Snowboard Kids Review Bundle #3
Nostalgia can be a very fickle thing for a video game developer, and if toyed with too greatly can turn a good game into something much worse in the minds of some. Snowboard Kids and its sequel Snowboard Kids 2 are both Nintendo 64 games that I have remained incredibly fond of as a fun, approachable racing game even fifteen years after they were first released. With fun and quirky racing that offered much needed diversity from the ‘kart racing’ boom of its time, colourful visuals and chibified character designs – they are both games I could recommend those interested in older games checking out.
While it still proves to be a competent game, the 2005 sequel SBK: Snowboard Kids which was developed by in-glove Co. Ltd and published once again by ATLUS, features very little of the personality that made the first two games so approachable and addicting. The core gameplay delivers pretty much the same experience: four racers make their way through several laps of a course and compete to see who makes it to the bottom first. However SBK feels more like an attempt at transitioning from what could have been considered ‘Mario Kart with snowboards’ to a more traditional snowboarding game with a few elements carried over. The items and shots are still there but not as fun to use when racing, the races seem to be more about speed over all the other obstacles and challenges the past games threw at the player and generally the track designs lacked the same uniqueness.
The developers could have easily continued to use the super-deformed, large-nosed character designs from earlier games, but instead decided to scrap several core characters (With Linda and Wendy being notable omissions), introduced several new characters and gave them a more realistic style that doesn’t stand out. Music on the other hand tends to be pretty good.
Going back to the very first sentence of this review, I am going to tell everyone now not to put too much weight into my score due to what I am dubbing ‘Retro Nostalgia Bias’. The first time I played SKB: Snowboard Kids was when it was first released in PAL regions during 2006, and after being left disappointed returned it only a few days later. Moving forward to 2014, I picked this up a few days ago for the purpose of this first ‘review bundle’, and actually think it is a decent game overall. However I still don’t feel this was the direction the series should have gone, with it having the potential of being something a family could crowd around on the Wii one evening and play for hours on end… just like Mario Kart.
What are Review Bundles?
Review Bundles are a new article series introduced to The Otaku’s Study as part of its 8th Anniversary Celebrations. The aim is to cluster sets of two to five anime, manga, video games, visual novels from the 1990’s, 2000’s and early 2010’s into genre, console or series related bundles. Each game in a particular bundle will then have 300 – 1,000 word mini-reviews written for them.
The goal is to highlight some of the better titles from my own gaming journey, and encourage newer gamers to consider checking out titles that are not just on the “New Releases” shelf in a store.
