The Merqury City Snowboard

Hands down, one of the most awesome events to occur out of the release of SSX On Tour was the revelation that Electronic Arts had put a snowboard created by one of the members of Merqurycity.com into the game - and made it by far the best snowboard in the entire game!

Back in mid-2005, the users of Merqurycity.com had decided to hold a fan-sponsored contest to design a single snowboard design to send to EA. Although a lot of the designs are no longer on the web, you can view the contest here. After several entries by many of our talented users, a contest was held in which users voted on a particular board design to send to EA.

After the entries had been totalled, a winner was announced. Royank's design (informally called the Grass Board) tallied the most votes and won the contest.

Without any sort of confirmation, we e-mailed the board design to Electronic Arts and asked them nicely if they could include it in the game. Several weeks passed without hearing anything - then, as EA released a batch of screenshots to the major online game sites, we noticed this one in particular in the bunch:

Needless to say, we were stoked that the design was featured prominently in the game. Upon the game's release however, we were even more excited, because Electronic Arts had elevated the "Grass Board" design to the ultimate board in the game, and even kept our particular name on it! It features max stats in all categories, and costs more than 3 times what the second most expensive board in the game does!

As a fan site we have been greatly honored by EA for electing to give us the honor of such a prominent place in their games, and for that we thank them.