SSX

SSX launched around 2000 as EA Sports' snowboarding series under the EA Sports BIG label, and from the start it was never meant as a simulation but as an arcade ride full of flips, shortcuts and larger-than-life characters. The games sent players down fictional mountains where flashy trick combos scored just as much as raw speed, setting the series apart from rival snowboarding and skiing games — including Nintendo's noticeably more grounded 1080° series — through its focus on fun and visual flair over realism. Its courses drew on mountain ranges from around the world, from Alaska to Japan to Antarctica, always as fictional, heavily exaggerated versions of real places, and from the early entries players were also driven by leaderboards for best times and trick scores, which gave every single run down the same course a good reason to be replayed faster, smoother, or with a flashier trick combo.

The 2001 sequel SSX Tricky pushed that direction further. It added so-called Uber trick combos unlocked by filling a boost meter through showing off, a career mode with a growing roster of rivals, and an energetic soundtrack that made it one of the most memorable titles of its generation on PlayStation 2, GameCube and Xbox. SSX 3 from 2003 is widely regarded as the series' peak: it dropped separate tracks in favor of a single continuous mountain split into three peaks that could be ridden down almost without interruption, mixing straight races, trick contests and big-air jumps along the way — a design still cited as a benchmark for opening up the arcade sports genre.

After 2003 the series searched for new directions: SSX On Tour (2005) added skiing alongside snowboarding and framed its career around a music tour, while later attempts tried to reinvigorate the brand through changes to controls and presentation without matching SSX 3's reception. The 2012 reboot from EA Canada, also sold as SSX: Deadly Descents, returned to more realistic mountains modeled on real-world ranges, tied its runs to real geographic data, and leaned into survival in dangerous terrain — avalanches, cold and altitude sickness — closing out the series on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC after years away.