There can rarely have been an easier sequel to make than Cool Boarders 2. Cool Boarders was a massive success and a compelling experience that barely felt like a complete game. There was so much room for UEP Systems to expand it. And so they did, and it worked. Yet for Cool Boarders 2 they don’t merely get by on adding in extra features, but make an impressive go at mastering some of them on what was essentially a first go.
First of all, there are of course new courses and more of them. They keep variation and the plunge-off-a-cliff danger of parts of them, but make exactly the right changes from Cool Boarders. That means adding in an actual difficulty curve rather than just one course a beginner has any chance on, and adding spectacle instead through some varied sights along the way, from tunnel to big pipes to houses towering over the course. The graphics occasionally slip into the world being made of puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit together, but it looks and plays better all round. It also recognises that carving tight turns was the most satisfying part of Cool Boarders, and adds a lot more weaving among trees.
Then, there is the inclusion of two-player mode, which was the most glaring omission of all in Cool Boarders. Now you can race a friend down these superior courses and do tricks, and and it all still looks acceptable. If we’d had a PlayStation at this point, I can easily imagine that having been worth a purchase on its own, given how much of my time playing was spent alongside my siblings.
The biggest success of Cool Boarders 2, though, is the single player tournament mode, which applies some thoughtful design in an area where a lot of games still didn’t. Each round is broken into two stages, neatly separating out the speed and tricks elements of Cool Boarders which always sat a bit awkwardly together. The first is a quickfire trick round where you get two attempts to pull off the best trick possible in one jump. The results of that then get turned into staggered starting positions for the boarder cross race stage. That means you can be in a race with seven other boarders without having the graphical or space-on-the-course issues presented by a mass start. The race still has countdowns for checkpoints for no obvious reason, complete with massively annoying voice samples, but otherwise it works a treat. It also means the trick round can promote taking risks without being too frustrating when they don’t come off, since it’s the race that determines the championship points. The points are where the other clever element comes in.
When Daley Thompson’s Decathlon on the ZX Spectrum was a sports game but still stuck with the same level structure as old arcade high score games, that was forgivable because it was a new idea. When games like Porsche Challenge were still presenting a series of straightforward pass/fail challenges by 1997, while being completely unsuited to it, that was less understandable. Cool Boarders 2 instead presents a continually escalating challenge in a way which rewards repeat play much better. You only have to finish 7th out of 8 in the first round to score the one point required to reach the second round. You don’t need two points in the second round, though — you need a total of at least three points. The number gets higher each time as each round carries forwards your championship score. That means that the first race is easy, but when you lose and go back to do it again, it isn’t just a trivial task but it makes a difference just how much you exceed the requirement by.
Taking the strengths of the snowboarding already present and putting them in a structure which feels like you’re part of a competitive challenge makes for a much richer experience. On tracks where I sucked at making it past obstacles, I could pull off a strong performance on the trick round and start far enough ahead to still be able to cling on to a midfield position. On the most straightforward courses, going for the win was enjoyable in its own right and important to set me up for the championship ahead. It shouldn’t be a surprise to see a little care put into this kind of mode, given the difference it makes. Again, though, all UEP Systems really had to do was make a game with some features, so it’s pleasing that they didn’t just clear that bar but pulled a backside indy grab 900 on the way down too.
