SSX (2000) Longplay: Mac

essay below, you have been warned :) So uhhhhhh hi! Welcome! This is something I've genuinely wanted to do for almost 15 years now: upload content of one of my favourite game series to Youtube, both for fun as well as for providing help, guides, walkthroughs, how-to's, what-to-do's and all that jazz. This is all recorded on REAL hardware, unlike a lot of content of the SSX series that's popped up on Youtube over the last 5+ years because, let's face it, the PS2 is a retro console at this point and it makes sense that it's basically impossible to find the 'real deal'. Lucky me, then, who not only still has his ACTUAL OG DISCS (yes, plural, I bought a spare in 2002 because I broke my original disc dropping my PS2 a few months after getting SSX for my birthday in 2001) but also his OG memory card AND the PS2 Slim he bought in 2007 when his OG PS2 died of death (phats are notorious for the DVD drives disintegrating). Pair that with a new(ish) controller* and a Retrotink 4K CE to be able to convert the signal to HDMI, and here you go. I still need to fiddle with OBS, I wanted this to be at least 1440p (to preserve the bitrate) but a game running at roughly 285p is gonna look pixelated no matter what so I guess it's fine. ANYWAY. Here we go. I wanted to do a full longplay run of the game's 'career', aka World Circuit, from start to end. So this is basically as close to a 100% casual longplay as I can be bothered to, because while the Trick Book isn't difficult to complete the issue is that you can't access it in the pause screen like on Tricky, and I'm not smart-enough to remember all 400 trick book combinations to unlock the bonus outfits and menu highlight. I doubt people would appreciate me pausing the game repeatedly to check my phone on a guide, so yeah. Here's an uninterrupted, 0-to-100, run-through of World Circuit with Mac, the game's default/starter character (and I guess the most popular or one of the most popular characters in the franchise) and who, admittedly, ended up being a semi-namesake for my xbox 360 gamertag years. Every event cleared with gold, every race and showoff (trick) event, and then the unlockable freeride event and an exhibition race on the best track in the game as bonuses. Time chapters are included if you want to skip to specific races, though in most cases I'm just messing about/AI pathing. We don't talk about Snowdream. Or Mesablanca. Screw Mesablanca. *I'm using a PS5 controller during this longplay because I've been having trouble with the d-pad on my PS2 controller. I'll probably just go back to the PS2 controller for future SSX/Tricky content, the thumbstick sensitivity is way too much for my muscle memory. Timestamps: 00:00 Boot-up, intro, changing menu settings Races: 02:55 Race 1: Snowdream, ft. blatant AI speedhacking 14:22 Race 2: Elysium Alps 34:42 Race 3: Merqury City, the corporate sellout begins ft. "Thank Heck for AI Rubberbanding" 49:50 Race 4: Mesablanca, the worst track in the game 1:04:18 Race 5: Tokyo Megaplex 1:20:22 Race 6: Aloha Ice Jam 1:31:59 Fixing my Snowdream failings Showoff: 1:40:41 Snowdream 1:44:59 Elysium Alps 1:52:36 Merqury City 1:58:55 Mesabl-- 2:00:40 Uhh--let's pretend this never happened... 2:01:55 Did I mention I hate Mesablanca? 2:07:21 Tokyo Megaplex 2:13:16 Pipedream Exhibition: 2:19:05 Untracked 2:26:29 Elysium Alps, Super Pro, fully upgraded.