1080° Snowboarding
Best Games to Play During the Winter Olympics
Why doesn’t anyone talk about this series anymore? It’s an in-house Nintendo EAD piece of work, and for that curious detail alone, it makes this list over other games of its ilk like SSX, Snowboard Kids or Heavy Shreddin’ (obligatory nostalgia fan-service fulfilled).
1080° is heralded for creating a formula against which other snowboarding games could be modelled, and features characters who later appeared in Wave Race: Blue Storm on the GameCube. They stick out like a sore thumb on a jetski with names like Ricky Winterborn, but hey, crossovers are fun all the same.
There was a sequel on the GameCube titled 1080° Avalanche, which attempts to ramp up the ‘extreme’ aspect of snowboarding. It also tracks your speed in kilometers, which makes it indecipherable to all but the most brilliant scientists, who then go on to drink a liter of water cooled to exactly 10 degrees Celsius. The heathens.
