DoctorSpuds Reviews Things - Skiing (Activision)

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Okay, uh, so I have just realized that I haven’t written a single review about an Activision game, holy crap, how did I even manage that! Apart from Atari Activision has released the largest amount of games for the 2600, well let me rephrase that, Activision has the largest third-party game library on the 2600 with a whopping 46 released games (correct me if I’m wrong), more than any other third-party. I suppose Activision had a leg up in the competition being the first ever third-party game publisher in existence, if you don’t know the story there are plenty of people out there who can say it better than I can, or just Google it. But instead of looking at one of Activision’s rare games or one of their late release games, I’m going to take a look at their fifth game, and one of my favorites, the ever classic Skiing.

Activision did something a bit strange with their cartridges, a tactic that Nintendo would copy years later with their Black Box games, they put an image that accurately depicts the in game graphics on the cartridge label so you knew what you were getting yourself into. And boy, what a simple game this is there are about seven graphical elements in this game, you have the skier, the blue flags, the red flags, the green tree, the light green tree, the grey mogul, and the light grey mogul. Here’s the thing though, I think this game has the perfect amount of simplicity, if it had any more or any more detailed graphics it just wouldn’t be the same, this game is truly iconic, and I love it. Other games tried to copy this game’s style; the first that comes to mind is Skiing on Intellivision, which has its own set of flaws that will be delved into later on the future. Skiing on Intellivision never looked as good because the graphics of Activision’s Skiing is burned into my head as the only way a skiing game in this style should look.

This game’s soundtrack is very sparse, all you’ll be hearing is the whoosh of your skis as you turn left and right, but again I think that the sounds fit perfectly into the overall package of this game. It just feels so good to swerve around a tree whilst hopping over a mogul and hearing that little tinny *ping* noise followed up by that oh so satisfying whooshing noise. I hate to bring out this word again but these sounds are absolutely iconic, I can’t think about a skiing game without substituting the sounds, it’s a bit distracting actually playing Slalom on NES and concentrating more on the sounds than the game itself, because they just don’t fit. Iconic is all I have to say.

This game is the king of simple yet addictive gameplay; there are ten different courses to select from. Games one through five are slalom runs, games one through four start with one being the easiest with the slowest speed and the least gates with four the fastest speed with the most amount of gates, but most people tend to select game five for slalom runs since it’s the fastest speed, has the most gates and is random each time. Games six through ten are the downhill runs, forget the gates you won’t need them here. Much like games one through five the downhill courses start with six being the shortest, slowest and easiest, and finish with nine being the longest and fastest, with ten being the longest and fastest but randomized. Most people will just play games five and ten because the randomization gives this game infinite replay value, I don’t know how many slope combinations there are but there are probably so many it’s unlikely you’ll get the same one twice, ever.

This game is amazingly good fun, and cheap as dirt too, I got my copy boxed from my local game store for ten bucks, I’m seeing an abundance on Ebay for less than five dollars, but chances are you already have this game in your collection, if not then you’re doing something wrong and need to fix it. This game truly is one of the all time classics.

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/729/entry-15083-skiing-activision/