158. Winter Heat (Sega, Arcade (Playstation 2), 1997)

Winter Heat is the sequel to Sega's 1995 arcade sports game Decathlete, rereleased on the Playstation 2 SEGA AGES 2500 series. Winter Heat mostly consists of skiing minigames, although there are also a few other winter sports, including skeleton, bobsleigh, and snowboarding. The presentation is pretty nice with big colorful characters and classic Sega music.

Unfortunately the variety is just not there. Despite having one more event than Decathlete, Winter Heat suffers from most of these events controlling the same or very similarly. On top of that, the control scheme of mashing the O and X in alternating rhythm to go fast is just not a fun, and it really wears on you in longer events. I don't mind alternate button mashing in a ski jump, where it's only for a few seconds, but when I saw that the cross country skiing event had an estimated time of over 5 minutes, I immediately quit, and it felt great.

The only events I had fun with were the skeleton and bobsleigh (which were exactly the same as each other), and while they were simple pressing left / right to turn and avoid hitting the sides, the sense of speed was real and smooth. I was excited for the snowboarding minigame, but it ended up controlling exactly like the skiing, so I popped SSX3 into my PS2 and had a much better time.

2/5, a repetitive minigame collection that is often a chore to play