It’s time for another installment of crap Commodore 64 skateboarding games, and this time I’m showing Skatin’ USA, a 1990 release by Atlantis Software, a UK company that would go out of business in 1992 after an 8 year stint. It looks like the premise of the game is an American kid on a skateboard battling English Punks. Seems like those two parties ought be be natural allies and not enemies!

I can’t make a simple post to save my life. This was going to a bundle about handful of crappy vintage computer games that weren’t interesting enough merit their own post. Curiosity killed my free time, and so here we are. In 1988 a 16 year old kid named James Closs programmed a crappy skateboard computer game for the Sinclair Spectrum called Skateboard Joust. He sold it to a publisher and made enough money to buy a car and have some cash during college. James had never stepped foot on a skateboard at the time, or actually played the game Joust. By his own admission the game wasn’t very good, and that always bothered him. 32 years later he released the sequel, Jetboard Joust on the Steam platform in 2020.

The Adventures of Willy Beamish is a classic point and click game developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 1991. From the game box, advertisements and splash screen you might think that skateboarding figures heavily in the storyline. I’ve scrubbed through hours of gameplay and I only found a few sequences. The frog is more important to the storyline, but that didn’t stop me from wasting a good chunk of time on this post. Besides, it’s been a while since I’ve made a vintage video game post.

This started as another David ODK post that I rescued out of drafts and embellished. It’s an Italian special edition Commodore C64 computer that came in a box with a skateboard! David found the board on Etsy back in 2015, and I had a screen cap from Facebook that showed a box with no info whatsoever. It was hard to tell if it was real or not, but it is real. Regular googling and reverse image searches came up with nothing but a thousand pictures of vintage skateboarding video games. However, some finessing turned up a decent image on 20thcenturyvideogames.com.

You’re looking at a computer game called Skateboard Kidz for the Spectrum (Sinclair) computer. The game was released in 1988 according to World of Spectrum, which would explain why it came on a cassette tape. Yes, that’s right, you used to have to load computer programs on some home computers via a cassette tape deck. Skateboard Kidz was made by Silverbird Software in the UK, and as such, all the radical 80’s dialect has a distinctly English accent. You can hear it yourself because the program files are downloadable from several places on the web, and if you don’t have a 25 year old computer, you can run it in a web browser with a Javascript MESS emulator. (FYI – Emulator does not seem to work with Safari.)

Does anyone remember Awesome Earl in SkateRock, circa 1988? He was supposed to be the sart of a franchise, with many other adventures “coming soon.” It’s a curious title for a video game. I imagine somebody in marketing picked up a copy of thrasher and randomly appropriated a feature title. SkateRock is a side scroller where you are supposed to avoid obstacles in order to “Join the coveted ranks of the Slime Rat Skaters!” That quote comes from a the game description online, but it’s not actually listed anywhere in the packaging that comes with the version I have. Inside the box there’s nothing more than a 5.25″ floppy, a very short instruction page, and a warranty card. I didn’t actually own this game in 1988, It wouldn’t have run on my Apple IIe. I own it now because I have poor impulse control. Radical! Bigger photos, alternate covers and screen captures from game play after the jump.

I was checking out a 7″ cover of the 720 soundtrack released by a band called Metronome the City, trying to track down an original that wasn’t on eBay, and of course I stumbled on a bunch of other time wasting distractions. Ahh… Interwebs™. Let me count the ways that I love you.

Here’s an episode of the 1986 show Computer Chronicles featuring a suit from Electronic Arts talking about the latest, greatest in computer games, Skate or Die, available for the Commodore 64. – Thanks to Stephen B for the tip.

Speaking of pixelated, it’s been a year and a half since we tackled bad skateboarding video games from the 8 bit days. It was called  “Seven days of bad skateboarding video games” but apparently I abandoned the concept after only three ( 1 – 2 – 3) days. Metro Cross has the honor of winning the worst video game box cover in a PC World article. – Thanks to Bobcat for the tip.

1987’s Skate or Die spawned an NES only sequel in 1990 that was imaginatively titled Skate or Die 2. No word yet on whether Nike has plans for a shoe based on Skate or Die 2. I don’t remember this game at all, but there’s probably a lot of info to sift through. Apparently, you accidentally run over the mayor’s wife’s dog on you skateboard, causing the mayor to ban skateboarding. Then you have to skate through the ghetto avoiding thugs and dragons, etc.. you know, normal skateboarding stuff. Unlike the other skateboard “simulators,” Skate or Die 2 looks more like a regular walking adventure game with skateboards pasted onto the feet of the characters. In some of the frames of the sprite animations (old 2D gaming terminology) the skateboard almost disappears. Oh yeah, you get to carry a gun too. Actually, it’s getting more and more realistic as time marches on. One thing that is worth checking out is the theme song, or at least the first 30 seconds of it. It’s got a very heavy Devo vibe. Check it out after the jump.