Snowboarding was the freshest sport on the slopes when Giles Goddard became hooked in the Nineties. He’s still a keen snowboarder to this day and has recently released Carve, a VR snowboarding game for modern platforms (see issue 225). But back in early 1997, Giles was working on a new graphics technique that created realistic-looking limbs that bend and twist. “I had this prototype demonstrating inverse kinematics and wasn’t sure how to test it. So, I had this arm that was attached to a ski pole and the arm was flailing around. That’s where the topic of making a ski game came up with Miyamoto. There weren't any good skiing games for the N64 and Miyamoto said, ‘Let’s make a skiing game.’”
Giles advised Shigeru Miyamoto that it would be better to go with one board instead of two skis. “Around that time, snowboarding had just begun to grow into a big thing. So, we had a discussion about which one would be more fun. A typical ski game, simply turning left and right, or a game where you can jump onto things and have massive leaps, twists, grabs and all this kind of stuff. It’s a no-brainer that’s going to be the more interesting game.”
After the decision was made, Giles continued developing the
