1080 Avalanche is a game about going really really fast down a really steep mountain with your feet strapped to a plank. Apparently this is a popular winter activity among Olympians and potheads alike. The overlap should really not surprise anyone. No matter how badly the IOC wants to distance itself from Ross Rebagliati and his THC-positive ilk, it is still the same organization that added something called "skeleton" to the official list of winter games. Skeleton is like luge, only head-first. Clearly, someone at Olympic HQ in Lausanne is high.

Anyway, snowboarding. The first 1080 was a game for the Nintendo 64. When it was released back in the spring of 1988, it was a revelation. Steering our blocky little snowboarders down the hill, cutting our board edges deep into the powder, turning sharply, leaping and spinning through the air, we felt as if we had been kissed by something special. 1080 was a racing game at heart, and as we played it we knew the point of the whole exercise was getting to the bottom of the mountain before anybody else did. But it felt so fast, so smooth, so beautiful, that we often found ourselves playing just to enjoy the ride. Just to look at the trails our boards left in the snow.

In video game years, that was a long time ago. We have seen a lot of snowboarding titles in the time since, and many of them owe a debt of gratitude to the old 1080. The features that once set a single game apart -- smooth and fluid control, a giddy sense of speed, that indescribable feeling of actually being there hurtling down the mountain -- are now the minimum standards any snowboarding title must meet if it wants to avoid public ridicule. This is a bit of a problem for poor 1080 Avalanche. The game is competently made, but only just. Consider the following nerdy quibble.

Your TV flashes 30 (okay, 29.97) frames at you every second. When you think you are looking at a moving image, you are really seeing a series of stills, one replacing the next so quickly that your brain is fooled into thinking you are actually moving down a snow-covered mountain.

Modern video games are built to run on powerful computers (Xboxes and Playstations and GameCubes and the like), which are themselves built to spit out many, many still frames of graphics in a very short period of time. A well-optimized game will manage at least the aforementioned 29.97 frames every second, which will allow it to keep up with your TV and make everything look smooth and exciting. A poorly optimized game will push the computer too hard, which will slow the frame-rate down, which will in turn give the whole experience a sort of chuggy, choppy, jittery vibe. At its worst, this has the power to nauseate. At best it shatters the illusion of speed and smoothness.

Which is where we come back to 1080 Avalanche. When you are racing through mountain towns with many buildings lining the track, or when you are turning sharply through a crowded field of other boarders, the frame-rate does drop and your concentration does falter.

It is not a total disaster by any stretch. The chuggy moments are brief and the speed always picks up again around the corner. But imagine a movie where you see a boom microphone dangling above every on-screen conversation and you'll get the picture. The technical shortcomings of Avalanche pop the balloon. In those moments when you would much rather just be out there, you know, riding, they make you think about game development and overworked programmers and cubicles decorated with empty Jolt Cola cans. And everyone knows caffeine is not the snowboarder's vice of choice.

How are the mountains themselves? They are beautiful. They are grand and stately and covered with tracks that range from realistic to fanciful and back in a few moments' time. There are trees and safety fences and spectators. There are tunnels loaded with giant icicles, which drop in your path and sometimes on your head. Great roaring walls of snow chase you down the hill. If you are quick you can beat them.