#amped: freestyle snowboarding

[grrl-bubble-acid]

Amped 1 Freestyle Snowboarding — Gameplay HD — Real Hardware {Component}

[vgprintads]

‘Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding’

[XBOX] [ITALY] [MAGAZINE] [2002]

100% Pure Freestyle.

Do you think there are only groomed slopes? Dude, Freestyle knows no limits. Go where ever you want, how ever you want, as badly as you want. Do everything to make your face appear in all the newspapers. But be careful, because it's easy to amaze photographers, but it's even easier to end up in a ravine crying for your mommy. ~Ad caption

Source: Evolution, April 2002 (#03) || Internet Archive; Bultro

[everygameiveplayed]

Dag yo! It's the amped freestyle guide to snowboarding

AMPED: Freestyle Snowboarding Commercial, 2006

[gardenerian]

Yes, actually, I do want the rationals 😂 especially behind Lips biathalon and Liam's curling?? 😂 Of all the things!

okay yay i'm gonna get weird and go Too Far with this:

fiona - speedskating: i can just picture her jumping up as the race gets heated, shouting COME ON and shaking her fists at the tv. she's so amped by it all she goes for a run immediately 😇

lip - biathlon: listen. it's about precision! it's about control! it's about moving quickly and shooting things! he's fascinated.

tami - figure skating: they're athletes! they're graceful! it's about beauty and power and tami is enchanted!!!!

ian - freestyle ski: kinda like the figure skating? i think ian could get into that too. a mix of strength and creativity that he admires. he's fucking floored by what the human body can do.

mickey - ice hockey: sanctioned aggression with blades on their feet? say no more! he loves the energy of it all, and he also wants to hit things with a stick from time to time.

debbie - bobsleigh: they move together as a team! they have to be so in sync! she's on the edge of her damn seat. plus, franny sits in her lap and debbie moves around like they're racing too ��

carl - luge or snowboarding: speed! power! danger! this is everything carl would want to do if he didn't love hanging around so much. in another universe, carl snowboards.

liam - curling: okay. hear me out. i think about him getting into sports management in s10. "it's exciting if it's the kill that you love" or whatever he says. it's all about precision and thinking on your feet and strategy and liam thinks it's badass. i can see him and lip sharing in similar olympic interests in this regard.

[breadknight-likes-things]

Bread’s Skate (?!) Journal 09/06/20: The Other Ones: A Look Back On The Tony Hawk Imitators Of The Early 2000's....And BMX XXX.

Looking back at Tony Hawk as a series that's pretty solidly in the past can cause someone to easily forget how those games were actually thought of at the time: Hyper popular.  As a result of that popularity, it was easy to see a bunch of other games and franchises that wanted a piece of that money, some from Activision themselves, some....very much not.  Some of these games were good!  Some of these games were so bad that they've become something of a legendary laughing stock in the game landscape as a whole.  

As I said, Activision was no stranger to trying to apply the Tony Hawk formula to other sports in an attempt to cash in on the extreme success of their franchise.  Sometimes these cash in's actually made for decent, if unoriginal games.  Matt Hoffman's Pro BMX was more or less a carbon copy of the Tony Hawk formula, but with BMX Bikes instead of Skateboards, and it actually worked pretty well once you got used to the inherent differences of the two different styles.  Other attempts were not quite as fortunate as Matt Hoffman though, and both of them sort of had the same "downhill" problem.   Shaun Palmers Pro Snowboarder was an attempt to put the Tony Hawk formula into a snowboarding game, and while that should reasonably work, the linear and all downhill nature of the levels really didn't lend themselves to a fun time.  

Following from Shaun Palmer was "Wakeboarding Unleashed featuring Shaun Murray" which is quite a title!  It was originally revealed with the far more descriptive name as "Shaun Murray's Pro Wakeboarder" but I have to assume that was changed to...distance the game from Tony Hawk?  It's a confusing move to say the least.  The game was actually quite decent, more so than you'd assume from something like a wakeboarding game, and you can tell there was some talent behind it, the games issue was that, by design, it was pretty much always on rails.  You were literally pulled through the levels behind a speed boat, and even though there was plenty to trick off, it lent a feeling that you were just being guided to the cool set pieces rather than actually doing any exploration of your own, it deserved better.  Hell, it at least deserves it's own Wikipedia page, the only mention of it at all is on Shaun Murray's very small Wikipedia entry, an ignoble end for a game that least tried something new.

I had to find a screenshot for Shaun Murray, which I swear is real, and this is the only one I could easily find online.  I swear this game happened!

Of course Activision wasn't the only studio trying to capitalize on the extreme sports craze and the Tony Hawk trick heavy style.  EA found what I would consider the greatest success with franchises like SSX, and one entry wonders like Freakstyle (which is a seminal game for me as a kid, but one I feel very few people even know exist), a sort of blend of SSX and racing through the lens of Motocross.  Hell, eventually EA would make Skate, which outlived Tony Hawk itself for a few years, and I already wrote about earlier this week, an excellent franchise that was nonetheless heavily inspired by THPS.

Now, there are far more imitators and hanger on's, some good (Splashdown, while closer to Wave Race, definitely stole some of it's vibes from THPS). Some incredibly bad (Gravity Games: Vert, Street, Dirt,  an abysmally bad Tony Hawk ripoff from the early 2000's immediately springs to mind) and some downright strange (Four words: Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure).  But only one company tried so hard and failed so miserably, and that's Acclaim, and BMX XXX.

This is genuinely what some of the worst impulses of the video game industry look like.

Acclaim had found success early on by getting Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX out only one year after Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and it certainly wasn't a terrible game.  It felt a little clunkier than what came out of Neversoft at the time, but it was definitely playable.  Acclaim also went on to put out Aggressive Inline, which, while it might sound insane to say about an inline skating video game, is genuinely one of the best extreme sports games ever made.  So Acclaim had real reason to believe they actually could put something out that would rival Tony Hawk!  Then they put out BMX XXX.  

BMX XXX is one of the most insipidly stupid things that any company has ever produced, certainly one of the worst video games ever made, and was so bad that Dave Mirra forced Acclaim to take his name off of it before release.  You really can boil this game down to two things: Dave Mirra's okay BMX game play, and the horn-dog mindset of a 13 year old boy that just found an issue of Hustler in the woods.  It's incredibly embarrassing!  Full of hookers, pimps, literal strip club videos, dogs fucking and humor that was shitty and mean spirited even by the standards of 2004.  It's astounding that anybody thought this game would sell at all, let alone do the impressive numbers they wanted for it.  Even the console manufacturers didn't really seem to want this thing on their consoles, Sony out and out censored the nudity even (which yes, the game featured full polygonal breasts, and they are horrifying to look at today), and though the other two allowed the nudity to slide, they made it pretty clear they thought the game was terrible.

BMX XXX is a punchline today, rightfully, but I think it did so much harm to the idea of a competing extreme sports franchise, that any further attempt to really hone in on an Tony Hawk alike just sort of stopped right there.  It actually came out pretty early on, in 2002, long before some of the other games I've mentioned on this list even, but the damage it did was impossible to ignore.  Activision kept trying, we still got the occasional excellent SSX game, and we got Skate.  Hell, we even got Ubisoft making a couple of tries, first with Shaun White doing a snowboarding and Skateboarding game, then with Steep.  The concept wasn't killed entirely, a favorite of mine, Amped 3 for Xbox 360, even came out just a few years later, but it felt like the spirit was gone, and it never really came back.  Thankfully, these days, we have more independent developers putting out their own vision of what an extreme sports game can be.  I hope this new generation of developers can really get us back to the glory days of the extreme sports game, and even if they don't end up making it too far, at least they're going to try.

And things might get a little weird.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #431

Top Ten Microsoft Games

It’s getting on for the time of year when I’d normally be thinking about E3, and the various E3-related events and announcements. This was going to be a banner year: huge new console releases from Sony and Microsoft, big game rumblings from Nintendo… there was an awful lot to get excited about, and an awful lot of New Stuff perched expectantly on the horizon.

And then, well, 2020 happened.

Obviously things being what they are, the conventions have all been cancelled or postponed, and we’re instead getting a succession of online reveals, spaced out over a longer interval. As such, instead of my customary “Ridiculous Predictions” list that I’d do around mid-June or whenever, I’m instead going to celebrate the wonder that is the videogame with a short series of gaming-themed Top Tens. There won’t really be a predictions list, although as we approach Microsoft’s next announcement video in July I will start talking about my hopes and dreams for the Series X; for the most part, however, the next few weeks will be me looking back at things I’ve loved or things I’ve found interesting in a variety of games.

To kick things off then, Microsoft. Or Microsoft Games Studios, or whatever we’re choosing to call them; the gamey bit of the Microsoft Empire. Although they rarely get spoken of as one of the “great” publishers, they’ve produced an awful lot of classics in their time. One of the first PC games I ever played was the Microsoft Golf game that came bundled with my computer, and for the most part it’s been uphill since there. I definitely associate the company with a lot of great games from the febrile period when my Now-Wife and I were newly be-coupled; the Age of Empire series and the various Madness titles in particular. And that’s all before we get onto the Xbox of it all.

So, then, here we are: the greatest games ever to sport the word “Microsoft” on the cover. If we don’t include the FPS game hidden in Excel, of course.

Fable II (Lionhead Studios, 2008): my favourite RPG, a beautiful pastoral parody of English fairytales and legends, shot through with Python-esque humour. Freedom of choice, supremely easy mechanics, progressive politics, a dog… it has so much that I love. Almost perfect.

Halo 3 (Bungie, 2007): Halo remains, in my opinion, the greatest shooter franchise of all time, with perfectly-honed mechanics and a thrilling gameplay loop, combined with a compelling and iconic universe. 3 offers an epic conclusion to the original trilogy whilst leveraging the power of the Xbox 360 to deliver expansive vistas and gorgeous graphics.

Crackdown (Realtime Worlds, 2007): taking the open-world city concept of GTA but injecting superpowers, this is a crazy playground of high-octane freedoms. The joy of scaling skyscrapers, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, is sublime, as is the freeform campaign structure. Sheer fun.

Forza Horizon 4 (Playground Games, 2018): the Horizon games are terrific freeform driving experiences, with as much joy coming from touring the countryside as actual racing (which is still great). Each instalment offers refinement, but it’s the British setting of 4 that I adore.

Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings (Ensemble Studios, 1999): in the Golden Age of RTS games, Age of Empires was one of the greats; taking elements of Civilization’s tech-evolution and history, it combined a greater degree of base-building with refined combat that offered less of a tank-rush dynamic than other games in the genre. Still plays great.

Project Gotham Racing 3 (Bizarre Creations, 2005): PGR games were gloriously fun arcade racers that offered a new way to play with their Kudos skill-ranking system. The variety of different game types available offered variety, meaning even poor racers (er, like me) could enjoy it and never get bored. Plus, hidden Geometry Wars!

Viva Pinata (Rare, 2006): an ingenuous garden-building sim that has you cultivate the perfect habitat for a range of beautiful paper-craft cryptids. Unflashy yet graphically gorgeous, with charm by the bucketload, and animals you can’t help fall in love with. Absolutely crying out for a new iteration on the Series X.

Midtown Madness 2 (Angel Studios, 2000): before PGR, before the Xbox even, the Madness series offered a wide range of driving fun (from bikes to, er, monster trucks). The open-world cities of Midtown were revolutionary at the time, and the gameplay offered loads of moments for hilarious hijinks as you crashed minis into buses whilst people leapt magically out of harm’s way.

Gears of War 3 (Epic Games, 2011): Gears injected fresh blood into the shooter genre, with its cover-based mechanics and ingenious weaponry making each encounter something of a tactical action-based puzzle game. Gears 3 probably is the best as, like Halo 3, it gives us a storyline conclusion and truly epic battles, and dives deep in the series’ trademark melodrama.

Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding (Access Software, 2001): a relatively under-sung OG Xbox launch game, Amped took the Tony Hawk template of racking up skill points with board-based stuntwork, but plonked it on a relatively-open mountainside that hurtled past as you tried to balance speed with precision.

So there we are – my favourite Microsoft games. No Minecraft, because whilst it obviously is a Microsoft game at this point, I feel like they bought it when it was already a classic. And a lot of Xbox titles, too, which I guess is unsurprising. I really hope over the next couple of months we see some games that will one day secure a place on this list! Maybe a new Perfect Dark…?

[quentinsimon]

Cyril, Chamrousse, February 2017 by Quentin SIMON

[laresearchette]

Monday, February 07, 2022 Canadian TV Listings (Times Eastern)

WHERE CAN I FIND THOSE PREMIERES?: ONE THOUSAND YEARS OF SLAVERY - THE UNTOLD STORY (Smithsonian) 8:00pm 1000-LB BEST FRIENDS (TLC Canada) 10:00pm

WHAT IS NOT PREMIERING IN CANADA TONIGHT?: ANGELA BLACK (TBD)

NEW TO AMAZON PRIME CANADA/CBC GEM/CRAVE TV/DISNEY + STAR/NETFLIX CANADA:

CBC GEM THE HEAD

CRAVE TV TRIUMPH: ROCK & ROLL MACHINE

NETFLIX CANADA FINDING YOU

WINTER OLYMPICS (CBC) 3:30am: Long track speed skating featuring coverage of the Women's 1500m. (CBC) 5:00am: Women's Hockey: Denmark vs. Czech Republic (SN1/SN/CBC) 6:30am: Short Track Speed Skating, Ski Jumping & Women's Hockey (TSN4) 7:00am: Curling, Mixed Doubles First Semifinal, Curling post show, Women's Hockey, Finland vs. Switzerland. (TSN2) 7:00am: Women's Hockey, China vs. Sweden. (CBC) 8:00am: Mixed Doubles Curling: Semifinals and Women's Luge (CBC/SN/TSN/TSN4) 12:00pm: The Hockey Show (CBC) 1:00pm: Beijing Today (TSN4) 4:00pm: Women’s Hockey: Canada vs. Russian Olympic Committee. (CBC) 7:00pm: Primetime Coverage (TSN/TSN4/TSN5) 8:00pm: Figure skating, Men's Short, Curling, Mixed Doubles Bronze. (CBC/TSN2) 9:00pm: Freestyle skiing, Women's Big Air, Women's Hockey, United States vs. Canada. (CBC) 10:00pm: Men’s Short Program (SN) 10:00pm: Alpine Skiing: Men's Super G (CBC) 10:45pm: Women’s Hockey: US vs. Canada (SN1/SN) 12:00am: Alpine Skiing, Men's Super G; Snowboarding, Men's and Women's Parallel Giant Slalom. (CBC/SN1/SN) 1:30am: Men's Figure Skating Short Program, Snowboarding (parallel giant slalom), Cross-country Skiing, and Biathlon.

NBA BASKETBALL (SN Now) 7:00pm: Heat vs. Wizards (TSN4) 7:00pm: Raptors vs. Hornets

NHL HOCKEY (SN) 7:00pm: Hurricanes vs. Leafs (SN1) 7:00pm: Devils vs. Sens

CHUCK AND THE FIRST PEOPLES KITCHEN (APTN) 7:30pm: Chuck visits Bécancour, where he and Abenaki chef Lysanne O'Bomsawin create contemporary dishes using traditional ingredients; Chuck meets Jacques Watso in Odanak and learns how to make Sagamité Watso, a soup from the community's culinary.

MARY MAKES IT EASY (CTV Life) 8:00pm:  Mary says "Grazie!" with four deliziosa pasta recipes that keep it simple but amp up the flavor.

UP THE DISH (CTV Life) 8:30pm (SEASON PREMIERE):  Four chefs take inspiration from the French classic, salad niçoise with salmon.

TRIUMPH: ROCK & ROLL MACHINE (Crave) 10:00pm:  The story of underdog Canadian rock band Triumph, which rose to stardom in the 1970s and '80s only to disappear at the height of its fame.

TRANSPLANT (CTV) 10:00pm:  Bash helps his undocumented friend Khaled apply for asylum.

HEAVY RESCUE: 401 (Discovery Canada) 10:00pm: Investigators race to find crucial evidence in the wake of a devastating crash; an unexpected malfunction puts Collin directly in the line of fire.

WALL OF CHEFS (Food Network Canada) 10:00pm: A home cook introduces the Wall to Peruvian Poutine in the Crowd-Pleaser round; when Chef Rob Feenie's ingredients come out, an unorthodox pairing of anchovies and honey has the Wall wondering if a home cook is swimming in troubled waters.

[joziebee]

Nobody’s really talking about how weird the soundtrack to Amped Freestyle Snowboarding 2 for the XBOX is

[gibsonfreak49]

Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding OST: Turnedown - River Street

[us-ice-dance]

U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes use the power of Twitter to answer some common questions about their respective winter sports. Former and current Olympians and Paralympians Gus Kenworthy, Lolo Jones, Amy Purdy, Alex & Maia Shibutani, Joss Christensen, Elana Meyers Taylor, Jamie Greubel Poser, Rico Roman, Danelle Umstead, Oskana Masters, Alex Deibold, Jamie Anderson, and Chloe Kim deep dive on the sports of freestyle skiing, ice dancing, bobsledding, snowboarding, Para snowboarding, Para ice hockey, Para alpine skiing, and Para nordic skiing.

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #364

Top Ten Original Xbox Games I’d Like to See on Games With Gold

So with Mercenaries in November and Jedi Academy in February, it’s nice to see that original Xbox (2001-2006) games are being made part of the Games With Gold initiative. I like free stuff, and GWG is a great little addition to the Gold service. I tend to find nowadays that I get more excited by the older games, as they’re increasingly things that I missed out on last generation; Jedi Academy doesn’t quite fit the bill (I had it on PC) but it’s always fun to swing a ‘saber and party like it’s 2003.  

Anyway, with all this in mind, here are ten games released on the first Xbox console that I'd love to see on Games With Gold, either because I didn’t play them the first time around, or because it’s been sixteen years and the game disc is stuffed in my loft somewhere and it’ll just be easier to have it digitally nowadays, y’know?

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003): however good the Mass Effect games are, I still miss the dynamic of this, BioWare’s best work (IMO). A terrific story, a tremendous twist, and a great combat dynamic that I wish they’d return to. And yes, my disc is stuffed somewhere at the back of the loft.

Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding (2001): I was one of those who bought an Xbox just before Microsoft knocked a hundred quid off its price, so as a consolation they sent me another controller and two games. One of those was Amped, a game I didn’t really expect much of but which was great fun. Channelling the vibe of Tony Hawk games, but faster and more colourful, it was an accessible and fun stunt racer that took advantage of the Xbox’s ability to create custom soundtracks from your own music library.

Project Gotham Racing (2001): still to this day my favourite PGR and possibly, by extension, my favourite racer of all time that doesn’t feature a short hairy plumber. The graphics were great, the Kudos system was inspired, it was great fun tearing round London, but really it was the progression mechanic that I loved, and which they messed around with a bit too much in subsequent games. Due to the custom soundtracks, certain songs from Pink and Nick Cave remind me of PGR courses to this day.

Burnout 3: Takedown (2004): I didn’t actually play this on the Xbox (my brother had it for the GameCube) but I loved the crashing dynamic so it’d be tremendous to have it again. I think I have Burnout Paradise somewhere, but it’s not quite the same for some reason; I liked the more old-fashioned, prescribed nature of tackling the crash courses, ticking them off almost like a puzzle game.

Psychonauts (2005): another one I've never played, but it gets rave reviews and I’ve loved Double Fine’s other work. With a sequel due out soon it’d be great to jump into the original.

Jet Set Radio Future (2002): I missed the Dreamcast and therefore the original JSR, but I played the demo of this “Back in the Day” (it came on a disc stuck to the front of a magazine that I had to buy in a shop, would you believe it?). It was great, great fun, just sliding around a beautiful, magnetic future-city. I wonder if it’d still feel fresh, or has the seriously underrated Sunset Overdrive scratched that particular grinding itch?

Spider-Man 2 (2004): I never had this; I don’t think I'd ever played it. But I remember playing the first Spider-Man game and wishing the swinging mechanic was a bit better. I think the consensus is Spidery 2 nails it perfectly. Seeing as the game I really want to play – Insomniac's PS4-exclusive Spider-Man from last year – remains out of my grasp, this would be a soothing balm.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002): I love a good RPG, but I've never gotten into Elder Scrolls. I know we’re now all looking at whatever’s coming over the horizon on the PS5 and Xbox Infinity, but it’d be nice to go back to a simpler time and enjoy this lost classic (well, lost to me coz I never played it). Fun aside: this was an early example of a game I nearly played, of a game I knew I'd probably like, but also knew I didn’t have time for. It was a wrench not buying it; I made that decision consciously because it was just too much money to lay out on something I couldn’t get to immediately. I mean, I probably have even less time nowadays, but it’d be free, so, y’know. That's something.

The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003): this is another one I played on the GameCube. It’s probably the best Simpsons game? Maybe? Certainly it’s the only one off the top of my head that managed to capture the sense of Springfield as a place, even if its gameplay didn’t always gel with the world of the show. I do remember it being fun to play and very funny, however, so it’d be nice to revisit it properly on Xbox.

Deus Ex: Invisible War (2003): I bought this on PC, along with Thief 3, taking advantage of a sale at (I think) either HMV or Game. I barely played either of them, as it was that period where I was sort of naturally segueing from playing games on PC to playing them on a console. As such, although I enjoyed what I experienced of it, I'd love to try to go back and complete it. My memory of it is that it was unfairly maligned whilst simultaneously not being anywhere near as good as the first game. But then what is?

To be honest, guys and gals, I've gone through this listing games I'd love to play (and there were several more that didn’t quite make the cut – Fusion Frenzy, Blinx, Dead or Alive 3, Wreckless, Republic Commando, the list goes on) and I've been made aware that, thanks to the generousness of Games With Gold I already have tons and tons of games I doubt I'm gonna get round to. I guess the collector in me can never be satisfied! Anyway, OG Xbox. Good times.

[quentinsimon]

Chamrousse, february 2017 by Quentin SIMON

[dawnblade]

was going to say, i like to imagine crossovers of games i like and was going to say oberon in amped freestyle snowboarding but. snowboarding is real. like its a thing you can just do. thats not a crossover thats just oberon snowboarding

also imagine oberon snowboarding. thats sick as fuck