How 1080° Avalanche shows us just how unprepared Ireland is for snow
1080° Avalanche (2003)
1080° Avalanche (2003)
Let me tell you, there’s nowhere in the world more unprepared for snowfall than here in Ireland. I do mean that, because can you name a country that has a worse response to extreme weather? Why don’t we go around the houses for a bit?
Canada and the northern States in the US expect snow to occur. It’s happened before that the southern States have been blindsided by blizzards and cold snaps. But they know all about preparation for extreme weather, thanks to the hurricanes.
If it snowed in Central or South America, I’m sure it’d be melted in a few hours. And just because some penguins hang around the tips of South Africa, that doesn’t mean the rest of the continent ever becomes draped in white baize. They find it hard enough to attract rainfall.
Continental Europe is well used to snow, experiencing more varied climates – they’re perhaps not so comfortable in the furthest depths of winter though, as old Hitler found to his cost in Russia. Those guys invented snow. And we don’t listen to the Australians at the best of times, but it seems to be just beaches down there to me.
So we’re back to the UK and Ireland, and generally the UK councils aren’t a complete disaster when it comes to snow; they have the ability to send out more than three trucks to do salt and grit the roads. That type of investment and foresight is not to be found here in Ireland, so when we get a deluge of snow, which seems to happen about once every five years, it all starts to fall apart.
No really, I’m talking about the very fabric of society here. They say that society is only three days, or nine meals, away from anarchy, or complete destruction. And so it proved one day when, suffering from cabin fever in the midst of heavy snowfall, me and my best mate embarked to the pub. Well, we’ve all seen Shaun of the Dead. What else is there to do in an apocalyptic situation, only decamp to the pub and wait it out?
Well, while we indulged ourselves, news filtered through the lounge like wildfire that some hoodlum had commandeered a JCB and torn down a local supermarket, not so long after the place had already been fully looted by the types of characters you see in the Fallout games.
Is that shocking or what? Alright, I get it. If this was the States and someone tried to take out a store like that, there’d have been shootouts on the street and SWAT teams called. I understand that. But where I’m from, it’s still considered an outrage if you don’t bless yourself when driving past the church. Razing a building around here is like slapping the Pope in the face.
So when the flakes fall, the schools close, the colleges close, and the offices close, although the ability to work from home takes the buzz out of that one nowadays. Actually, I should say that most offices close; in an old job of mine, that was a thousand years behind the times, they wanted us to come in, during unprecedented snowfall.
You have to sympathise with them, don’t you? This pesky snow was getting in the way of retail profits. They’d given us one day off, through gritted teeth, but no more. Hence, I had to drive there on the snow and ice.
Now, I’m not going to overdramatise this any more than I already have. It’s not like I had a near-death experience or anything. But I did skid a few times, and Jesus Harold Blimey, is that a fright for the body or what? Like someone’s stuffed some icy snow down your cacks.
And even after getting to work that day, and hamming up my expert snow-driving to impress the office girls, well, what a pain it was to be there. See, I’m the type of person who writes off the entire day if it’s raining out. A bit of snow, and I’m eyeing up the entire week in bed. I’m just not used to snow, I could do without it. Generally, I don’t want to take part in it.
Or do I? When 1080° Snowboarding came out for N64, it was a quintessential rental game. I would never think about buying the game for myself, of course. Perish the thought. Do I look like a snowboarder to you? It’s not even within the realms of possibility. I’ve never referred to anyone as “dude” in my life, and I’m not liable to start now.
Still, the first 1080° game was fairly enjoyable. The main component of the game seemed to be racing down the snowy slopes against AI, or one of your pals. I wasn’t so good at the game, though, so I usually tended to kill my guy in some gut-wrenching accident, scattering him against jagged rocks or something.
To keep sane and guilt-free, I actually spent a much larger proportion of my time in the game’s Trick Attack mode, attempting to throw out 720s and 1080s on the half-pipe to put together an unbeatable high score. It was pretty fun actually, and I know a lot of players thought the same.
I suppose 1080° Avalanche for GameCube exists to try and turn everything up to 11, or perhaps more accurately, to turn everything up to 2003. The game opens with a song called Choke, from a band called Cauterize, with the whole music video (a sweaty underground bar) included on the disc for you to watch.
I’m not going to have a go at them for it – after all, this was decades ago now, and I certainly ain’t a music critic – but it’s about as generic an American rock millennium spiky hair song as you can get, featuring what I call American Pie guitars. It all looks and sounds exactly like something you would have caught on the Kerrang TV station in the early 2000s.
But then, that’s what 1080° Avalanche is all about, right? This is an extremely 2003 game. Capturing the radical zeitgeist perfectly, where the camera editing was busy and zany as hell, and you were nobody without blonde highlights in your hair – and for proof of that, just look at the cast of characters available, now with a lot more voice samples and personality, not to mention a much larger selection of awesome boards.
In essence, the gameplay and flow is much the same, just with nicer graphics and a more bodacious frame rate. OK, let’s be fair, there are much better physics on offer, even if you still get these ridiculous situations where your character wipes out, but their rigid cadaver will still be flying up into the air, headfirst.
The upshot of it though is that there isn’t an awful lot new here to keep you entertained. The single player races are good for a wee while, but they get old quick, even if there’s helicopters and jet fighters overhead causing avalanches for you to race away from. There’s multiplayer, and even broadband support if you want to go really crazy and link four GameCubes together.
But luckily, the Trick Attack returns, and that’s where I reckon you’ll be spending all your time. You can take your guy (or girl - I hear they can get pretty extreme as well) down the sky-high Air Make jump, or onto the faster paced Half Pipe. It’s all quite addictive I must say, enough to see you try and beat your high score again and again – just best of luck trying to figure out the combo system.
But there’s something else that I fear proves fatal for 1080° Avalanche’s prospects of staying in your GameCube. Even more fatal than smashing into a rock formation or a reindeer at maximum velocity. And that’s that this game had some contemporary competition in the snowboarding department.
You see, 1080° Avalanche entered competition with the SSX games on its release, and I believe it lost massively. Hence Nintendo haven’t tried making a game out of extreme sports like this again, and they’re happy to just rest up and stay warm, while the others dip their toes into the icy waters. Just like me then, they’re much happier to sit by the fire, in a cosy house, doing absolutely nothing.
20 February 2024