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Slalom. That’s a hard word to say. Slalom. It’s also a hard game to play. I killed
my skier, like, a million times. Ran him into trees...and that was before I even got to
Mt. Nasty. That place is a deathtrap.
It’s Slalom for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
This is actually a pretty interesting NES game. It’s not only a proverbial kick square
in the balls, but it’s also sort of a landmark release. This was the very first Nintendo
game from its developers Tim and Chris Stamper. You might know them as the founders of a little
studio called Rare. And you might know Rare as one of the most prolific game makers of
the 1990s. Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye, Banjo Kazooie...
It all started here. Here on Mt. Nasty.
So like a lot of the titles in the NES sports series, Slalom is a pretty simple game. You
control a skier, you pick a slope, you try to make the qualifying time. It has that simple,
addictive gameplay that makes the best NES sports games so timeless, but the game also
shows a degree of technical savvy that would become a Rare calling card.
It moves fast, there’s a ton of stuff screaming by...there are children on sleds.
The little miscreants. Must be a snow day.
So the objective is simple—just finish before time runs out—and so are the controls. You’re
steering with the d-pad, you’re jumping with either A or B. It’s an easy game to
play, but again, that doesn’t mean it’s an easy game. Because it’s not. Slalom can
be surprisingly brutal, and it’s never all that easy to beat the clock.
And the cool thing is that the game’s simplicity is complemented by some nice, subtle complexities.
So for example, you don’t actually have to ski through the flags, but your skier does
slow down if you skip them. And you’ll need as much speed as possible to compensate for
all the crashing you’re going to do.
There’s also a nice little trick system, as well. So if you jump the little snow ramps,
you can use the d-pad to do some midair stunts. And those are tallied up as bonus points.
Now, the truth is...Slalom’s real claim to fame is that it was the starting point
for much better games. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a classic in its own right.
It’s simple and a bit difficult, but it’s undeniably fun to play. And again, it has
a certain quality that...you could just tell there were really talented people behind it.
They’re not quite Gorilla Glacier, but the snowy trails of Slalom are very much worth
a visit.
Big thanks to Benjamin from New York for sending it in.