Year released: 1990
Type: Winter sports
Publisher: Electronic Arts
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| Title screen |
14 years ago, in computer-science cabinet in my elementary school we had 286 and 386 computers. Teacher always timed his lectures so that we have time to play games for 15-30 minutes. That was the first time i played "Ski or die" and I loved it.
Music in game is perfect when Soundblaster card is used, graphics is good enough for this kind of game.
Gameplay
Ski or Die is a game without story, you simply have to play and be the best ... something. Once you start the game, you'll get on the main map (shown below). On this screen you navigate by using arrow keys while holding the Enter key. |
| Main map |
From this main map you can either go to "Rodney's Ski Shop" or to play one of the games. There are two ways of playing this game: "practice" and "compete" mode. By default, you're in practice mode and you can immediately go and play one of the games. But, in order to get into highscore list, you have to register at Rodney's first and select "Compete" mode. Also, there is a slight difference between modes in one of the games.
It is possible to play with up to 6 players, but it isn't a real multiplayer - when you choose game to play, one player with play after another (only one game is an exception).
Rodney's Ski Shop
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| Rodney's Ski Shop |
Games
In each game you use direction keys for navigation and "Enter" and/or right "Shift" as action keys.Snowboard Halfpipe
Long time ago, this was my favorite part of the game. Today, I can't finish it without falling at least once. This is, in my opinion, the hardest discipline to play. It all narrows down to jumping and doing tricks on halfpipe. This however gets a bit complicated as you need good timing to perform tricks. There are three levels of tricks and each level is complicated than the one before. Luckily, you have indicator on screen that shows you on which level you are. This is in fact a speed indicator and tricks change with speed level. | |
| Indicator shows third level of tricks |
Green circle indicates first level, blue square second and black rhombus third level. All tricks are done similar: when you're on top of the pipe, press enter key and one of the direction keys. Left and right direction key do the same trick. Besides that, you can do tricks by passing over the snow humps on track and using enter key with one of the direction keys.
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| Second level tricks: Enter+Down/Up/Left or right |
Avoid the logs and these things:
, as they will throw you off your snowboard and drop down trick level to one. In order to achieve really high score, don't do the same trick over and over again and don't fall.Innertube Thrash
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| Innertube Thrash |
First player commands: direction keys for moving, right "Shift" to attack
Second player commands: T-H-F-B for moving, Y to attack
Your goal is to reach the finish line and to collect as many points possible in process.Your main source of points is attacking the enemy. Once you move close to your opponent, press attack key to deflate his tube - each successful attack gets you some points. During the race, you can pick up different weapons and items (as pictured below).
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| Weapons (+25 points on pickup) | First two patch the tube, other two deflate it |
Acro Aerials
Ski-jump acrobatics, press "Enter" to start and after that press "Left" then "Right" and repeat that left-right part until you're airborne. You need to do this to achieve greater speed and by that - higher jump so you can do more tricks. Once you are airborne - use up/down direction keys to do loops or enter+one of direction keys to do one of the following tricks: |
| Enter+up/down/left/right |
Downhill Blitz
This is really cool part of the game: you have mountain, jumps, tricks and time race. There are two things that will affect your score: number of points you managed to collect by doing tricks and how long it took you to reach finish line. Tricks are done in the same way as in "Snowboard halfpipe", only difference is that there is only one level of tricks. |
| Jumping of the ledge |
You can do tricks by jumping of the ledges and doing tricks. Use left/right key to navigate, up key to speed up and down key to slow down. When you're near some ledge, press enter key to jump, and hold it in combination with one of the direction keys to perform trick.
Snowball Blast
In this good ol' snowball war game and your goal is simple - strike down all your opponents, become ultimate warrior and get all the girls! OK, I'm exaggerating, you just have to hit all opponents with a snowball. You move cursor around with direction keys and as soon as you aim the opponent, hit the Enter key to throw snowball. Points you get depend on your distance from the enemy (as pictured below).There are actually four sectors here, you can check the compass in upper right corner of screen. When you whack all the opponents from the current screen, you have to move the cursor all the way to the side where you wanna move (left or right) and press "Shift" key. Numbers on the map represent the number of opponents in each sector (as you can see on a picture below).
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| Points by distance, compass in upper-right corner |
To make the game more interesting, there are other objects to hit besides opponents:
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| Bonus points: 100/30/30/30 |
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| Extra time/unlimited ammo/+100 snowballs/-25 snowballs |
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| Slight difference in interface when in practice mode |
Reverse gravity powerup - reverses gravity (but only for Mylo)
Super gun powerup - Mylo can kill any enemy with his rocket gun
Red mushroom - makes Mylo invincible and he can kill any enemy simply by touching it
Stop sign - stops all enemies and Mylo can get past them without getting hurt
Crystals - In order to finish level, Mylo has to collect all crystals in level (50 points)
Shovel - worth 800 points
Blue Mushroom - worth 1000 points
Candle - worth 1000 points 
Pickaxe - worth 5000 points 
Hidden crystals - Some platforms, like the green one on picture bellow can drop crystals if you hit them from below (just jump and hit them). You can try that with each segment of platform. They're worth 5000 points.
Fruit - Appear randomly, but only for short period. If you manage to pick it up, they're worth 5000 points each
Eggs
- Some levels contain 5 eggs. If Mylo shoots them, letter will appear.
If you collect all letters from eggs (they spell "BONUS"), you get 10000
points. 
Chest key - Some levels contain chests like this: 
. Once you get the key, you can open them and get between 1000 and 5000 points for each chest.
