2D sports titles have had their place since Konami’s Track & Field rattled arcade screws loose with its fiercely competitive button rapping. WayForward’s Xtreme Sports draws influence from California Games, a summery seaside boardwalk of hip events and addictive tap-a-thons. You have two characters to choose from, dude or girlfriend dudette, who face off in various tricky sporting events that scream early '00s gnarlyness.
Xtreme Sports, originally a 2000 Game Boy Color title, was graphically impressive for Nintendo’s colour handheld, and the portrait and character art will be familiar to anyone ingratiated with WayForward’s pirate platformer, Shantae. The visuals are bold, colourful, and cleanly arranged, each minigame functioning well around a two-button control scheme. As well as a piecemeal practice mode, the story game features an island over-world with various NPCs who shape your bid for podium gold, and energy drinks that offer a competitive advantage. To enter the tournament proper where the challenge is increased, you first need to complete the training rounds. There are five events to tackle: skateboarding, in-line skating, street luge, surfing, and skyboarding.
Skateboarding gives you a half pipe in which to build momentum, pulling off tricks at the incline lip using various input combos. It becomes more engaging when you’re making the lip on every roll and combining different tricks to shatter the opponent’s target scores. In-line skating is a 2D obstacle course where you tap to skate, slide under gates, jump and double jump to grab all the flags and reach the finish line in a timely fashion. It’s fun, with increasing creativity in its layouts, and challenging to master. Street Luge is probably our least favourite, a top-down course where you can earn points by hitting ramps and avoiding obstacles. The limitation of the Game Boy Color’s squat 4:3 screen makes it hard to see what’s coming here, meaning you need to hold back on top speeds until you have the layout memorised.
Surfing is very much cut from California Games, requiring you to skilfully ride beneath an endless wave for bonus point pickups and leap the top edge to perform mid-air tricks, ensuring your angle of reentry is suitable to avoid a washout. Finally, Skyboarding is not only the wildest event, but also one of our favourites, seeing you leap out of a plane, board at your feet. This one is fairly unique, in that you can grab directional arrow blocks to form a combo string. You then need to tap the D-Pad in the order of the collected arrows, completing the sequence to pull off a high-value stunt. It’s both novel and addictive.
Alas, even with WayForward’s skilled programming and graphical artistry, Xtreme Sports remains limited. The island overworld works well, adding a charming dash of RPG-lite, and the increased challenge will keep you at the events for some time. There are purportedly more than 400 competitors to defeat, but while fun and neatly executed, the repetitive nature and limited number of sporting events means that mileage will vary in how long it holds your attention.
Comments 17
Huh, expected an even slightly higher score based on how overall positive the review is.
Regardless, it sounds right up my alley given my love for RPG Sports Game Boy Color/Advance games so I'll eventually get it for sure!
Yeah, I expected a higher score too. I mean, it's a Gameboy game. It's pretty good for its Gameboy limitations.
Anyone have thoughts on how this stacks up with Mario Golf and Mario Tennis on GBC? Those are two of my all-time favorites, but the review hardly mentions the RPG elements in Xtreme Sports. Is it not really in the same sport/RPG vein?
I loved California Games on the Master System. I think I'll give this a go.
It's kind of strange this is on the eShop instead of NSO.
I thought that was Misty for a second there.
I picked this up on 3DS, the virtual console version, and I’d say I generally agree with this review. I might give it a 7 instead of 6, but overall I also found that it got repetitive and a bit tedious. Like you said, it’s a limited number of games, and I feel like none of them captured my attention in the same way that say, tennis or golf did in those Mario GBC games. They definitely feel more like minigames than a full experience that you’d want to play over and over. Still a neat little game, but nothing groundbreaking.
Please don't be the same as the first Shantae (GBC) port on Switch. It was poorly done, butchered graphics, glitches, saving issues etc.
Probably would have been better if WayForward just put this game on GameBoy Switch online list.
@shonenjump86
That's the general issue with Nintendo Switch Online's services, third parties are less keen to put their games on there because it precludes them from selling the games standalone.
In this game's case, it also makes it easier to sell a physical copy, which is what happened with Limited Run Games.
@MatthewTaranto Agreed. How does gameboy games as a switch online perk mean anything if companies can just choose to put their GB games on the eshop instead?
@JohnnyMind Are there others you'd recommend? I really enjoyed Golf Story (I know it's not GBC) and enjoyed it. This seems cool, too. Anything else that kind of plays like those (or stands out to you)?
@XiaoShao It's not really like those, rpg is a true strong term for it. It's just a bunch of minigames you have to unlock by getting high scores in other minigames. It's more like that game Google made for the Olympics last year. It loses most of its point, not on an actual gameboy though.
@RupeeClock yeah, I hear you on that. That’s why I pretty much don’t get too excited these days when Switch online games get announced. Especially on SNES.
@Chug_Norris I was referring in particular to the Mario Golf and Tennis games on Game Boy Color and Advance that others also mentioned in this comment section, considering you've really enjoyed Golf Story which is heavily inspired by those I definitely recommend them if you've never played them!
I'm still excited about whenever sports story is coming, these type of RPGs where you level up as you play a sport have always been a guilty pleasure of mine, from the handheld Mario sports games to hot shots golf, I'll have to play this in my own time.
Will probably wait for a sale on this - even if this game isn't amazing, I'm still glad developers are preserving their old games on Switch.
Show Comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...