1080° Avalanche

1080° Avalanche

North American cover art
Developer(s) NST
Publisher(s) Nintendo
Series 1080° Snowboarding
Platform(s) Nintendo GameCube
Release date(s)
  • PAL November 28, 2003
  • NA December 1, 2003
  • JP January 22, 2004
Genre(s) Racing, extreme sports
Mode(s) Single-player, multiplayer
Rating(s)
Media/distribution 1 × GameCube Optical Disc

1080° Avalanche is a snowboarding game for the Nintendo GameCube, developed by Nintendo's in-house development studio, NST, and published by Nintendo. Avalanche is a sequel to 1080° Snowboarding for the Nintendo 64. The game has an emphasis on racing, rather than doing tricks, in contrast to other popular snowboarding games, such as the SSX series. It can output in 480p and Dolby Pro Logic II and supports four players on one GameCube as well as LAN play with up to four GameCubes.

Contents

Gameplay

Gameplay in 1080° Avalanche is similar to that of the original, centering around racing more than performing stunts. The only large gameplay difference between 1080° "and the original is the ability to knock down opponents by running into them after filling a meter by performing tricks. A trick attack mode was added and has three unique courses.

Unlike the first game, each rider had specific boards to them, and up to five could be unlocked throughout the game. There were also bonus boards, which were surreal objects replacing the snowboard, such as a penguin or NES controller.

Development

In 1999, it was confirmed a sequel to 1080° Snowboarding was coming to the Nintendo 64. Second-party studio Left Field was responsible for development. When the game failed to materialise, it was confirmed the game was no longer being produced for the N64, but for the GameCube. Not long after this announcement, it was also confirmed Left Field was revoking its status as a second-party studio so it could develop multi-format titles.

Development of the game was handed to Nintendo's American development studio, Nintendo Software Technology Corporation (NST). They originally planned to call it 1080°: White Storm (after Wave Race: Blue Storm), before finally renaming it 1080° Avalanche.

Versions

1080°: Avalanche was released in two different versions; a common single disc, and a dual disc format. The second disc was not a game disc, but rather a mini-DVD, featuring half an hour of extreme snow sports footage, set to music from the game. This version was only available at Wal-Mart, and is differentiated by a red sash on the front cover.[1]

Soundtrack

There are 38 songs in the game. This is a list of songs in the game. A music video for Cauterize's song "Choke" is available in the options menu.

Finger Eleven - "Good Times", "Other Light", "Conversations"

Cauterize - "Killing Me", "Choke"

BOYSETSFIRE - "Handful of Redemption", "Rookie"

Seether - "Fine Again"

Socketzero - "Point A", "Friendly Fire", "Pretty Neat", "Slurp Slurp", "Yuiop", "Pear Spawn", "Drop", "Gated Baby"

Squidd - "A Matter of Time", "Small Drift", "Don't Stop Now", "Slip Away", "7 8 9", "Just Like That", "At the Kiosk", "Ten Men", "Girls's Got a Gun"

B711 - "Hoax", "Re; Union", "GFDs", "Never Even Knew", "Kill Kill Kill", "Beat Me Beat Me", "Ocho"

JP - "Buttah", "Nachos!", "Osmo", "Get Off", "Freeze", "Thumpr"

Reception

Publication Score
IGN
7.3 of 10
GameSpot
6.7 of 10
Compilations of multiple reviews
Game Rankings
75.0 of 100
(based on 47 reviews)
MobyGames
75 of 100
(based on 29 reviews)
Metacritic
73 of 100
(based on 37 reviews)

It received a score of 7.5/7/5.5 from Electronic Gaming Monthly: Dan Hsu, the first reviewer, said, "You can't beat its cornea-stripping sense of speed". While Hsu found fault with the game's trick system, it was severely criticized by third reviewer Shawn Elliott, who believed that "Avalanche [...] can't compete with SSX 3".[2]

Appearances in other media

References

External links