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Released on November 10, 1998 for the Nintendo 64 by Midway, developed by Boss Game Studio,
Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding attempts to create a gameplay
experience centered around...extreme snowboarding |
Twisted Edge Extreme Snowboarding was supposed to be released in
the spring of 1998, until Nintendo announced and released the spectacular
1080° Snowboarding, where after
Twisted Edge was delayed for
several months. Then released to little fanfare, the most common sentiment on
Twisted Edge was "not as good as
1080° Snowboarding."
Twisted Edge has been haunted by
1080° throughout its entire
existence, and for that reason I won't compare it to that game, or even mention
1080° in this review again.
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| There are more trees in the opening START screen than in the rest of the game combined |
Twisted Edge features several modes. The first is the racing mode, where
the player competes against three CPU-controlled snowboarders. There's also a
multi-player mode, where you and a friend race against each other with no CPU's
in sight. The most interesting mode drops the player off at the top of a
mountain and asks them to successfully perform as many tricks and combos as possible, to
earn enough points from these tricks to access the next course. This is the
game.
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| THIS IS THE GAME |
Twisted Edge doesn't look terrible. The courses are pretty bare bones visually
and feature few landmarks. There's a crane, a truck, windmills, or a shed here
are there. At one point there's a train. That's about it. Forget about trees or
any other environmental elements to draw you into
Twisted Edge's visual world.
They aren't there. There's barely even much of a downhill background most of the time.
However, the character models actually look okay. The effects as you speed
through the snow are solid. Not only does snow realistically spray out from the
back of your board, but sparks shoot out if you slide over metal. Pretty cool. Most
importantly, the game runs smoothly. There's no slowdown or framerate issues
here.
Twisted Edge does actually give the feeling that you're blazing down the side of a mountain.
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| Look, a mountain |
Sound-wise,
Twisted Edge comes from the phase where most Nintendo 64 games
were starting to feature some level of voice-acting.
Twisted Edge has an audio
commentator who mainly either praises you when you do well, or makes fun of you
when you do badly. It's fine. The sound effects are also fine. It sounds like you are snowboarding, but then again, some extra touches, i.e. wind noise, could have gone a
long way toward making the game a bit more absorbing. As far as music goes,
Twisted Edge's is a blend of funky rock and drum 'n bass
that's surprisingly pretty decent. There's a solid enough number of tracks, to where none of it ever really gets old. But then again, will you even play this game long enough for
the music to get old?
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| There are no obvious metaphors in this picture |
Twisted Edge is the definition of the late 90's "weekend rental." The racing
mode, which features a handful of nondescript tracks and a few mirror versions
of them, isn't overly difficult, but also isn't overtly fun enough to hold a player's
attention for long. The controls are actually okay, with the joystick
controlling direction, and fighter game-like button combinations combining with the joystick to perform tricks and combos. In racing
mode, pulling off these tricks and combos gives a slight speed boost. The "trick" is learning at
just what height in a jump the player needs to stop performing a trick and start
focusing on landing safely. If you fall during a trick attempt, it doesn't count. As good as the controls are, they react with the game's physics
engine in ways that are both a blessing and a curse.
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| I'm not so sure you can safely land horizontally |
As far as the good, the physics engine is floaty in an arcade-like way, giving
plenty of opportunities for the player to hit big air and pull off large
handfulls of tricks and combos. The problem with this is that if you fall or hit
a wall, it can be quite tough to pick up momentum again. You can even get stuck.
Getting stuck in a racing game is not fun. The fun aspect of the physics engine
branches to the tricks mode, which is strangely addictive to the point that it
is not. Trying to get enough points by stringing tricks together is at first an
obsession, until the third level, when opportunities to jump strangely end, the physics engine starts to work against you, and
the fun abruptly ends.
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| Strangely enough, steel pipes DO NOT slow you down |
"Abruptly ends" really sums up the experience this game offers. The snowboarding
racing is fun for a few hours, the trick courses are fun for a couple hours, and
then something in your brain tells you "I guess this is it," and it's time to
turn off the game. The two-player racing adds a little bit of replay value, until
one of your brains hits the "I guess this is it" wall. There's a diverse
selection of characters and boards to choose from and you can unlock new ones, yet the bare, character-free courses, along with the rather frustrating elements in
the gameplay, create an endpoint where you'd be perfectly content returning the
game to Blockbuster on Sunday after renting it on Friday (with no plans to ever
play it again), but not so content if you actually shelled out full-price to purchase it.
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| I wish the courses had more moments like the train bridge in this one...and maybe a tree or two |
Of course, this isn't 1998, but 2022--or some year after 2022 if you're reading
this in the future (hi!)--and you can buy this mostly forgotten game for about the price you would have paid for a Blockbuster Rental in 1998. For a mediocre snowboarding game
that's not as good as...several other Nintendo 64 snowboarding games, that's all
I would pay.
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| I really need to stress that I took pictures of the absolute most exciting visual moments in this game. I promise literally every other moment in Twisted Edge looks blander than this. |
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