EA's short-lived BIG label was an EA Sports offshoot that focused on wild, flamboyant extreme sports games. It was founded in 2000 before being unceremoniously shuttered less than a decade later in 2008. But in that relatively short time it spawned a few must-play games—including 2003's sublime SSX Tricky. This colourful, larger than life snowboarding game launched 20 years ago today for the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube, and is fondly remembered for its vibrant characters, outlandish tricks, rollercoaster-like tracks, and killer soundtrack. It's one of the best games of the PS2 era, and still immensely playable to this day.
SSX Tricky is a sequel to a game released for the PS2 a few years earlier, titled simply SSX. It was created by Steve Rechtschaffner, inspired by a real-life extreme sports event he helped organise that was essentially motocross riding, but on snowboards. "We staged the first ever boardercross race," he said in a 2003 interview. "It had people riding head-to-head, it had burms, and it had jumps." Rechtschaffner later joined EA and turned this new sport into the original SSX. The sequel, SSX Tricky, then took this formula—head-to-head racing and tricking on dramatic, dangerous tracks—and cranked the volume way up.
"We got the core experience down in the first SSX," said producer Larry LaPierre in a making of documentary bundled with the SSX Tricky. "Now it was time to build the worlds we really wanted to build." The result of this approach is courses like the magnificent Tokyo Megaplex, a breakneck downhill descent through the heart of a neon-lit Japanese cityscape littered with bumpers, drops, ramps, half-pipes, and booster pads. There are lots of great tracks, but this one in particular exemplified everything that was great about the game. It's loud, dramatic, outrageous, and just straight-up absurd—which perfectly describes SSX Tricky itself.
While there were tricks in SSX, the sequel (as the name Tricky suggests) pushed them to the forefront. These gravity-defying stunts were brilliantly animated and ridiculously over the top. Brody would grab his board in mid-air, hold it out in front of him, and spin it like a helicopter rotor. Luther could perform a mid-air backflip and belly flop on his. Eloise could grab hers and strike a yoga crab pose. It's all very silly, but that's SSX Tricky through and through. "We wanna be so far away from a simulation of snowboarding," art director Ron Bignell said at the time, a goal he and the team at EA Canada definitely achieved—and then some.
SSX Tricky is also a wonderful snapshot of the early 2000s. This was a period when celebrity actors playing characters in video games was becoming a trend, and Tricky's cast is very much of the time, with appearances from Billy Zane, Macy Gray, Jim Rose, David Arquette, and Lucy Liu. The music is just as much of the era: a glorious mix of hip-hop, breakcore, jungle, drum and bass, scratching, and sampling. But it's perhaps best known for its remix of It's Tricky by Run-DMC, the game's memorable main theme, which gained the Queens rap trio an army of new fans. 20 years on, SSX Tricky has become a real time capsule.
All these years later, SSX Tricky is still untouchable. The snowboarding in Ubisoft's Riders Republic is the most fun the sport has been in a video game for years, but it's still very tame and play-it-safe in comparison. In an interview last year, Rechtschaffner said he'd love to see a remake or remaster of SSX Tricky, but the IP belongs to EA, so it's obviously out of his hands. Still, one can dream. From Insomniac's Ratchet & Clank remake and the Yakuza Kiwami games, to this year's GTA: The Trilogy, plenty of classics from the PS2 era have been given another shot at glory on modern consoles—SSX Tricky should be next in line.