Play Slalom Online

Summary

Slalom, known in the arcades as VS. Slalom, holds a quirky place in NES history: it was the first console title Nintendo ever published that wasn’t built in Japan, and it marked the debut of Rare’s Stamper brothers on the Nintendo brand. The game’s development story is almost as slippery as its slopes – Tim and Chris Stamper reverse‑engineered the NES, built a demo, and convinced Nintendo to grant a license, kicking off a partnership that would last decades.

Players tackle 24 downhill runs spread over three mountains – Snowy Hill, Steep Peak, and the aptly named Mount Nasty – each flagged with obstacles like trees, snowmen, and rival skiers. Hitting a flag on the wrong side forces a snowplow slowdown, while moguls launch the skier into the air for a brief chance to pull off freestyle tricks and earn bonus points. Successful runs add seconds to a solo‑run timer, and high scores linger in memory until the console is turned off.

The arcade cabinet even offered a quirky ski‑pole controller, letting you stand on shortened skis and steer with two poles, a novelty that never made it to the home version. David Wise, who later became Rare’s legendary composer, programmed the game’s chiptune soundtrack by hand‑coding HEX values – a process he later joked sounded like doorbells.

Contemporary reviews praised the smooth scrolling, perspective tricks and the sense of speed, even if the physics felt more cartoon than sport. Retrospectives have been harsher, calling the graphics blocky and the gameplay repetitive, but the title still pops up in modern nostalgia collections, most recently as part of the 2015 Rare Replay compilation on Xbox One.