The game is set in Snow Town, which is the main hometown of the protagonists. The plot follows the daily lives and adventures of the kids, and the rather ridiculous attempts of Damien to sabotage them. The gameplay of this game is almost identical to its predecessor's, but with a few differences. There are now three distinct playing modes: the Story mode, which follows the game plot and uses the classical system of cash prizes by winning the races; the battle mode, which includes multiplayer mode; and the Training mode. There were new additions and changes to the Items and Shots. All of them were redesigned and the Shots were renamed as Weapons. Additions include the Rocket, the Wings and the Whirlwind (see more below). Other changes to the Items and Weapons include the reduction in the freeze time when a character is hit by the Freezing Shot, and the effect of losing coins when hit by a Slapstick. The special tricks (which were different for each character and required the player to perform a combo to do them) were replaced by the ability of doing multiple tricks while in the air. It also added the ability to repel Weapon attacks by performing a Trick or Board Grab in the imminence of the hit. The player can also look behind by pressing the R button.
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Snowboard Kids 2 is pure arcade-style snowboarding fun and a blast from the past! Race and battle your way down wacky courses, collecting insane power-ups and pulling off ridiculous tricks. It's got that classic N64 charm, with vibrant colors and catchy music. The controls are a little wonky by today's standards, and the story mode is short, but for a multiplayer snowboarding party with friends, Snowboard Kids 2 still rocks!
Not a difficult game (except for the final boss), but a good one. Very quirky racing game. Not too deep, so you run out of new content after a little while, but I can't complain about my time with it.
it's hard to overstate how powerful nostalgia is. ever since i started understanding how memory can be easily manipulated and self-fabricated (all unintentionally), i've been very wary of how i view the art and stories i grew up with as a kid. some days i think i'm overcorrecting, some days i think i'm not going hard enough against my biases. after replaying snowboard kids 1 (sbk1), i felt primed to go into this and be let down in some capacity. it's only natural. and, let's be clear, i think snowboard kids 2 (sbk2) has obviously aged in a lot of ways. but, ultimately, i fully replayed this game and got a swell trip down memory lane while also being able to re-appreciate just how quaint and charming this game is.
sbk2 takes the base formula sbk1 established and basically refines everything about it. there's more characters, a small "slice of life"-esque story, more varied stages, and even a little hub world where the characters can run into each other and say "hi!". it's all very quaint, and these small things go a long way to making the game endear itself to you. there were even these adorable yonkoma strips in the instruction manual (https://imgur.com/gallery/h1erE) that i absolutely adored reading as a child, and they helped make this game feel more unique and memorable than a contemporary like 1080 boarding, which i played as a kid but i could not tell you a single thing about to this day. these things add up and matter, and they give sbk2 an identity that endured.
as far as the actual racing goes, it is relieving to say that the racing AI isn't horribly mangled in this game and avoids the rubberbanding problems that sbk1 was plagued by. it's genuinely surprising to see that the game actually has the kids now adapt to the rules of their board + build, so you're not gonna run into nancy being faster than christ and when someone uses a slow board like the ninja board, they're usually gonna be at the back of the pack. again, small but compared to both its predecessor and something like mariokart 64, which, to the best of my memory, completely doesn't give a shit about this sort of thing, it's nice to see. if anything, this game is on the fairly forgiving and easy side, but maybe going from sbk1 to sbk2 can be likened to when goku's fighting piccolo in dragon ball and takes off the leg weights and is suddenly zip zooming around. ice land is a difficulty jump, which is fitting for the final level of the game, but it's not as absurd as any of the final three levels in sbk1. i normally like harder games, but sbk1 was challenging for the wrong reasons, so i'm completely fine with this game doing a lower gear shift to let me soak in the stellar OST and level design.
speaking of levels, i love the variety we get here. i think sbk1 already had a pretty great selection of levels, so to see sbk2 hit it out of the park and improve upon that is impressive. standouts include the aforementioned ice land, starlight highway, and wendy's house. there are some true platform highlights in this game, and it's no coincidence that each of those levels has a killer music track to accompany it. so much of this game is just the simple fun of racing in unique locations and taking in the sights. even the relatively tame locations jingle town get a section with aurora borealis that shockingly translated pretty decently on N64 hardware.
the biggest problem with this game happens to be items, and, in a weird way, when i played some of these tracks without them, i had more fun. there's just a huge lack of oversight when it comes to item distribution. tell me: why the fuck am i able to get boosts in first place? hell, why the fuck am i able to get the pan in first place? speaking of the pan, i think it has to be the single worst item in a racing game, and i'm trying not to be hyperbolic when i say that. it's far too common, for starters, and it's the lightning bolt from mario kart but instead of capping speed, it stops racers dead in their tracks if they don't have an invisibility item to protect them. i wouldn't mind this item's existence if it was, to counterbalance those problems, either much rarer or less overpowered. its existence can turn races into very big stop-and-go affairs that ruin the feeling a racing game should have. i'm also not entirely crazy about the ghost items due to how swingy and game-changing they are in a game where momentum management is king, but compared to the pan, they are eclipsed in severity. i don't have a segue for this nor do i want to type up an entire paragraph about them, so let me also just state here that the boss fights are all extremely bad and unnecessary, and god help you if you do them on expert mode.
i get that this game isn't for everyone, and there's always going to be an aspect of this game that i forever associate with how it felt to play this when i was 5. i maintain that it hasn't aged nearly as badly as other racing games of the time, and the art style utilized N64 graphics better than most games on the platform. still, it is a fairly basic racing game with a fundamental item issue, so i get it. i also get the feeling that, in spite of my replay and critical eye, i still manage to overrate this a tad. oh well! i've wanted to replay this game for literally a decade now and only just gotten around to it, and i enjoyed my time with it. this was a special game to me as a kid, and it was a joy to discover that its star hasn't dimmed for me in adulthood.
sbk2 takes the base formula sbk1 established and basically refines everything about it. there's more characters, a small "slice of life"-esque story, more varied stages, and even a little hub world where the characters can run into each other and say "hi!". it's all very quaint, and these small things go a long way to making the game endear itself to you. there were even these adorable yonkoma strips in the instruction manual (https://imgur.com/gallery/h1erE) that i absolutely adored reading as a child, and they helped make this game feel more unique and memorable than a contemporary like 1080 boarding, which i played as a kid but i could not tell you a single thing about to this day. these things add up and matter, and they give sbk2 an identity that endured.
as far as the actual racing goes, it is relieving to say that the racing AI isn't horribly mangled in this game and avoids the rubberbanding problems that sbk1 was plagued by. it's genuinely surprising to see that the game actually has the kids now adapt to the rules of their board + build, so you're not gonna run into nancy being faster than christ and when someone uses a slow board like the ninja board, they're usually gonna be at the back of the pack. again, small but compared to both its predecessor and something like mariokart 64, which, to the best of my memory, completely doesn't give a shit about this sort of thing, it's nice to see. if anything, this game is on the fairly forgiving and easy side, but maybe going from sbk1 to sbk2 can be likened to when goku's fighting piccolo in dragon ball and takes off the leg weights and is suddenly zip zooming around. ice land is a difficulty jump, which is fitting for the final level of the game, but it's not as absurd as any of the final three levels in sbk1. i normally like harder games, but sbk1 was challenging for the wrong reasons, so i'm completely fine with this game doing a lower gear shift to let me soak in the stellar OST and level design.
speaking of levels, i love the variety we get here. i think sbk1 already had a pretty great selection of levels, so to see sbk2 hit it out of the park and improve upon that is impressive. standouts include the aforementioned ice land, starlight highway, and wendy's house. there are some true platform highlights in this game, and it's no coincidence that each of those levels has a killer music track to accompany it. so much of this game is just the simple fun of racing in unique locations and taking in the sights. even the relatively tame locations jingle town get a section with aurora borealis that shockingly translated pretty decently on N64 hardware.
the biggest problem with this game happens to be items, and, in a weird way, when i played some of these tracks without them, i had more fun. there's just a huge lack of oversight when it comes to item distribution. tell me: why the fuck am i able to get boosts in first place? hell, why the fuck am i able to get the pan in first place? speaking of the pan, i think it has to be the single worst item in a racing game, and i'm trying not to be hyperbolic when i say that. it's far too common, for starters, and it's the lightning bolt from mario kart but instead of capping speed, it stops racers dead in their tracks if they don't have an invisibility item to protect them. i wouldn't mind this item's existence if it was, to counterbalance those problems, either much rarer or less overpowered. its existence can turn races into very big stop-and-go affairs that ruin the feeling a racing game should have. i'm also not entirely crazy about the ghost items due to how swingy and game-changing they are in a game where momentum management is king, but compared to the pan, they are eclipsed in severity. i don't have a segue for this nor do i want to type up an entire paragraph about them, so let me also just state here that the boss fights are all extremely bad and unnecessary, and god help you if you do them on expert mode.
i get that this game isn't for everyone, and there's always going to be an aspect of this game that i forever associate with how it felt to play this when i was 5. i maintain that it hasn't aged nearly as badly as other racing games of the time, and the art style utilized N64 graphics better than most games on the platform. still, it is a fairly basic racing game with a fundamental item issue, so i get it. i also get the feeling that, in spite of my replay and critical eye, i still manage to overrate this a tad. oh well! i've wanted to replay this game for literally a decade now and only just gotten around to it, and i enjoyed my time with it. this was a special game to me as a kid, and it was a joy to discover that its star hasn't dimmed for me in adulthood.
my favorite thing about this game is everyone has to wait on a ski lift to start the second lap.
This review contains spoilers
This game is radical.
While the first game slowly lost the "snow" part of snowboarding until it became racing on grassy hills, this game pretty much takes off the mask straight away. Level 1 is your typical snow level, but level two goes off the rails and sticks you underwater. Level 3 is weirdly another snow level, with a light Christmas theme. And after that it's just new theme after new theme. Castles, haunted mansions and outer space!
Whether you like this or not will really prefer if you prefer a more down to Earth snowboarding game where the levels with sand and grass are kinda extras to enjoy after the "realistic" levels (and those are still relatively simple compared to what we have here), or if you just enjoy devs going balls to the walls with ideas and throwing you on a snowboard regardless.
The actual level design seems to have taken a hit. The first game had a nicely progressive difficulty scale, where the latter tracks were genuinely hard to stick on at all times. This game goes for a more Mario Kart approach where tracks are either very easy, or easy. Much less sharp turns, and more long straight sections. I assume the latter is to compliment the games new defensive features. When an item is about to hit you it will now flash when it's close, so you can jump over it (which was technically possible in the first game, but without the flashing it was impossible to time properly). You can also deflect items now too, by doing a small trick while you jump, to add some extra risk vs reward. These would have been pretty much impossible in the game game because jumping requires a straight path as you can't turn while doing so, and SBK1 had very few straight paths.
So it's not really a step forward or backwards. It's more of a replacement. They replaced more complex course layouts for a more complex defensive system, while compensating by making the course themes more interesting.
There's also an attempt at a story mode now. It's just a little cutscene after and before each race. They're kinda cute, but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. Also we get 3 bosses now ala Diddy Kong Racing. Some people hate them - I didn't mind them.
We lose the secret character from the original game, but a brand new character is added to the starting roster, while everyone else gets a redesign. This game adds 3 more unlockable characters of its own, and they definitely have that feeling of wacky 90's unlockables - a dog, a penguin and a little goblin thing.
Only a few new items were added, most of which are just variants of existing ones - the rocket is just a faster fan, the ghost item now has a version that hits everyone etc. But the wing item is new and ties with the rock as being the worst item in the game. It just makes you floatier to stay in the air longer, which is almost always worse than just landing so you can pick up speed again.
Unique trick inputs for each character are replaced with a skill-less "keep pressing A to keep doing the same trick" to get more cash. So boards now cost much more to keep up with the fact the player will earn much more money...despite items in-races still costing the exact same, so you never really end up in a situation where you can't get an item. They even buffed being poor because going through an item box without the cash won't cause you to crash anymore, you go through it like normal and just don't get an item. I just wish that if they were gonna throw all the money at us they could do something like let you hold items so when you go through the next box you pay more to upgrade the weapon. Having boards to buy with excess money is nice and all, but in the heat of the race earning 5000 coins with no advantage for them kinda sucks.
When you beat story mode you unlock expert mode, which lets the AI be more competent overall. Doing the levels again in expert will unlock a new board for each level beaten, so it's a nice incentive to replay. It isn't too hard, they just manage to deflect an item or two so it might take more to hit them. Overall still easier than Snowboard Kids 1 cheating SOBs.
The bosses on expert are another story. The snowman ain't too hard, but the dinosaur requires pretty perfect play. The last boss is just the most unhinged, demented load of BS ever programmed into a game. It literally just spams items at you non-stop. You can't deflect them, and they come too fast to jump over more than 1. The only reason I ended up beating it is because one of the boards you unlock through expert mode is the ninja board which gives permanent invisibility (which makes you invincible) in exchange for being very slow, which isn't an issue for this boss. That makes the boss TOO easy, so like... that can't be the intended method right? But I can't see how human beings could possibly win against cracked up Terminator, so is the only answer really to just make the boss a non-fight?
While the first game slowly lost the "snow" part of snowboarding until it became racing on grassy hills, this game pretty much takes off the mask straight away. Level 1 is your typical snow level, but level two goes off the rails and sticks you underwater. Level 3 is weirdly another snow level, with a light Christmas theme. And after that it's just new theme after new theme. Castles, haunted mansions and outer space!
Whether you like this or not will really prefer if you prefer a more down to Earth snowboarding game where the levels with sand and grass are kinda extras to enjoy after the "realistic" levels (and those are still relatively simple compared to what we have here), or if you just enjoy devs going balls to the walls with ideas and throwing you on a snowboard regardless.
The actual level design seems to have taken a hit. The first game had a nicely progressive difficulty scale, where the latter tracks were genuinely hard to stick on at all times. This game goes for a more Mario Kart approach where tracks are either very easy, or easy. Much less sharp turns, and more long straight sections. I assume the latter is to compliment the games new defensive features. When an item is about to hit you it will now flash when it's close, so you can jump over it (which was technically possible in the first game, but without the flashing it was impossible to time properly). You can also deflect items now too, by doing a small trick while you jump, to add some extra risk vs reward. These would have been pretty much impossible in the game game because jumping requires a straight path as you can't turn while doing so, and SBK1 had very few straight paths.
So it's not really a step forward or backwards. It's more of a replacement. They replaced more complex course layouts for a more complex defensive system, while compensating by making the course themes more interesting.
There's also an attempt at a story mode now. It's just a little cutscene after and before each race. They're kinda cute, but I wouldn't miss them if they weren't there. Also we get 3 bosses now ala Diddy Kong Racing. Some people hate them - I didn't mind them.
We lose the secret character from the original game, but a brand new character is added to the starting roster, while everyone else gets a redesign. This game adds 3 more unlockable characters of its own, and they definitely have that feeling of wacky 90's unlockables - a dog, a penguin and a little goblin thing.
Only a few new items were added, most of which are just variants of existing ones - the rocket is just a faster fan, the ghost item now has a version that hits everyone etc. But the wing item is new and ties with the rock as being the worst item in the game. It just makes you floatier to stay in the air longer, which is almost always worse than just landing so you can pick up speed again.
Unique trick inputs for each character are replaced with a skill-less "keep pressing A to keep doing the same trick" to get more cash. So boards now cost much more to keep up with the fact the player will earn much more money...despite items in-races still costing the exact same, so you never really end up in a situation where you can't get an item. They even buffed being poor because going through an item box without the cash won't cause you to crash anymore, you go through it like normal and just don't get an item. I just wish that if they were gonna throw all the money at us they could do something like let you hold items so when you go through the next box you pay more to upgrade the weapon. Having boards to buy with excess money is nice and all, but in the heat of the race earning 5000 coins with no advantage for them kinda sucks.
When you beat story mode you unlock expert mode, which lets the AI be more competent overall. Doing the levels again in expert will unlock a new board for each level beaten, so it's a nice incentive to replay. It isn't too hard, they just manage to deflect an item or two so it might take more to hit them. Overall still easier than Snowboard Kids 1 cheating SOBs.
The bosses on expert are another story. The snowman ain't too hard, but the dinosaur requires pretty perfect play. The last boss is just the most unhinged, demented load of BS ever programmed into a game. It literally just spams items at you non-stop. You can't deflect them, and they come too fast to jump over more than 1. The only reason I ended up beating it is because one of the boards you unlock through expert mode is the ninja board which gives permanent invisibility (which makes you invincible) in exchange for being very slow, which isn't an issue for this boss. That makes the boss TOO easy, so like... that can't be the intended method right? But I can't see how human beings could possibly win against cracked up Terminator, so is the only answer really to just make the boss a non-fight?
Sacrifices genuinely great level design for what's essentially unfailable courses (outside of the extremely jank boss and trick courses), the soundtrack is also a massive step down over the original. There's almost zero sense of item management anymore as you're able to churn out 200+ on every jump (items still cost 100)
Genuinely don't get why this one gets gassed up so much more than the original, it's inarguably a shallower singleplayer experience for a slightly better multiplayer one (debatably worse though as the new tech the game introduces would make the gap even wider than anything the first game could've come up with (reflecting) )
Nearly completely sanded off of all edges that made this unique to learn, but I guess in the process that makes this more "palatable" as a multiplayer experience. Really I'm just tilted at how much of a downgrade this is over the original presentation-wise, they replaced the kids yelling "POINT" and "GO!!" and such with a generic stadium style announcer and most of the music sounds like an approximation of "good N64 music" vs the original's absolutely "going ham on the keyboard" that was so good it made the game go 6 for 6 on people assuming the og was a PS1 game rather than N64 when I streamed it.
Genuinely don't get why this one gets gassed up so much more than the original, it's inarguably a shallower singleplayer experience for a slightly better multiplayer one (debatably worse though as the new tech the game introduces would make the gap even wider than anything the first game could've come up with (reflecting) )
Nearly completely sanded off of all edges that made this unique to learn, but I guess in the process that makes this more "palatable" as a multiplayer experience. Really I'm just tilted at how much of a downgrade this is over the original presentation-wise, they replaced the kids yelling "POINT" and "GO!!" and such with a generic stadium style announcer and most of the music sounds like an approximation of "good N64 music" vs the original's absolutely "going ham on the keyboard" that was so good it made the game go 6 for 6 on people assuming the og was a PS1 game rather than N64 when I streamed it.