SSX On Tour

SSX On Tour expands EA Sports BIG's arcade snowboarding series with skis and sets the racing in the fictional mountain resort of Peak, where the player assembles their own crew of riders and climbs in popularity much like on a music tour, choosing for themselves whether to ride primarily on a snowboard or on skis. The core remains flashy tricks, long combos of jumps across the whole course, and an over-the-top stylized presentation with a soundtrack full of then-popular music, complemented by host commentary between rounds of the tour. The career mode rewards not just placement in the races themselves but also showmanship, chaining tricks into one smooth combo, and completing side objectives on individual tracks, which motivates players to keep coming back even after finishing the main career and unlocking further clothing and gear for their characters.

The GameCube version was released alongside the other consoles in 2005 and contains the same tracks, riders, and game modes as the PS2 and Xbox releases, including the entire career line with its music tour and the same selection of unlockable clothing and gear. The Nintendo console's weaker graphical power showed mainly in crowded races with many riders on the track, where frame-rate drops were more pronounced, and the snow and surrounding environment textures were somewhat simpler than on the more powerful Xbox, which was especially noticeable when riding fast between trees and obstacles. Content-wise, though, there was no trimming or shortening of the career – players got the complete game with all tracks and modes, just with a noticeably more modest technical presentation, which was typical for GameCube ports of this generation and applied to a number of other multiplatform titles of 2005 that came out on the Nintendo console alongside PS2 and Xbox and had to fit within the more modest technical limits of the weaker graphics chip, without this changing the structure of the career or the amount of unlockable content.

Why play it: Anyone craving a complete career with all the tracks and the music tour will appreciate the GameCube version despite the more modest graphics and noticeable slowdown in larger races.