Thanks to brand licensing issues at Sony, Cool Boarders Burrrn is the Japanese name for a game that was known in the US as Rippin Riders, and in PAL regions as Snow Surfers.
I didn’t choose to use the Japanese name in the title by chance, I’m actually playing the Japanese version on my European PAL console using the Action Replay CDX demo disc that came on the cover DC UK magazine back in June 2000 - and if you don’t know about that drama this article in Eurogamer is a fascinating read.
I remember finding out about a free disc that bypasses region locks from a friend, and then scouring every newsagent and corner shop in the town where I lived in search of a copy. After finding at least a couple from which the CD had been stolen, I eventual unearthed one in particularly dingy corner of the main shopping centre - I had no Japanese or American games to play with it at the time, but over the years I’ve picked up a small import collection and it has been an invaluable asset. Compared to the prices I’ve paid for other multi-region solutions on other hardware, £2.95 for a magazine I can’t remember if I ever read is a bit of a bargain.
Burrrn is actually the third game in the Cool Boarders series developed by UEP Studios (pronounced Wep). The game with the 3 in the name came after Sony had purchased the rights and handed them to a second party studio called Idol Minds.
This all led to a situation where what we have is, essentially, two number ‘3’ entries in the Cool Boarders franchise - but which is better?
There’s only one way to find out…
I’ve never played the original Cool Boarders, but I played the sequel for the first time back on day 29, in a similar face-off with 1080 Snowboarding and, despite it coming out on top of that particular scrap, I was a bit surprised by how untidy looking it was; you could literally see the joins in the environment - at least, in the environment that you weren’t still waiting to pop-in.
As you would expect from the Dreamcast’s more powerful hardware, Burrrn absolutely resolves these issues. The draw distance takes you over the horizon for the most part, and the environments are super-clean and very well rendered.
Cool Boarders 3 was released before the arrival of the PlayStation 2 so it remains exclusive to Sony’s original console. Graphically it’s definitely an improvement of the second game, with the slightly more detailed characters skimming over a patchwork of decently modelled snow. Trackside objects are rather simplistic but serve their purpose well.
The courses in Burrrn ‘feel’ bigger, whereas those of CB3, even with the familiar ‘cross-shaped’ trees, feel more grounded in reality.
However the roles are reversed when it comes to the feel of movement and tricks. Here CB3 throws around spins and flips in gravity defying style, whereas Burrrn’s show-piece moves are slower, heavier, and more constrained. In Burrrn this is somewhat lessened or exacerbated depending on which of the initial six different snowboarders is chosen. They’re a diverse if ultimately generic bunch, but their differing stats have a real impact on the way the game plays. CB3, on the other hand has a total of 20 Boarders available but as far as I could tell they are limited to visual variety, with only the type of board selected providing a range of turn and/or trick speeds.
There’s no grey area when it comes to content: CB3 offers almost twice as many varieties of play than that of the Dreamcast game; they may be fairly basic variations on the ‘Race’ and ‘Trick’ event standards, but basic variation is better than no variation at all.
Weirdly, the game made by Idol Minds has more in common with the first two games made by UEP, and Burrrn, the game made by UEP is the one that feels very different to play.
It could certainly be argued that, to this end, CB3 offers only a small iteration on the previous game, but either through the effort of trying to change or the differences in hardware, Burrrn is ultimately the less enjoyable to play.
It’s interesting to think that at this point in time we were still 2 years away from SSX Tricky; the snowboarding game that would combine the huge, almost open, courses of Burrrn with the over-the-top tricks of Cool Boarders, and create an arcade Snowboarding experience that hasn’t come close to being bettered in the two decades since it’s release.
When push comes to shove the Dreamcast game looks much nicer than the PlayStation one, but that’s the only ace it has to play. In terms of speed, tricks, variety, and just plain being more fun to play, then it turns out the best ‘Cool boarders 3’ is the one that’s called ‘Cool Boarders 3’ - should have guessed, really.
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