SSX Tricky
IT'S TRICKY! The snowboarding game that traded realism for backflipping off a glacier while Run-DMC loops in your skull. Uber Tricks, a celebrity voice cast, and the loudest announcer in video games — winter sports as a Saturday-morning cartoon.
SSX Tricky arrived in 2001 for PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox as a direct sequel to SSX — less a new game than the original cranked to eleven by developer EA Canada under the EA Sports BIG label, the publisher's home for arcade-style excess. The title wasn't subtle about its theme song: the game is named after Run-DMC's "It's Tricky," which is featured throughout, kicking in at exactly the moments you'd want a Run-DMC classic to kick in.
The headline addition was the Uber Trick system: absurdly unrealistic, exaggerated aerial moves, and landing six of them earned unlimited boost for the rest of the race. It was a perfect risk-reward loop that turned every downhill run into a highlight reel. The riders got personalities to match, voiced by a genuinely surreal celebrity cast that included Lucy Liu, David Arquette, Macy Gray, Oliver Platt, and Billy Zane.
Critics loved it — the PlayStation 2 version holds a 92 on Metacritic — and the PS2 release alone sold over 800,000 copies worldwide, earning Platinum status. A Game Boy Advance port followed in 2002. For a couple of winters, SSX Tricky owned the sleepover: pass the controller after every crash, argue over favorite riders, and let that song burrow permanently into your brain.
SSX 3 followed in 2003 and refined nearly everything, but Tricky is the one people tattoo on their memory — the purest distillation of the early-2000s EA Sports BIG philosophy that sports games could be loud, stupid, and joyful all at once.
Similar items
1080° Snowboarding
"TEN-EIGHTY!" — the grunted title call said it all. Nintendo's own N64 snowboarding game played it straight: weighty, physics-driven boards, board-scraping sound design, and a namesake 1080-degree spin so hard it took nine distinct actions to land. You spent whole evenings just trying to beat the rival rider in Match Race.
Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding
This Xbox launch title did something radical: instead of following preset race tracks, you could pick any line down a whole mountain. The gimmick was fame—impress photographers and film crews, land sponsorships, and become a media sensation. Plus, the hard drive let you load your own music onto the console, a showstopper feature in 2001.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
Activision and Neversoft's skateboarding game, first released in 1999, about chaining tricks into massive combos and collecting the letters S-K-A-T-E across increasingly iconic venues. The punk, ska, and hip-hop soundtrack defined the era. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) is widely considered the series' peak and one of the best games ever made.
Final Fantasy X
The first Final Fantasy where the characters actually spoke — and the awkward forced-laugh scene became legendary for all the wrong reasons. A summoner's doomed pilgrimage, a sport played underwater, and an ending that broke a generation of PS2 owners.