difficulty level in match races can be set to normal, hard, or expert, adjusting the complexity and number of races. If the player fails at defeating an AI competitor, they must retire. The player is given three chances to beat the computer before the game is over. Players may initially choose from five snowboarding characters: two from Japan, and one each from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Each snowboarder has different abilities and is suited for different levels and modes, since each has varying statistics in fields such as technique, speed, and weight. Three additional snowboarders are unlocked by completing certain game levels and modes. Eight snowboards are initially available for every character, and one additional snowboard may be unlocked later in the game. Each board also excels in different situations, since each has different strengths in categories such as balance and edge control. Development and release 1080° release was announced on 21 November 1997 at Nintendo's Space World trade show; the game's working title had previously been Vertical Edge Snowboarding. 1080° was one of several snowboarding games released for the Nintendo 64 in 1998, others being Big Mountain 2000 and Snowboard Kids. Before the game's release, journalists were able to play 1080° at the January 1998 Nintendo Gamers' Summit. 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