Maybe you have to be a true surf guru to notice the variation in handling among the different surfers and boards, but it was all just way too subtle for this city kid. Or maybe I'm just not Zen enough to look past the pitiful graphics and sound. The soundtrack consists of a mixture of techno and surf rock that, while intriguing on certain stages, is mostly forgettable. The menu-selection screens are visually uninspiring, and no matter which game mode you choose to delve into first, your transition into the actual game is abrupt, consisting of your surfer magically appearing in the middle of the ocean. The models for the surfers are tiny and indistinguishable from one another unless you switch the camera view to something a little closer to the action, in which case the surfers are indistinguishable from one another, and are small rather than tiny.
Ditto goes for the skies.
About the only digression from the generally poor quality of the visuals here lies in the waves themselves, which roll, crest, and break in a manner realistic enough to highlight how lame everything else on the screen looks. In fact, I'd say that the wave engine featured here might very well be Championship Surfer 's one saving grace, aside from the surprisingly deep trick system. Championship Surfer has to be one of the most frustrating games I've played in quite a while. Granted, I didn't have an instruction manual at hand to explain the basics of surfing mechanics, but no game has a right to be this thoroughly unintuitive. At first, you'll find that simply staying ahead of the breakers is a challenge in itself, and much seawater will be ingested before you can manage to pull off even the simplest of tricks.