1080° Snowboarding on the N64
And as you can see from the title I've decided to do a face off against a similar unplayed game...
Cool Boarders 2 on the Playstation
I actually have Cool Boarders 3 (PS1) and Cool Boarders Burrrn (for the Dreamcast) also unplayed but the second one was closest to the release date of 1080 and I wanted to make it as fair a fight as possible. I might do a double-header for the other two if either is selected later on.
1080° Snowboarding was released originally in February 1998 - almost exactly halfway between the second and third Cool Boarders’. It’s a great looking game even today, and it embraces the very un-Nintendo styles of the late ‘90s snowboarding scene pretty well. The art and music direction sets the tone for what is a surprisingly realism-focused approach for the whole game; the snow effects and physics in particular are impressive for 1998.
Cool Boarders 2 also doubles down on the ‘extreme’ design choices. From the music to the text font this is unmistakably a turn of the century ‘esports’ title. Graphically it’s a notch behind 1080° Snowboarding with a seemingly lower polygon count leading to a general blockier look. I don’t know what the technical term is for being able to see the joins in the environment but this is such an issue that it almost looks like a deliberately retro pastiche made by some hipster indie developer just last year. The physics too are less realistic, you always feel ‘on the snow’, whereas in 1080° Snowboarding the snow gives a much better impression of being a changeable, moving surface.
So 1080° Snowboarding definitely wins on presentation and (relative, this is an N64 game) realism, but when I head off to the slopes to learn the tricks and control systems for both games it’s a bit of a different story.
1080° Snowboarding is very deliberately not a grab-and-tweak based game, the most complex tricks are based on rotation - with the titular 1080 spin requiring three complete rotations of the analogue stick with three changes of button press. The same trick in Cool Boarders 2 is performed by simply holding left or right or right on the d-pad for a bit before a jump. The approaches couldn’t be more different and as a result 1080° Snowboarding only has 25 tricks, nearly half that of Cool Boarders 2.
And since I mentioned the d-pad I should probably clarify that analogue control is not an option in the Playstation game - and you have to wonder how much the systems’ controllers influenced the very different ethos’ of these titles. The N64 offering appears very self-conscious of using the analogue stick. The few grabs in the game are performed by pushing in one of eight directions on it, and only the main two face buttons are used in general play along with the Z and R triggers. The PS1 game is also conspicuous in its use of all of the controller's trademark 4 triggers and only really uses two face buttons in combination with them.
Deciding which scheme is better in 2020 is a difficult task. The controls of 1080° Snowboarding work well and it delivers exactly the kind of experience that it’s aiming for; in that regard it’s a definite success. The issue is that this is the game equivalent of a Panda Bear: It looks great and feels nice but it’s a complete evolutionary dead-end. Playing it for the first time today is like trying to ride a bike with your hands on the pedals while controlling the brakes with your ears. The next esports game to put analogue control front-and-centre was Skate, 10 years later, and even that doesn’t really bear any similarity to 1080° Snowboarding. As such, despite an ostensibly more complicated set-up, I found Cool Boarders 2 a much easier game to get to grips with as it fell instantly in line with the muscle memory I’ve built up through decades of playing the Tony Hawk and SSX series’.
When it comes to looking at the games as a whole it presents an interesting dichotomy. When you directly compare the things the games have in common; Depicting the sport, the snow, and representing the style of both - 1080° Snowboarding is a clear winner, in these aspects it’s just all round a classier act. But when you look at the way the two approaches differ, spins or grabs, simple or complex, racing or stunts, realism or OTT thrills… Cool Boarders 2, it turns out, is just a lot more fun to play.
Would I have thought the same if I’d played these in 1998? Hard to say - This was before Tony Hawk's Pro Skater entered the scene and pretty much defined how all extreme sports titles would play for the following decade, so it’s possible I would have enjoyed 1080’s approach more had I played it at the time… but we’ll never know. What I do know is that, as far 2020 is concerned:
The winner of the 1080° Snowboarding vs Cool Boarders 2 face-off is:
Cool Boarders 2
Despite lagging the Nintendo game in every obvious, technical regard, Cool Boarders 2 was the game I wanted to keep playing, and in the end there’s nothing more important than that.
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