PlayStation

Cool Boarders

If you can't go big on the mountain, do some shreddin? at home with Cool Boarders. It's a fun ride.

Cool Boarders is a pretty fun game that should have been a lot better. The tricks are awesome and the music fits the game perfectly, but the annoying commentator and the difficulty in qualifying for races keeps this game from being a must-have. The idea is great and I think that this will open up a whole new market for the PlayStation; I fully expect someone else to follow the path and release a similar game. Hopefully, they will learn from Sony's mistakes and make the game what Cool Boarders should have been.

The only problem with Cool Boarders is with its terrain recognition. Hit a wall and the player ricochets like a pinball; get stuck between two trees and endure a frustrating struggle to get out. The programmers would have also done well to heed an important aspect of real snowboarding - the terrain does not completely control you. I kept wishing for more places to go off-course and use the sides of the track for freestyle tricks. Maybe in Cool Boarders II?...

It is still a fun title in a very basic way, but Cool Boarders proves that with snowboarding, it pays to keep your eyes forward and forget what is behind you.

Cool Boarders is a pretty hard game to get a handle on because racing on snowboards offers interesting racing physics. The graphics are decent, and the CD soundtrack adds a lot to the attitude of the game. Being able to pick from several characters and boards is a nice feature, but an important Two-player Mode is missing. All in all, once you get the hang of it, Cool Boarders is reasonably fun, but since there are so many great racing games, only pick this up if you are a fan of snowboarding or "Extreme" sports.

Cool Boarders should have gotten an 8 out of 10 with us, but the graphics seem to have been slapped together at the last minute. The snow on the tracks is nicely textured, but the racers themselves are chunky and stiff. And there's no getting around all the thick, black seams in the track, made worse by the fact that the ground is all white! The Expert Level is especially glitchy.

Given the rising popularity of the sport, a 32bit snowboarding simulation was inevitable. It was perhaps also a sure thing that the first example would be intrinsically flawed – if only because it is something never before attempted.

Digitized mountains are visible in the background, but these are so grainy you probably won't even notice them. Cool Boarder's guitar-driven soundtrack is surprisingly good. Unlike the music in most modern snowboarding games, it's edgy but not headache-inducing. There's also a "totally rad" teenage commentator who spews all sorts of repetitive and annoying comments. Cool Boarders is interesting to look back on, but its minimal gameplay was just a taste of things to come.

Cool Boarders känns mest som ett försök att slå mynt av en trendig sport.

Cool Boarders ist alt und zeigt das auch sehr deutlich. Kaum Optionen, kaum Strecken und nur ein Spielmodus verbunden mit gruseliger Grafik. Die Nachfolger waren zwar auch nicht sonderlich toll, aber doch noch wesentlich besser als dieser Mist hier.