kimachi, will you ever snowboard again?
1080 Avalanche may not be the premiere snowboarding game, but I’ve enjoyed it so far, and find it relaxing to play at times. I don’t know how much further Avalanche could go besides the mentioned short amount of stages, but I feel that it’s about as a good as the original. I really enjoy how the game controls, the emphasis on racing as opposed to tricks, and the neat stuff you can do like jumping over a large rock or leaping over the side of a cliff to take a shorter path down the mountain. Now all I have left to do is unlock the rest of the character’s second costumes and get the rest of the secret characters. I wonder if LAN play is any fun?
For info behind the development of the game, 1up.com has an interview with the staff of NST.
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