Total Extreme Sports

The Total Extreme Sports series is a series of extreme sports games developed by Innovision Softworks and published by ACS. The series consists of sports games based on several extreme sports, such as skateboarding, snowboarding and BMX, which were released from 2000 to 2004. The series has been released for several platforms, including the PlayStation, PlayStation 2, XBox, Nintendo Gamecube, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance.

The Total Extreme Sports series was officially licensed by proffessional skateboarder Chris Senn, proffessional BMX rider Jay Miron and proffessional snowboarder Peter Line, and features a wide variety of real-life pros as playable characters.

History
Prior to creating the GameTime series, ACS released Freextyle, an arcade-style skateboarding game released for the PlayStation, in 1998, with an enhanced Nintendo 64 released a year later (known as Freextyle 64). While not the first 3D skateboarding game on a console (Electronic Arts’ Street Sk8er was released months prior), it recieved praise for its kinetic gameplay and environments.

Before development began, ACS decided to strike a deal with proffessional skateboarder Chris Senn, proffessional BMX rider Jay Miron, and proffessional snowboarder Peter Line, all of whom won medals in the 1999 X-Games, in order to promote their newest game series, which eventually turned into the Total Extreme Sports series.

The first game in the series to be released is Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding, released in October 21, 2000. Then, Trevor Meyer’s Total BMX was released a month later: November 19, 2000, becoming one of the first games of the BMX genre next to Acclaim’s Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, released months prior. Finally, Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding was released December 23, 2000,two days before Christmas. Subsequent titles in the series would later follow this release schedule.

The last game in the series to be released was Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding PRO, released in Christmas of 2004. ACS was planning a followup to the series to be released by next year, but lack of interest, as well as their contracts with Senn, Line and Meyer expiring, led to ACS putting the Total Extreme Sports series in an indefinite hiatus.

Gameplay
The gameplay of the Total Extreme Sports titles bears various similarities to other extreme sports games. Players get to choose their character of choice (or create their own) and traverse through their chosen course, while racking up points by performing tricks and various objectives.

The main objective of the game is to score as many points as the player can by performing successful chains of tricks, which are performed during jumps and are best done when the character goes through a quarter pipe bowl or ramp. The game’s controls are clean-cut and easy to learn, with face buttons being used for ollies/jumping, tricks and grinds, while the shoulder buttons are used for spinning and foot-switching/fakies. Tricks are performed by entering simple direction + face button commands while the character is airborne. During an airborne state, the player can also spin left or right with a press of the d-pad or shoulder buttons which can be appended to certain tricks for higher score rewards. Players can also grind on rails scattered all around the level for extra points. Failed trick attempts will often result in bailing, which nullifies the player’s score in that combo.

By performing successful chains of tricks in a row, the player can fill up their Extreme meter and activate Total mode, which multiplies the score obtained during tricks, as well as giving the player a speed boost. The Total Extreme Sports 2 games add in special Total tricks, special tricks that can only performed during Total mode, which are often high-risk, but reward the player lots of points upon successful landing. In the Skateboarding and BMX games, the Extreme meter goes down gradually as the player stops performing tricks. In the Snowboarding games, the Total meter goes down much slower, due to the more limited nature of snowboarding.

The games feature several real-life as playable characters. The game includes unlockable characters mostly consisting of token ACS characters. Series namesakes Chris Senn, Peter Line and Trevor Meyer have appeared in all iterations of the series.

Game Modes
The games feature a plethora of game modes to choose from, with Pro Tour being the game’s main mode, where the player mus perform various challenges to win cash or medals in order to unlock extra boards, levels or characters.

The Pro Tour mode in the Skateboarding and BMX games is mostly objective-based, in which the player are given two minutes to accomplish the objectives scattered within the course. Objectives range from earning a certain amount of score to collecting bonus icons and letters to spell out words like “SKATE”, “GRIND” or “TOTAL” to smashing objects. Occasionally, the player could join vert contests, where there are no other objectives other than beating the other skaters/riders by setting high scores.

On the other hand, the Pro Tour modes in the Snowboarding games act more similar to a Career mode, where the player perticipates on events such as Freestyle, where the played must traverse through a downhill course while performing tricks on certain slopes and/or grinding on rails, Big Air, where the players must perform one huge trick on a single, large-scale slope, and Downhill Race, which uses similar stages to the Freestyle events, except the player must race against other snowboarders.

Other recurring modes include Session mode, where the player is given two minutes to perform as many trick as they can in order to beat high scores, Freeplay, where the time limit is disabled and the player is given free rein to practice through the course (a similarly named mode is available in the Snowboarding games, but acts more like Session mode), and various Multiplayer games. Tutorials are also available for those who are getting started with the game.

Create Modes
Total Extreme Sports 3 adds the option to create custom characters. Player are able to create custo characters of both genders, and change their clothing, stats and trick list. The player is able to store a maximum of ten skaters per save. These custom skaters can then be used on all modes.

Soundtracks
The Total Extreme Sports series features several licensed songs from different artists and bands. The tracks featured are predominently skate punk tracks, but also feature other genres such as hip-hop, nu metal and electronica.

Main article: Total Extreme Sports/Soundtracks

Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding

 * Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding (2000; PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color)


 * Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding 2 (2001; PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance)


 * Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding 3 (2002; PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance)


 * Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding PRO (2004; PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance)

Jay Miron’s Total BMX

 * Jay Miron’s Total BMX (2000; PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color)


 * Jay Miron’s Total BMX 2 (2001; PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance)


 * Jay Miron's Total BMX 3 (2002; PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance)


 * Jay Miron’s Total BMX PRO (2004; PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance)

Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding

 * Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding (2000; PlayStation, Dreamcast, Game Boy Color)


 * Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding 2 (2001; PlayStation 2, Game Boy Advance)


 * Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding 3 (2002; PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance)


 * Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding PRO (2004; PlayStation 2, XBox, Gamecube, Game Boy Advance)

Trivia

 * Whenever the player falls out of bounds, into water or gets hit by a train in certain stages, the player respawns back it came from, while a random zinger appears on-screen chronicling what happened. Some more common zingers include:
 * (after falling on water) “Taking a bath?”
 * (after falling on sand) “Sand me an angel!”
 * (after falling off a cliff) “What goes up, must come down.”
 * (after getting hit by a train) “Gotta train harder…”
 * Some of the tracks in the Total Extreme Sports series were later used for the GameTime series of pro sports games.
 * Chris Senn’s Total Skateboarding was among the first ACS games to incorporate a licensed soundtrack.
 * Hacking Jay Miron’s Total BMX 2 would reveal an unused area known as “Hangar 55”, a level taking place inside a military hangar. Hangar 55 was eventually re-included in Jay Miron’s Total BMX 3.
 * Early pressings of Peter Line’s Total Snowboarding PRO were known to have a particularly nasty memory glitch that could corrupt the player’s save data at random, if not the memory card itself. Fortunately, this was fixed in later pressings.