''1080° Avalanche'' is a snowboarding video game developed by

Nintendo Software Technology Nintendo Software Technology Corporation, doing business as Nintendo Software Technology (NST), is an American video game developer. NST was created by Nintendo as a first-party developer to create games for the North American market, though thei ...

and published by

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

for the

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. It was released on November 28, 2003, in Europe, on December 1, 2003, in North America, and on January 22, 2004, in Japan. ''Avalanche'' is a sequel to the 1998 video game ''

1080° Snowboarding is a snowboarding video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 in 1998. In the game, players control one of five snowboarders from a Third-person (video games), third-person perspective, using a combination of buttons to ...

'' for the

Nintendo 64 The (N64) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on June 23, 1996, in North America on September 29, 1996, and in Europe and Australia on March 1, 1997. As the successor to the Super Nintendo E ...

. In contrast to similar snowboarding games such as the '' SSX'' series, the game emphasizes more on downhill racing than stunts and tricks. Gameplay can output in

480p 480p is the shorthand name for a family of video display resolutions. The p stands for progressive scan, i.e. non-interlaced. The ''480'' denotes a vertical resolution of 480 pixels, usually with a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and 4:3 a ...

and

Dolby Pro Logic II Dolby Pro Logic is a surround sound processing technology developed by Dolby Laboratories, designed to decode soundtracks encoded with Dolby Surround. The terms Dolby Stereo and LtRt (''Left Total'', ''Right Total'') are also used to describe s ...

and supports four players on one GameCube as well as LAN play with up to four GameCubes.

Gameplay

Similar to ''

'', gameplay focuses on racing more than performing stunts. There are differences between this game and ''Snowboarding'', with one being the ''Avalanche'' - the final event of every Match Race challenge is a daredevil run through an avalanche-prone trail where the player has to outrun an avalanche that starts in the middle of the run or even at the very start. In over 20 courses, the players can compete in the main Match mode, along with Trick Attack, Time Trial and Gate modes. Unlike the first game, each rider has unique boards, and up to three new boards for each character can be unlocked along with bonus boards, which are surreal objects replacing the snowboard, such as a penguin or a NES controller.

Development and release

Shortly after the release of ''

'' (1998),

announced that Left Field Productions was taking over development for a sequel title on the

. Pre-production planning was done on the game, but it was cancelled early on in favor of moving development to the then-upcoming

platform. When Left Field later ended their exclusivity contract with Nintendo, their work was returned to Nintendo, and the game was reworked internally by Nintendo to release as ''1080° Avalanche'' (2003) for the GameCube. Development of the game was handed to Nintendo's American development studio, Nintendo Software Technology Corporation (NST). ''1080°: Avalanche'' was released in both single-disc and double-disc versions. The second disc is a standard miniDVD featuring a half-hour of snowboarding footage alongside gameplay footage set to soundtracks from the game. This version was exclusively available at

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

and can be differentiated by the presence of a red sash on the front cover.

Reception

It received a score of 7.5/7/5.5 from ''

Electronic Gaming Monthly ''Electronic Gaming Monthly'' (''EGM'') is a monthly American video game magazine. It offers video game news, coverage of industry events, interviews with gaming figures, editorial content and product reviews. History The magazine was fou ...

''. Dan Hsu, the first reviewer, found fault with the game's trick system, while the third reviewer Shawn Elliott severely criticised it, who believed that ''Avalanche'' can't compete with '' SSX 3''.

Notes

References

External links

*
''1080° Avalanche''
at Nintendo.com
archives
of th
original
at the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

) * {{DEFAULTSORT:1080 Avalanche 1080° (video game series) 2003 video games GameCube games GameCube-only games Multiplayer and single-player video games Nintendo Software Technology games Racing video games Snowboarding video games Video games developed in the United States Video games produced by Shigeru Miyamoto