Ready to feel old? SSX Tricky turns 20 this year. The iconic PlayStation 2 snowboarding game has long been considered one of the most popular extreme sports titles out there, and fans have been clamouring for an official remaster for years.
The bad news is that it doesn't look like we're any closer to that remaster. The good news? Steve Rechtschaffner, who worked as executive producer on the first three SSX games is working on a brand-new arcade-based sports game that will share some DNA with the classic franchise.
Speaking to Laptop Mag, Rechtschaffner that the upcoming game has the working title Project Gravity. It'll be a free-to-play live service snowboarding title from Rechtschaffner's team at Supernatural Studios. Expect the same kind of silky smooth arcade snowboarding you remember, plus a ton of modern elements like more social features and course building. I should also point out that the game is early in development, so we don't have screenshots or trailers just yet.
As a free-to-play title, Rechtschaffner plans to release Project Gravity with a smaller amount of content and build out from there. "It wouldn't be like we're shipping a retail game because if we do our job right, a lot of these courses and experiences have deep replayability through progression and competition," he explained. Through this live-service model, he hopes to "introduce new content, course elements, locations, characters, live events and a variety of other fun and unexpected goodness."
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Of course while fans will desperately want this to be just like SSX, Rechtschaffner wants you to know that it's a different beast at the end of the day.
"A lot of things that excite us are creative extensions of experiences that we would've liked to create at that time, but couldn't," he explained. But what we are working on is not rooted in the world of SSX. We're not nostalgic in the sense that we want to bring something back. If we were, we'd be working with EA to create a reboot of SSX. It's not that at all. We don't want to be beholden to people's expectations of where that goes. But we do want to make this arcadey, amazing-feeling, very accessible, competitive and fun game."
So no, it's not the SSX Tricky remaster you crave in your heart... but those of us who have been starved of a good snowboarding game for so long will probably come to see Project Gravity as the next best thing.
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Laptop Mag explains that Rechtschaffner is currently talking with unannounced publisher about release plans, but no specific dates are in place. The goal at the moment is "to get something out there that people can start experiencing sooner rather than later".
Featured Image Credit: EA