The latest in the Disney Sports series is Disney Sports Snowboarding, which arrives on the GBA as a surprisingly fun game for the kids – a definite improvement overall from Disney Sports Soccer (GBA), which I found to be needlessly complicated and visually disappointing, considering the heritage of the Disney license.

Snowboarding gives you pretty much exactly what you would anticipate from a merging of Mickey and extreme sports: an easy-to-play, fairly simple version of the sport itself, with a few tricks and Disney "magic" utilized to spice up the action.

The whole run of Disney characters is again on-hand to choose from: Mickey, Donald, Minnie, Goofy, Chip and Dale, and that-ever-lovin' big slice o'fun, Pete. Once you select your character (each with his/her own attributes in terms of speed, ability, etc.), you're off to the game's five different stages, though only one of them is unlocked right off the bat.

The goal of Disney Sports Snowboarding is two-fold: first, by pulling off trick combos, you can accumulate points that you can later apply to buying new boards or exchanging with items from other Disney Sports titles (Soccer and Basketball for the GBA, Football and Soccer for the GC). Second, in order to advance to the next stage, you have to beat your opponent to the end of the course, who will vary from one level to the next.

Moving about on the game's snow-covered courses will require a bit of patience for players (especially younger ones), but it's not impossible. Tricks are easily pulled off by crossing one of the game's "trick ramps," which then pulls up a sub-menu of different combos you can accomplish. Steering is controlled by a combination of the control pad and the L and R trigger buttons, while the B button performs jumps. A couple of quick taps on the A button enables you to utilize whatever Magic moves you have at your disposal.

The relative simplicity of Snowboarding makes for a much more engaging game than the other Disney Sports titles I've played on Nintendo systems. With the GBA version of Soccer, it almost felt as if Konami had simply slapped the Disney license on top of a generic soccer title. Here, however, the fast-moving (but not too fast) game-play and amount of options results in a title that should do a better job holding the attention of its intended young demographic than the previous DS titles.

Graphically, Disney Sports Snowboarding is no knockout, but several stages look pretty nice just the same. The opening level takes you from a snowy mountaintop to the peak of a metropolitan skyscraper, with a nice, not-too-cluttered course design. Later levels aren't quite as inspired (especially a futuristic city tunnel that looks like a GBA version of Extreme G), but the characters are at least much better articulated here than in Disney Sports Soccer. Sound-wise, the game is nondescript, with a bland collection of "Muzak" tracks with no connection to the Disney legacy whatsoever.

As with previous Disney GBA titles, inter-connectivity is stressed: the game offers multi-player capability via the GBA Link Cable, with play offered in four different modes (standard Race, Trick Points, Time Trial, and Rally, which mixes the race and trick goals together).

Disney Sports Snowboarding isn't a great game, but at least it's an improvement on Konami's predecessors in this series. For younger gamers, it should prove to be a fun little title to keep them occupied on their GBAs.