SLALOM: Nostalgia & Color Palettes

In my youth, there were a series of NES games I experienced not because I had immediate access to them, but because I had family that owned them. I think most consoles players can relate to this experience. You never had to own all of the carts if you had friends or family you could swap with from time to time.

I never personally owned Slalom, but it resided with a mighty collection of NES carts at my Grandma's house. My Grandma didn't jam much on this game, but she had her three go to games: Kid Icarus, Gauntlet, and Legend of Zelda. How hardcore of a gamer was my Grandmother taking on titles of this difficulty? The hardest of the hardcore of course! At one point, my Grandma had the entire over world from Legend of Zelda mapped and gridded out with all secret and dungeon locations revealed. She even mastered the second quest unaided. It's also fair to mention, she didn't sleep much either.

I digress.. Slalom is one of the many titles that when I fire it up, the smells of long spent menthol cigarettes, acrylic paint, and the old wood floors of my Grandma's hobby room come back to me for just a flicker of a moment as if I'm back in 1988. Briefly in my mind, I'm back in that room playing NES with my Grandma. Some games are more than just fun to play, the are a window into my own youth that reverberate so powerfully I can fully recall those moments. These games in many ways, are like my own personal flux capacitor, they make mental time travel possible. The visual stimulus that stays with me from this cart is the color palette from this game. The palette isn't deep, but it's a strong visual mix. The color themes can be seen throughout each of the screen caps in this post, I have a breakout of these at the bottom of the post.

A brief summation of this game:

If the title wasn't obvious enough, this game is all about the skiing. Where does it take place? On either Snowy Hill, Mr. Nasty, or Steep Peak... wherever the hell those are. This was an early NES release (1987 in the US) part of the "Sports Series". Simple and fun. Decent solo, fun head to head. Each course has a series of obstacles (including other NPC skiers). The main goal is to beat the clock while running the course. For added funsies, you can perform tricks off of jumps for bonus points. Great way to rub in defeat against your competition while playing head to head.

The color palette consists of bold complimentary colors. All the colors are cool, reflective of winter. The only warm colors are used for the Player's skier, starting poles, finish poles, guide flags, and the timers. Everything else is cool and dusky. I'm always generally amazed at how some of the most well done games visually do so much using so little.

In the image below, I have the two main palettes for the game: The skier and the background. I've also created Kuler themes here for the skier and here for the background if you are interested in the color numbers. Enjoy!