Jonny Moseley Mad Trix

"Silly Rabbit, these tricks aren't for anyone!"

Ooops, 3DO does it again.

I think I'm experiencing game review karma. In the past month or so, I've reviewed the absolute best (SMA2, Crash) and some of the absolute worst (Peter Pan) games on the GBA.

Based on my synopsis and score, it is easy to figure out that this game falls into the last category.

The Game
In JMMT, you can initially take on the role of one of three skiers who will challenge the various courses. Sounds okay so far? The courses include many jumps and rails to grind, and the courses take you to exotic locations. There are also many tricks you can pull off while on rails or coming off the jumps. On paper, this game must have sounded good, but in reality, the game suffers.

The Problems
First and foremost, the control of this game is terrible. You view all of the action from a ''diagonal'' overhead view, and you can rotate (yes, rotate) your skier clockwise and counterclockwise. This gets very, very, very frustrating because it is not intuitive, it does not feel natural, and it is just downright confusing.

The gameplay is also boring and extremely repetitive. Imagine that you took all of the good stuff out of Tony Hawk 2 for the GBA and threw some snow on the ground. You'd have JMMT. The courses are not very unique, and the only thing different about each course are some slight window dressing graphics.

Speaking of the graphics, this game looks like a home developed demo. The skiers are very small, and when they jump up towards the screen (when coming off jumps), they become incredibly pixelated and ugly. Most of the tricks look okay, but since most of the tricks take place while you are in the air, your skier is ugly and pixelated while the tricks are taking place. Urgh!

The soundtrack has some pounding tunes on it, but they all began to sound the same to me and completely dominated the minimal sound effects in the game.

Oh, there is no two player mode or anything like that.

Rent, Buy, or Destroy?
JMMT feels like it was a rushed product that could have used a few more months (err, years) of development and polish. It just feels like a poor attempt to capitalize on JMMT for the PS2, etc. This type of game has been done before, and done much better than this incarnation. If you want to experience the frustration yourself, I would recommend renting, but you really should do the world a favor and destroy this game!

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 03/09/02, Updated 03/09/02