The early pre-release press seemed to declare EA Sorts' snowboarding game SSX the hands-down leader among launch titles. As much as I personally detest the gratuitously hip jargon of any sport involving a board, and the spectacle of suburban white boys struggling with their “hood” vocabulary, I bit the bullet and loaded it up.

We'll talk in greater detail about the quality of the titles in a series of mini-reviews Sharky will be posting in the coming days, so let's stick with how the hardware itself is being used in these titles.

No doubt SSX has the highest resolution and most detail of any race style game we have seen on the consoles. One of the first things that is apparent is that smarter programmers are using the processing power to introduce more peripheral detail rather than just drop dead graphics. For instance, while much of the downhill racing course and texture mapping seems only incrementally better than what we've had for nearly a year on the Dreamcast, SSX also tosses in a world of lighting effects. Fireworks cascade onto the course as you pass certain checkpoints. I even veered my boarder through plate glass, leaving shards everywhere and sounds tinkling appropriately.