The best sports games like SSX Tricky are SSX 3, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 and Steep. Below are 9, each with the reason it is here — and, at the end, what filtering to sports costs you.
Filtering to sports means you want the shape of a real game without necessarily wanting the rulebook. Most of the memorable ones throw the rules out entirely.
What you get: Something anybody can join. Arcade sports games are the easiest genre to hand to someone who does not play games.
What made SSX Tricky worth playing in the first place is covered on the full list. This page is the sports part of that answer, and only the sports part.
The peak of the series — one mountain, top to bottom, no loading.
The other great trick-combo game, remade properly.
If you want the mountain to be open and the tricks to stay arcade.
The closest current game to SSX's noise and speed.
Downhill on a bike, procedural, and all about flow.
For the same trick-scoring rush in a different shape.
Xbox 360 snowboarding, funnier and stranger than it needed to be.
Modern snowboarding that leans arcade rather than sim.
Same era, same loud style, same trick-line thinking.
Depth, in the arcade ones, and accessibility in the simulations. Very few sports games manage both.
The full list is on games like SSX Tricky — 9 picks, no genre filter.
SSX 3. The peak of the series — one mountain, top to bottom, no loading.
No. SSX Tricky released on the PlayStation 2, but a recommendation is only useful if you can play it, so the picks above span platforms and eras. What they share is the genre and the reason.
For the arcade picks, no — they do not use the real rules anyway. For the simulations, it helps a lot.
Usually not. The on-pitch changes between years are small and last year's version is a fraction of the price, unless you play the online team modes where the population moves across.
By hand. Each pick was written for the full SSX Tricky list first, on what the game actually does, and this page is the part of that list that is sports — never a genre tag lookup, which is how "best racing games like Super Mario 64" used to be a page on this site.
Or read the sports guide for where to start in the genre generally.