Skiing
A winter wonderland right on your 2600
By Ethan C. NoblesFebruary 17, 2006
Activision, once again, did a fine job when
the company released Skiing -- a game that is nothing but fun and
manages to capture enough elements of the sport to keep it entertaining.
Skiing, released in 1980, never won any awards for innovative
gameplay. And, it sure isn't one of those titles which pushes the 2600
to its technical limits. Still, it sure is nice to plug in and play from
time to time and is one of those unique cartridges which helps round out
a collection.
Skiing offers 10 variations – five of them are slalom runs, while
the remaining ones are downhill runs. The difference, of course, is the
slalom runs require the player to steer his skier between a set number
of poles. The goal of a downhill run is, simply, to make it a set number
of meters down the mountain in the shortest amount of time possible.
While that all may sound quite simple, the game is quite challenging. In
slalom runs, it can be difficult to set up your skier so you both make
it through sets of gates correctly and in the shortest amount of time
possible. To make matters worse, there are trees which one can sail a
skier into quite easily. Oddly enough, the skier just rather “smashes” a
bit (quite amusingly, I might add) when he hits a tree, but suffers no
serious harm – he just loses time.
In downhill runs, the non-lethal trees are back, and new obstacles show
up – the dreaded mogul! A mogul is a bit of ice which shows up as gray
in color on the course and will knock the skier down unless he jumps
over them effectively. Hitting a mogul is similar
In both slalom and downhill games there are a variety of variations
which allow for longer, faster games as the level of play of advances.
In both types of runs, there's also an option which generates random
courses – a far cry from the very other variations in which the courses
are always the same. Indeed, there's a challenging variation waiting for
you in this game, regardless of your skill level.
And, to make things more challenging, difficulty switches are used very
well here. For example, if things are too easy in a slalom run, one can
elect to set the difficulty so trees pop up in between the gates. If
downhill runs become to easy, one can choose to turn “automatic jumping”
off so the joystick button has to be activated at just the right time to
leap over a mogul.
Even more intriguingly, the player can elect to either be restricted to
the “path” he is supposed to ski or choose to turn that option off and
ski around the mountain at will. That's right. Go ski through the woods
and go nuts. Everyone who owns this game has had fun completely ignoring
the time and wandering around the mountain at random. Try it. It's fun!
The control here in the game is pretty good, and mastering it is key to
doing well. Here's the thing – your skier goes fastest when he's going
straight ahead, so there's some strategy involved in steering gradually
in order to avoid slowing down too much while still getting through
gates, avoiding trees and etc. The controls are responsive, but a bit
difficult to get used to because it's an easy matter to turn your skier
too much, thus losing valuable time (and, perhaps, even missing a gate
or hitting a tree).
The graphics are quite simple, but are also very clean. You get a
top-down view of your skier against a white backdrop (of course) and a
tree pops up here and there. The skier isn't overly-detailed, but still
looks pretty convincing. And, I've mention it's pretty darn funny when
he hits a tree or falls down, haven't I? The poor skier gets rather
mangled, yet manages to pick himself up and get back to the job at hand.
The sound is simplistic, too. You get a nasty little racket when the
skier falls down or hits a tree or pole, and there's plenty of
“whooshing” going on which is supposed to simulate the sound of skis
against snow. I'm not really sure what else could have been done to
improve the sound, really – this is a 2600 game, after all, and skiing
isn't exactly a “loud” sport, is it?
All in all, this title will never be regarded as one of the best ones
for the system. Still, Skiing is a very solid game which can be
found on eBay and other outlets for classic games pretty easily. It's
pretty common, too, so you won't exactly break the bank by picking up a
copy.
Game Data |
Scores
|
| Title |
Skiing |
Graphics |
80% |
| Publisher |
Activision |
Sound/Music |
75% |
| Genre |
Sports |
Gameplay |
85% |
| System |
2600 |
Control |
90% |
|
|
Overall |
85% |
)
)
