SSX 3 (Game Boy Advance)

SSX 3 for the Game Boy Advance is to snowboard fans what Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is to skateboard fans. In this case, SSX 3 is an over-the-top rendition of downhill snowboarding that brings together, in one place, all of the various tricks, boards, and wacky outfits that it normally takes a year's worth of casual television viewing to see. The game duplicates many of the same features found in the console versions of SSX 3 and has a free-flowing 3D graphics engine that is pretty much unrivaled by anything else currently available for the system.

Instead of updating last year's SSX Tricky with new courses and riders, Electronic Arts has come up with an entirely new game that goes to greater lengths to bring the style, depth, and variety of the console versions of SSX 3 on to the portable, "go anywhere" format of the Game Boy Advance. One of the reasons that SSX 3 is such a big improvement over SSX Tricky is that the graphics engine doesn't just look nicer and run smoother; the courses are larger and wider, and the amount of interaction with the environment is much more realistic in this game. In SSX Tricky, the only way to grab some air was to launch off of a ramp or hill. Here, you can use fallen trees, rooftops, and cliffs as well. The number of shortcuts is decent too. As you make your way down a run, you'll find many opportunities to access side routes that often lead to alternate sections of the course.

For the most part, the game looks great, but the pace stutters in spots. This usually happens when all six riders are visible onscreen at the same time, although there are two or three courses where slowdown is prevalent throughout the run. Despite the shaky frame rate, the game never bogs down to the point where it becomes difficult to watch or play. Otherwise, the ambitious nature of the graphics engine is a good thing. Tricks come out smoothly, and the animations for actions like shoving an opponent or wiping out are fairly elaborate. Courses are full of hills, trees, mountains, rails, advertisements, and anything else you'd expect to see on a mountain during a snowboard competition. There's a bit of humor here and there as well, such as how you get to watch your own rider lounge around in a tram before every event.

As for how it plays, SSX 3 for the GBA is basically a "lite" version of the console game and should please anyone who wants to play a snowboarding game on the go. It includes the same 12 riders from the console versions and has two-thirds as many events. The GBA game has 12 events scattered across two mountains, while the console versions have 17 events spread across three mountains. The controls work well, even in light of the GBA's four-button layout. On the ground, you use the directional pad to speed up or slow down, and you use the A and B buttons for jump and boost, respectively. In the air, the directional pad allows you to perform spins and flips, while the buttons activate a variety of grabs. Handplant and boardpress tricks aren't in the GBA game, which is unfortunate, since they're two of the console versions' best new features.

Each time you land a trick, the level of your boost meter increases. You can use the B button to drain the meter to accelerate faster, or you can let it fill, which allows you to perform an ubertrick. After you perform four ubertricks in a single run, you'll spell out the word "uber," which means you can start performing supertricks. Supertricks are exciting, multifaceted tricks that require quite a bit of hang time to land, so the points you earn for performing them reflect that added touch of difficulty. Once you perform five supertricks and spell out the word "super," the boost meter remains full for the rest of the run.

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