That sense of fun carries over into the courses themselves, which bristle with imaginative but unlikely ice formations and frozen ramps in among the more realistic snowploughs and ski lodges. When you find yourself taking a detour down a main road or along the tracks of a twisting mountain underpass, you know you're not in Kansas any more.

A minor scratch in the wax is the lacklustre running commentary, which soon grates with the amount of repetition involved. While the soundtrack itself is that cliché of post-grunge nihilistic-rock and poor Prodigy imitations you've probably already predicted, it does at least capture the scene and recreate the format of extreme sports TV coverage. Also, the simplistic front end menus become a tad obstructive when it comes to skipping replays and restarting after you screw up a stunt, and that's unfortunate given the number of times you're likely to be leaving little ice-moulds of your screaming face pressed into the snow.

Walking the line between arcade and sim, Supreme works because it manages to hit just the right tone, offering highly playable stunt snowboarding without taking such liberties that core fans would feel turned off or insulted. It doesn't have the depth or longevity of titles based on more tactical sports like football, sure, but for immediacy, excitement and spectacle, this is as essential as knee-pads under your combats.