Video - Steep Slope Sliders (Saturn)

Yes, children, people still play Sega Saturn in the year 2012, and games like Steep Slope Sliders deserve to be played.  Cave's snowboarding classic is magical, beautiful. The fluid, immediate controls, the ease of performing stunts, the fantastic level design, the sheer purity of it all - zen perfection.

You do not race for trophies or seasons or celebrity endorsements.  There is not plotline or backstory.  There is only the act of snowboarding.  You race for time and points, and nothing else.  Take your run.  Pass the controller.  Unlock a few more boarders and make another run.  Maybe I'll play the green space alien on this one.  Yeah.

There should be a Criterion Collection for video games, a system that cannot be made instantly obsolete every four years, but a permanent home for the true classics.  Either this medium is a form of artistic expression, a means of bringing people together and expanding our imaginations, or it has no future.  Our lives must stand for something, aspire towards something.  And our creations should not be so easily disposable.