Ski!
Ski! We liked this! Whoo-wee!
No, seriously, we had fun with this one. It's pretty simple: the Überlay is mostly opaque, but your skier shines through a few key spots. Most notably: the trail, the flags, mountains and trees. This is an Odyssey game about controlling the horizontal and vertical motion of the glowing TV square representing your skier and moving her along a predetermined trail of translucent points.
The challenge is to keep the skier on the trail. If the light square does go off the trail, you essentially lose sight of her and must blindly bring her back. While trying to get back onto the safety of the trail, you gain points if you light something up that isn't the trail. This represents a collision. For instance you can ski into a mountain, as in "Ack! I hit a mountain!" or a tree, as in "Ack! I hit a tree!"
My son and I were really tickled by this in a way that probably only a parent and child playing a wholesome game together can be tickled. The person reaching the end of the trail with the fewest points (injuries?) wins. There's a timed mode and a point mode and both are fun enough to have kept us entertained for about 40 entire minutes. We may even play it again!
To me, there was something lavalamp-esque about moving the little light, er, skier along the path. It brought me an inner peace not unlike meditation. I'm not being as sarcastic as one might think. The controllers are definitely reminiscent of an Etch-a-Sketch so if you remember what it was like drawing with that, then you may have an idea of the flavor of "peace" I'm talking about. It was nice to zone out and maneuver my skier through, lighting the trail. I don't know why.
(I should probably mention I've been described as "spacey" more often than I'd care to admit. Might be a factor.)
So, at last, here's a variation in gameplay that doesn't involve wiggling a PUCK or a Ball Spot past your opponent's paddle using your ENGLISH! This is all about control and getting into the "zone". If we do a replay day of Best of the Odyssey (before it goes back to eBay) we'll definitely play Ski!
Ski actually gets the point today over Ultraman!
The Score: Ultraman: 3, Odyssey: 1.5!
Next game could be considered the "First Home Shooter"! Submarine.
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