Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix
Score: 80% ESRB: Everyone Publisher: 3DO Developer: 3DO Media: Cart/1 Players: 1 Genre: Sports
Graphics & Sound: With the Olympics comes Olympic videogames. One of these is Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix. While he may not have done so well in the actual games, 3DO hopes that Jonny's game will fare better on the Gameboy Advance. Smell usually isn't a sense that gamers use, but when I started Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix I had a strong sensation in my nose. The graphics wreak of Tony Hawk for the GBA. For those readers who aren't familiar with the game, it uses an isometric view and mini polygonal characters to give a sense of three dimensions. This effect was also used in Shawn Palmer Snowboarding and Matt Hoffman BMX for the GBA. The catch is that these games came from the same developer as Tony Hawk (Activision), so I'm not surprised that they look the same, but Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix is from 3DO. It is a bold move to rip off someone's style, but if it was illegal, the kids from Jet Grind Radio would be covering the characters from Cel Damage in tag art. I digress. The question is do the isometric 3D graphics work in Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix? The answer is that they do from a graphics standpoint, but they end up slightly hindering the gameplay. (See section below entitled Gameplay) The game looks good and there are plenty of special effects like snow spray coming off the back of the skis and trails showing your path through the snow. Also the characters sport excellent animations. Although the characters are small, you can still tell that their knees bend and the arms swing the poles around as they switch directions. Outside the actual game, the menus also sparkle. Good stills were made for both the character selection and the game mode selection menus.
Gameplay: As far as gameplay goes, Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix seems a lot like a sequel to Ski Free for Windows. Players have the choice of either turning right or left and also have the option of jumping just like in Ski Free. What makes this game different (and a lot better) is the large trick list. Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix is not all about unlocking new courses like some other games, but also completing all of the tricks. Most of the button combinations are simple such as up plus A and B at the same time which means that they are easy to remember. There aren't any thumb breaking Super Street Fighter 3 Revival Turbo Alpha EX combos which means that it is still accessible to the younger gamers out there. The courses are all different, but all have the same elements. Jumps. These serve as launch pads for tricks. Rails. Commonly used for sliding along or 'grinding' by skateboarders, rails can be found in the game for all of your ski ruining needs. Moguls. The bane of all skiers, the mogul is a large mound of snow that slows you down if not properly traversed. Trees. These come in the coniferous version to slow your progress down the run, but they also raise your thumb/eye coordination. The levels are laid out very well with a good placement of the previously mentioned elements. Instead of getting mad because I couldn't do any trix, I found that there were plenty of different types of jumps, many of them with rails placed after them for easy combination setup. One of the only gameplay hampers is the orientation that you have with your character. Because of the isometric viewpoint, you're never skiing from the top of the screen to the bottom, but instead the courses go from the top right corner to the bottom left corner to give the effect of being 3D. This can become disorienting when the course changes directions. Many a time, I went around a corner and thinking that pushing left would cause me to steer towards a jump, I instead slammed into a wall. Because pushing right on the D-Pad moves the character to their right you have to be in a different mindset when the course takes a corner. Suffice to say, the learning curve for steering may be a little too steep for children, but the experienced gamer should be able to pick up on it after a few tries. The biggest letdown of the gameplay is the lack of modes. What I really would have liked to see is a park editor to design your own courses, but alas there is none. One other thing that I was disappointed with is the fact that all of the characters handle in the same way despite having different trick lists.
Difficulty: The main difficulty of Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix comes from learning to ski. Once you have all of the elements of turning and hitting the jump button at the right time on the jump, the game becomes a breeze. I wish that there would have been some other modes to add a challenge like a sponsorship mode or big air contest. I guess some of the difficulty, or lack thereof can be blamed on the limitations of the Gameboy Advance's two button setup. This might be off the point, but I have to wonder why there aren't four face buttons on the thing. The Super Nintendo had four buttons, and there are a lot of it's games being ported over to the new Boy. Once again, I digress - many apologies. Anyhoo, Jonny Moseley's Mad Trix won't be much of a challenge for most gamers, and also new gamers will be able to get it after a while. Some people may say that the game is 'accessible'. I call it easy.
Game Mechanics: I was most amazed, but also somewhat confused about the file saving procedure for the game. After unlocking a load of tricks, I wanted to know how to start from the same point in the game next time I turned it on. Given that I had not seen any sort of password screen I assumed that it would be up to me to save the game, but I couldn't find any sort of screen with the words 'save' or 'load' on them. With a wince I turned off the unit fearing that all my data would be lost. Much to my surprise I found that all my accomplishments were saved automatically. This works great because you can just play and the game does all the saving on the fly without you doing anything. The only downfall to this is the fact that you can't have multiple files for multiple players.
-Joe Guys, GameVortex Communications AKA Joe Labani
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