SBK: Snowboard Kids appears to be one of those reboots that forces an edgier tone, but it’s actually decent and retains a sense of fun.

I grew up poring over Nintendo 64 magazines, and the original two Snowboard Kids games fascinated me. Their lively and colourful look, their chibi protagonists sporting ludicrous schnozzes, the familiar cartoony racer setup combined with the natural integration of jumps and tricks. This reboot ages all the characters up into a standard anime style, in the process disappointingly giving them all tiny noses. But the other elements remain, more or less.

There’s a good variety to the courses. Being a snowboarding game, they universally involve frozen water arranged into slopes, but you could find yourself storming down a frozen-over Chinese city street, or along an iced castle wall in Germany. The layouts leave lots of room for experimentation; when to crouch for speed, when to slow for extra control. Of course there’s plenty of chaos, with comical weapons being thrown at you, as well as the separately-charged special item each character has. It’s thankfully not as bonkers as Mario Kart, since there are only three other racers.

Doing the campaign will also present different scenarios: sometimes items are banned, or you’re doing a “slalom” time trial, or throwing snowballs at a big robot. There’s three of these campaign gauntlets, but the other progression is earning points for the shop, to unlock skins, courses, board types, and even extra characters (a penguin and, for some reason, the mascot creature from off of Megami Tensei—twice!). These extras make the gender parity of the selectable characters even worse, but oh well. Many characters are ostensibly reinterpreted from the original games but they’ve been changed so much they’re unrecognisable. Best not to worry too much, and try to take it at face value.

The game uses the touch screen well, by which I mean sparingly. There’s a loose “map” displayed there, but you also use it to get started after stacking it, or to do special tricks. These frantic tap-fests have different patterns to keep you on your toes. Otherwise tricks use a face button and a direction to spin or flip; I often got muddled when transitioning between ground and air, but that’s all part of it. Mastering the systems and courses takes practice. Anyway good game, good times.