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.