1080° was directed by Masamachi Abe and Misthuro Tanako, programmed by Englishmen Giles Goddard and Colin Reed, developed and published by Nintendo, and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto. Abe had previously directed Tekken 3 for Namco. Goddard had previously programmed the Mario face in Super Mario 64, which was released two years prior to critical acclaim and was a huge commercial success, while Reed had programmed Stunt Race FX. According to Miyamoto, the game "came about because I like skiing. I was thinking about making a skiing game after completing Wave Race [64]. However, the current trend seems to be toward snowboarding. With snowboarding, it seems that you can go places that you can't with skis; for example, in between trees." Development took place in Nintendo headquarters in Kyoto, Japan. When developing 1080°, Goddard and Reed used a technique called "skinning" to eliminate joints between the polygons composing the characters. Their programming used a combination of standard animation and inverse kinematics, creating characters whose appearance during collisions is affected by what object is hit, what direction the collision occurs in, and the speed at which the collision takes place. Tommy Hilfiger outfits and Lamar snowboards appear throughout 1080° as product placement. 1080° soundtrack of "techno and  beats" with "thrashy,  vocals" was composed by Kenta Nagata.