Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing

Overview

Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing was developed by Ray Kaestner for Realtime Associates, and released in 1988 for the Intellivision. While Mountain Madness is not officially a sequel, it serves as a spiritual successor to U.S. Ski Team Skiing, and uses much of the same code.

Much like in U.S. Ski Team Skiing, up to six players take turns skiing down a mountainside rife with trees and moguls attempting to earn the fastest time. Mountain Madness Super Pro Skiing adds more hazards, including ice and unpacked snow, and adds a selection of 32 preset mountainsides. The player also has the option of designing their own course, or skiing down a randomized slope.

There is no computer AI in Mountain Madness, so the game can only be played in a solo practice mode or in competition with friends.

Gameplay

Setup

Mountain Madness starts with selecting how many players will be playing, from one to six. The colors used for each skier are as follows:

• Player 1: Blue

  

• Player 2: Red
• Player 3: Tan
• Player 4: Dark Green
• Player 5: Green
• Player 6: Yellow

Once the number of players is chosen, the "flag style" is selected, from either downhill, slalom, or no flags. Slalom is the most difficult, with narrow flag gates, while downhill has wider and more forgiving flag gates. No flags is exactly how it sounds: no flag gates, so the race is straight to the bottom of the course.

Next, the course is selected. There are 32 preset courses in Mountain Madness, and a map showing their general path and conditions can be viewed before the selection is made. In addition, there is the option of a Helicopter course, which will take the player to a random course on a random mountain, or design their own course, which is discussed later.

Finally, the slope for the course is chosen, which determines the speed of the skier. The slope varies between one (slow) and fifteen (very fast). In a reality-breaking move, players can choose different slopes for the same mountain course. However, time will move at the same pace, so players choosing a faster slope will have a definite advantage, provided they can control their skier without problems.

Racing

Each player takes their turn alone on the mountain, situated up at a starting gate with the best times from each player to the left. Before taking off, players can opt to view the map of the course one final time.

Once they start, players guide their skier through flag gates (with the exception of no flags mode), while avoiding obstacles and hazards on the course. When a flag gate is successfully passed through, one of the flags will change color. There are two ways to maneuver the skier down the hill and through the gates. Normal turning is slow but more predictable, and scrubs off a little speed. The player can also use their edges to turn, which makes for sudden, faster turning that does not decrease the speed at much. However, using this method requires more planning of the course and is more difficult.

The skier will encounter hazards such as trees, moguls, icy snow, and powder snow. Trees must be outright avoided, but moguls and powder can be jumped over safely. Icy snow does not need to be avoided, but will hamper the turning ability of the skier. Hitting any obstacles other than ice will cause the skier to crash, slowing them down tremendously and taking away all of their momentum. Hitting a flag is not as critical, but the impact will slow the skier down somewhat. Also, running into the crowd at the end of the track will trip up the skier.

Once a skier passes through the finish gate, their time is tallied. Each gate missed will add two seconds to the final time at the end of the run. This also means that it is advisable to bypass any gates that will require more than two seconds to reach. The stats screen will show the previous best run, the time penalties accumulated, and the total time of the current run.

Each skier receives three runs, with only their best run counting. The winner is the skier with the fastest time.

Course Designer

Beyond the 32 courses in the game, players can create their own tracks using pre-fabricated segments of track. There are 28 of these segments to choose from when creating a course, and at least three segments (or at most fifteen segments) must be placed before the course can be used. Once the track is finished, players choose their slope, and the game continues normally with the custom course.

Custom slopes cannot be saved, so players wishing to save their masterpiece would do well to write down all the segment numbers used for future reference.

Game Room

On March 24th, 2010, Mountain Madness was added to the Game Room. Since the game only keeps track of course time and offers a wide variety of courses, there is no leaderboard support. The only challenge medals available when playing Mountain Madness are the Time Spender medals, which are (aptly enough) awarded for spending time playing the game.