- Slash and burn your way through wild and wintery terrain - jump huge boulders, shred steep ravines, and rack up the points with your insane tricks..
- -3 Game Modes available: Free Ride, Super Pipe, & Match Race for two players.
- -Full collection of tricks & moves.
- -Seven main characters with unique styles and varying degrees of snowboarding skills.
- -Silky smooth graphics at 60 frames per second.
Product description
-------------------
Slash and burn your way through wild and wintery terrain - jump
huge boulders, shred steep ravines, and rack up the points with
your insane tricks.
-3 Game Modes available: Free Ride, Super Pipe, & Match Race for
two players
-Full collection of tricks & moves
-Seven main characters with unique styles and varying degrees of
snowboarding skills
-Silky smooth graphics at 60 frames per second
.com
----
One hundred years from now, a historian may categorize
snowboarding's greatest achievement as its expansion of the
English vocabulary. For its part, snowboarding has brought new
meanings to the words "indy," "mute," "method," and "melancholy."
For those not attuned to the sport's phat lingo, these are all
terms for snowboarding maneuvers that generally refer to grabbing
a particular part of the board while airborne. Not a word of this
terminology is overlooked in the first snowboarding game for the
Dreamcast. Also included are appropriately stylized characters,
each with two outfits to choose from, and licensed gear from real
snowboarding companies Bonfire and Salomon.
Armed with a glossary in the form of a user manual, players will
soon be able to talk the talk. But in this game, walking the
walk, or rather pulling the tricks, requires quite a bit of
controller dexterity. Luckily the game is not based solely on
snowboarding tricks, but also has a y dose of racing at its
core. What makes this game stand out is the length and detail of
each downhill course. Jumping off the roof of sheep farms,
avoiding falling icicles, and catching the spotlight of a
hovering helicopter are all in a day's play in Rippin'
Riders--and that's just the first track!
A unique two-player mode challenges players to shrink the
nent's split screen by outscoring him or her. Track graphics
are up to snuff, but the players look a bit chunky. --Jeff Young
Pros:
* Outstanding course design with plenty of details and multiple
checkpoints
* Groovy outfits and snowboards for each character
Cons:* Many of the tricks are difficult to execute
* You never see other racers on the course, except in multiplayer
mode
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Review
------
When you think of the snowboarding genre, it's hard not to think
of the long-running Cool Boarders series. Arguably the best
snowboarding games around, they gave PlayStation owners top-notch
action on the slopes. Now the Cool Boarders series has made its
way to the Dreamcast in the form of Rippin' Riders, as 989
Studios owns the U.S. rights to the Cool Boarders name. As with
the first Cool Boarders on the PlayStation, Rippin' Riders leaves
the door open for further improvement. As with any snowboarding
game, Rippin' Riders lets you take your pick from a varied group
of athletes, all with their own strengths and weaknesses. From
there you choose the board you want to use, the course you'd like
to rip up, and the outfit you'd like to wear, if you want an
alternate outfit. Once on the snow, the game focuses on the
high-adrenaline racing and trick system you'd expect from a Cool
Boarders game. There are two different modes: the free-ride mode,
where you race down a ain and perform tricks at various
trick gates to boost your score, and the super-pipe mode, where
you fly down a huge half-pipe and use big trick combos to score
as many points as possible. The graphics in Rippin' Riders look
as good as you would expect on the Dreamcast. The rider models
all have their own distinct look, and they appear extremely human
in the replay mode, where their faces are visible. The track
backgrounds are extremely creative and expansive. When you're in
an open space, you can literally see everything in front of you.
Pop-up takes form in a small a of fog, which actually helps
bring the track into view with a nice combination of subtlety and
reality. To the game's credit, you don't simply race down snowy
hills; you'll blaze through snowed-in amusement parks, through
icy caves, past herds of stray sheep, under the skeletons of
long-extinct dinosaurs, and over the rooftops of Swiss
chalet-style houses. Unfortunately, there's a good a of
slowdown throughout the game, primarily in the replay mode, where
it would appear your snowboarder is trolling along at 15 miles
per hour. And while the two-player mode does a good job of
keeping the frame rate of the single-player mode, you'll notice
that important graphic details, such as your snow trail, have
been left out. The sound is pretty standard for a Cool Boarders
game. Techno, house, and mild hip-hop rock the soundtrack, while
the overjazzed announcer shouts ridiculous phrases like, "Let's
bust some air!" Your rider will congratulate himself when he
lands a trick and will berate himself when he doesn't. The clips
themselves are pretty hokey, with the exception of Bob, the
Rastafarian, who says stuff like, "Ah, you chose the Rasta-man
didn't ya?" The sound effects are standard snowboarding fare: An
icy scraping sound is used when you're on the straightaway and a
nice snow-crunching sound comes forth when you delve into the
powder. Rippin' Riders controls a lot differently from the last
PlayStation Cool Boarders, Cool Boarders 4. Instead of timing a
jump meter, Rippin' Riders lets you hold down the jump button for
as long as you like. The longer you hold the jump button, the
faster your rider will rotate when he goes airborne.
Unfortunately, you can't steer your boarder while you hold down
the jump button, so to execute any sort of complex trick, you'll
have to line yourself up with the jump as best you can and then
hope for the best. And because the trick areas are usually narrow
and peppered with useless signage for you to run into, lining
yourself up from a distance great enough to power up any sort of
good rotation becomes almost impossible. Once you've started
charging your jump, you cannot simply cancel it and correct your
course, which forces you to jump at the most inappropriate of
times if you aren't precisely on course. Aside from the a of
time you've charged your jump, you have no midair control of your
rotation, leaving landing a spinning trick more up to chance than
actual skill. And while you can bust all sorts of crazy tricks
for points in the super-pipe mode, you can only get points for
tricks at specified trick areas in the free-ride mode. Any tricks
you bust along the way will instead add a few seconds to your
time extension when you pass through a checkpoint. Also, like in
many snowboarding games, the trick-points system seems to be a
little unbalanced. Indeed, the hardest tricks to land in the game
award you very few points, making them almost worthless to
attempt. The Johan Flip only awards you 250 points per rotation
and is almost impossible to land and takes forever to charge up
for, while the Method Grab is easy and can be done at almost any
time for a cool 150 points. Unfortunately, this fills the game
with the same few tricks being performed over and over again, as
it's almost not worth it to attempt variety.--Ben
Stahl--Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without
express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot
Review
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