Skate or Die 2, the search for double trouble. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. When you think of skate or die. I think the part that stands out to me the most about the whole franchise is the title, right? Skate or Die. Very aggressive take.
uh for a skateboarding game nothing ever comes quite close to it we could put a lot of things right we could put like or die next to a lot of different actions and they'd be great video games right i think that skate is probably like the perfect one Perfect. Interesting. Okay. I have nothing to say beyond that. You wouldn't be interested in like football or dot.
Uh, yeah, no, no, no. I also think that a little off topic, but like funny or die, which would be like, you know, probably the most popular version of this is probably the most non sequitur. yeah there you go yeah i think i think if you're going for this like 80s i guess this isn't really 90s but like that 80s like cool kid feel skate or die works but like If you want to go a more intense route, like fight or die, that's a different feeling. It's redundant. I don't know.
Now, the other thing about Skate or Die, specifically in this Skate or Die 2, When you look up any information about this game, the first thing that you're most likely to hear somebody talk about is the little song on the title menu that sings out the title of the game, Skate or Die. You know, anything else like that where, like, the first thing comes to your mind is the main menu? Pictionary. Pictionary. Of course.
The select screen for that Donkey Kong double feature. Take yourself out of the NES. Take yourself out of the NES for this one. I just meant like, you know, I guess in a weird way, I don't think it's the defining. Okay, I got one. But, like, Halo, you know? Oh, yeah. The original Halo. That's a good version of that. I'd say that the... Kind of in the same vein of like, oh, this is kind of embarrassing. Would be the PS2 remake of Spy Hunter had a new metal song by Seether.
That I believe had a music video play before the game started. For like an original song. Which is not the only video game where that's happened. The idea that at one point they were like, yeah, we should just have like, you know, bands play a song and we'll do like an FMV. Yeah. PsyOps, the Mindgate conspiracy, had cold. I don't know what your example is. This goes even before the main menu. So now it's like, how much further can we push it? But... I just remembered this on a run.
I was just thinking about the old Neversoft animation with the worm eye, the eye worm, trying to escape the letters and then getting stabbed through the eye. It's like, that was so violent. Yeah, it's like our Pixar. And what kind of name is that? Never saw... Always hard. You know what they mean. I do, but I also think it's a little clever for soft being soft. Yeah, right, right. But no, I guess I'm so confused by that because...
I never once thought about it like that as a kid. I was never like, ooh, that's gruesome. Or like, why is it called Neversoft? And now that's the kind of shit I'm thinking about as an adult. I don't think I ever thought about that until right now. I never saw it. I was just like, yeah, that's a word. I never thought about the two parts of it together. I mean, even if you take out the double entendre, it sounds cool.
So, Joe, are you just somebody who, like, the second a company announces that they're a company, you're like, yeah, that's their name. I think that it was more like I knew them.
you know from like Tony Hawk and stuff but like it's not like I'm they just kind of melded into my brain before I ever actually focused on it I was just like let's get to the game here's all this random text in the beginning I'm not paying attention to and by the time I like looked at it it was already like a part of my subconscious Do you have that same feeling for David Bunch, Eric Knopp, and Michael Kasaka? I don't know what you're saying. You do. You know those people. They made the game.
They made which game? This game. It's just like this game. Very weirdly put. I guess this is more like an early Electronic Arts thing where they would actually feature the developer name.
Back when they were more of like an art collective that gave it shit it yeah could you imagine they're actually like they might as well put in this artist bio section of the manual which is where sean pulled those names they might as well have also said like no it's literally on the title screen yeah it's on the manual i thought you're talking about the part in the in the uh manual there's a whole like
there's a picture of the three of them with their skateboards it is like a whole like you know who they are and stuff like that and i i think it's all very interesting but You know, like it's also so different from the EA of today where there are. what, thousands of employees? Yeah, I think that's a good guess. Imagine having them on your title screen. Yeah, this is like 10 employees. Well, you know, you ever watch the credits at the end and read the names?
I mean, that's like an hour of my time. Right. But like read the name, Sean, like be like, I'm going to remember that guy. I mean, here and there. It's nice of you. Yeah. I feel like I just look for like who direct. Well, I want to know who did the QA for the Korean release. But like just that guy. Nobody else. You're always just looking. You watch the whole... I wait until localization, yeah.
Yeah. Could you believe that we actually received listener mail for the first time in a long time about something like specific to a game? And that was for this episode. We got listener mail about Skater Night 2. okay and it was not like an opinion on the game it wasn't like hey um you know like i grew up in this game i have a lot of nostalgia for it instead it was just like don't forget to mention this And that fact. It was notes. Make sure you mention this. So I put it in here. The skater.
that is on the cover of Skate or Die 2 is Jeff Whitehead, who apparently makes some of the darkest... Black metal. Yeah, black metal music for a band called Leviathan. And I was like, all right, I don't know what else to do with that because black metal is not my jam, but I'll say it. I wonder if this guy that sent this letter to us... is like also like a wikipedia editor because oh because it's in there it's in there now yeah i think it's an important thing to know i it is definitely like
an interesting i'm not gonna say coincidence but like it's not like he's wearing a shirt that says leviathan i don't even know if leviathan was a project at this point yeah i don't know like You know, like, hey, yeah, I'll do your skateboard thing here. And also, like, where is he skateboarding? Like a mall. Let me pull this up.
Well, I'm looking at the manual again. I don't know if I have the box art in front of me. I'm looking at the manual, and it looks like he's in a mall. Yeah, I think that is a multi-tier mall. Maybe that's, you know, reference to the, yeah, that's reference to the level in the game where you're in a mall. Yeah, no, I agree. Speaking of, game starts in a weird way. Speaking of the game. Yeah. Starts in a really strange way.
There's the opening cutscene. First off, you meet a lot of interesting people before you ever meet yourself, right? So you've got these people that have a... They all have like a skater aesthetic or, you know, at least like a punk rock thing going on. And then you see, I guess, I don't know if they have a name or not. I'm just going to say you see the player character and it is like.
Just the most boring, like, white bread person I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, you project onto him. I think the weirdest one is, like, there's a Disney princess. Everything I've looked at about this game makes that joke. Oh, and Ariel's here. But it's not like, okay, everyone makes that joke. No, that is Ariel. It's not even a joke. It's so clearly her. It's like a trace.
And some of these are like traces off of real people or like definitely like more anatomically correct people like the skinhead who's apparently your nemesis. And then there's you who looks like you were pulled out of like a how to manual of how not to die on an airplane. And then you've got like Rodney and Lester who are more cartoons. And then it goes into a completely different art style when you kill that dog.
Don't you think Rodney also is just Rodney Dangerfield in like a punk aesthetic to Rodney Dangerfield? It looks like. I mean, it does. It does look like Roddy Day. Oh, you know what? You're right. I didn't even think about that. Yeah. Just to go back to the whole, like you were saying, they almost trace over pictures of real people or whatever. I don't know. I don't hate any of those other characters. I just hate that they made you the most boring person in the game.
Anyway, so you run over the mayor's wife's dog. Yeah, and you're the hero. You're the hero. Yeah. Well, because that's the mayor's wife. Nobody likes her. Nobody likes the mayor. A dog was killed. The dog is innocent of being the mayor's wife. You think the dog was killed by the skateboard? Definitely. Great.
Uh, so naturally the mayor's wife is, talks to the mayor and says, you got to do something about this. And he bans skateboarding. Yeah. I mean, do you see, sorry, just to clarify here. Do you see the dog in that scene? Dog's dead. It's the only logical conclusion. Yeah.
I've got to say about banning skateboarding, they have no control over this town because there are skateboarders everywhere. That's why his approval rating is so low. Everybody hates the mayor. You're the hero for running over his poodle. Even after he bans it, nobody's listening. Everyone's still skating on the streets. Might as well not even bother getting it reinstated. No one's stopping you. There's no one arresting you for skateboarding.
I mean, but here's the thing, though. The main character even comments on how clean the streets are. There's no graffiti on the walls. There doesn't seem to be any criminal element aside from some skateboarder. So maybe this... This mare isn't too bad? You sound like an apologist for the Elwood mare. Look, I'm just saying that if somebody kills your dog, there's been movies made about what you can do after that.
Hmm. Do you think that she should, the old lady, should have gone on like a John Wick style killing spree? Doesn't she try to? Yeah, she kind of does, actually. She tries to get her revenge, you just wind up fucking her up again. You're like, I'll do what I did to your dog. And that's the first level. The first level is literally go confront the mayor's wife with a paintball gun in a warehouse and defeat her.
I'm glad that you got there. Go ahead. My thing about this level, because it kind of looks almost like a beat-em-up style thing or whatever, but... Once you know where to go, there's this door with an arrow pointing into it. Yes, I guess you can skate around and collect... currency, which is like pizza and tacos and chili fries. Which is a cool currency. Don't just skip that. I like that better than money. Don't disrespect the currency.
The idea of trading in pizza and CDs for stuff is way better than money.
But you take this stuff, and yeah, maybe you can upgrade your board and everything. But other than that... this level is skate to that door and go inside like there's not there's not like you can ignore everyone just don't run into anything skate to the door which is not even at the end of the level go inside and now it's the boss battle like it's just it's kind of it's kind of weird there's not like really anyone that much in your way
It doesn't take that long to get to that door. I mean, is this supposed to be like a tutorial? I don't know, because it didn't tutorialize me. So basically, just to give some clarity here. You start with a skateboard that can barely go forward and can barely like jump or ollie or whatever. Um, so the first door that I noticed I can go into. It didn't have the lady in it. It was something else. But I noticed there's some stuff.
down some not steps like down a ledge and i went down to get it and i realized i couldn't get back out without falling on my ass and then it just sort of like spawns you outside of that so i'm like okay right now i can't go where it wants me to unless i guess i upgrade my board so i wouldn't have even every time i went in there and saw like oh she's down there i can't jump out uh i was like oh i i probably
Don't want to do anything here. Can you kind of follow my thought process? I guess. I think so. You're talking about when you found the lady or just. Or, like, you know, you go into these buildings and usually there's, like, either a pickup down a ledge or her who's, like, throwing stuff around. And it just looked like a place I was supposed to avoid. I don't know.
I got you. Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, I said, was this supposed to be a tutorial? That was the worst word to use because, yeah, it does not ever at any point explain what to do, how to do it. So I was a little confused at first on my objective.
Because I will say, you know, I made the point about like you just go into this room and then you're done. I did originally go all the way to the end of the level. Nothing there. It's a dead end. All the way back, all the way back before I realized, okay, there's this door I got to go in. But there's nothing else to do, I guess, is my point. But it is very confusing to even figure out how to control. Because there were even points where I was trying to find a skate shop.
And there was never those doors never led anywhere like that. And then I only until I stopped avoiding the people skating around that I realized, like, oh, I could just talk to these people. Like that's one of those guys is Rodney. Right, right. I mean, you guys are talking about whether or not like it. Explains what's happening or whatever, but if you remember to it's just like
This is the second game in this franchise, and they've done the classic NES thing of just like, nope, totally different game. Like, whatever you thought Skate or Die was, it's different now. This is not like Skate or Die 1, which was just like... I don't know. You know, it had like a little bit of a hub thing that you like skated around to go to different mini games, essentially, and do skateboard things there. You could do the high jump or skateboarding race or joust or the half pipe.
This is like an adventure game, like with levels and like... Open world. You know what I mean, though? It's like it just drops you in there, and I don't think... if you know like who knows maybe back then people would just buy skate or die two and not have to you know like not care whether or not right so like maybe this was their entry into it and then they go back to skate or die one and like oh this is weird but you have to imagine there's some
section of the audience that was like, oh, I really enjoyed Skate or Die 1. I want to see how they improved on it. And now it's like a totally different game. Yeah. It would be equivalent to us in the late 90s or whatever playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1. And then we pick up Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. It's like a Crash Bandicoot style 3D platformer on a skateboard instead of like do 30 second sessions or 60 second sessions and do tricks.
Yeah, the the I can totally understand like making it more of a story mode. But. You have to keep something and they even change like just the basic. Like, they changed the basic mechanics of the game. And it used to be kind of overhead and had this faux 3D, and now it's more of a side-scroller where you can kind of move on the Z-axis. Yeah, it's a weird thing. Talk about that because they did, the way you control the skateboard.
It just takes some getting used to. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's not necessarily the way, like, when I first picked up the game, I would have just assumed that I can just use the up, down, left, right buttons on the D-pad to move in those directions. But that's not how it works. It's a simulation of being bad at skateboarding. You have to...
You have to use the directional buttons left or right. You can't start up or down. That's against the rules. You have to go left or right, and you have to kick off several times to get some speed. Then... I guess the motor kicks in and you don't have to kick off anymore. Um, but, and then you can either shoot your paintball gun, which isn't explained that you have, uh, and that, or you can jump.
And it doesn't, whatever that 3D feeling or that omnidirectional feeling from the original game, it's just not there anymore. On some level, if you don't think about it hard enough, It makes a little bit of sense that you can't go up or down without going forward, without having that momentum. I know on a real skateboard, you could probably like, you know, do that thing where you tilt it back and turn. But, you know, if they're not going to park them in there, it makes sense.
It makes some sense, but... I think that what's missing here is that balance between realism and fun. as far as the movement goes like yeah maybe that's more realistic but like is it actually fun to do that in a video game to do it that way and that's what's frustrating me like i just want to go into this go into this bookstore or whatever. You have to, like, do a K-turn to even get up there. Yeah, or, like, I stopped because I almost passed it, and this is my destination.
And now that I stopped, yeah, I've got to like loop back around so I'm moving so I can go up. I can't just press up and go through the door. And, you know, maybe I just wanted to maybe I just wanted this to be more of a sports game and less of an adventure game. But like there isn't much about like.
skateboarding like like the skateboarding is just your your method of movement in the world there's not like a lot of like you know oh and then grind on this rail to get to this area or launch up this half pipe to reach the next stage you know it's like it is just very much a um Use your paint. It's a paintball gun, right? Use your paintball gun to fight back against enemies and find out where you need to ultimately go to fight the...
That just makes it feel like another one of these action games, not necessarily like a skateboard. Make sense? Yeah. I also think that our idea of what a skateboarding game is is just so colored by Tony Hawk that... Like, we can't even think outside the bounds of it. Like, just your example of, oh, grind up this rail to go to this area. Like, I don't think that I've ever seen a real grind. Like, in a real skateboarder performing a grind, go more than, like, 20 feet off of, like, a...
Just like our idea of what a grind is, is this cartoon Tony Hawk version that never existed before that game. I see that for sure. You don't just stick to the rail and grind for 20 minutes. But what it is for me, where I agree with what you're saying, Mike, is that it's the physics.
where it's like, I want to feel like I'm moving on a skateboard, whether or not I'm doing tricks or whatever. Like it just doesn't feel like that. This feels like you're trudging along. Like I want to, I don't know. I want to feel like I'm skating and dodging things. And like, yes, you are dodging things here, but like you might as well. I don't know, I shouldn't say you might as well be walking because there is that momentum, but it's such a trudge that it doesn't feel...
Like when you think about skateboarding, even when you're not thinking about like skateboarding in a video game, you think about skateboarding, you think about like moving fast and this fluid, smooth movement, maybe doing some tricks. And I know there's like technically tricks in this game, but like... Does it ever feel like you're getting that adrenaline of skateboarding? No, but it's also not necessary to do those tricks. Like you think about in the...
The next stage after you kill or dispose of a man's wife. Let's just go with kill, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you're in the mall, and, you know, it changes the game a little bit, right? Now you're like... I don't want to say I'd be generous if I called it crazy taxi-like, but you're a delivery guy, and you've got to go from one area, one shop to the next, delivering the things in time.
There's no, like, you're just moving left to right. Like, I suppose, like, you have to avoid those shoppers. But it's not like. I don't know. It's not, it almost loses the action part of the game too. And just becomes more of this like, okay, go here, then go here, then go back here, then go back to this place, then go to this new place. Like just, you just. You're just kind of, to your point, you're not doing anything with the skateboard other than using it to kind of like glide across.
Yeah, I'd say like maybe Skate or Die 2 is to skateboarding as Paperboy is to BMS. It just seems to be a means to an end. Paperboy has a great BMX section at the end, though, remember? At the end of the stage, you have to go to the optical course. But that's not what it's about. But that's true, though, because Paperboy...
you could almost have the same complaint. It doesn't really like feel like you're on this bike, but that, yeah, like that's not the point. This is called skate or die. So like, I want to feel like I'm on a skateboard. Well, I also want to feel like I'm being like, Like a rebel. I mean, skateboarding was just banned, and I don't have, like, a wanted meter as I'm skating through the town, you know? Like, where are the cops? Like, it doesn't seem like I'm doing anything. And then you get a job.
Right. It doesn't seem like I'm doing the or die part, you know? Yeah. yeah and then yeah level two the guy is like well you're gonna have to get a job and he's like this is war and then you go get a job I think it's more again this is more about skateboarding culture than it is about skateboarding so like you were just working at zoomies like, like any other, uh, mid. a skateboard kid would do. Yeah. But speaking of the job that you have now, you're delivering stuff.
within the mall but like you're delivering from like one mall store to another mall so like the record store has to deliver something to the healthy food store which then is like Great, deliver this to the shoeshine place? What products are they changing? What is this economy in this mall? Maybe all their stuff got mixed up and they're hoping that you can sort it all out. Yeah, maybe. I think it's just more CDs, mixtape. Uh, pizza and tacos. Balancing the stockpile.
Right. Well, since we're hungry for the skateboarding aspect of the game, it is worth noting that after you complete the game or whatever, what you're building towards essentially is getting the... the blueprints and then the, uh, The building, the construction of this half pipe, which is called Double Trouble, which is interesting. I would have thought Double Trouble, the search for Double Trouble, I wouldn't think would be the half pipe for some reason. I would have thought that was like.
I don't know. I guess I didn't think about what that would be. Well, because it doesn't really come up in the story until like halfway through the game. Because at first it's like skateboarding is banned. Which is fine. And then it's like the halfpipe is destroyed. Yeah, it's just, I was confused by the title too at first.
But then, you know, so that's a cool thing. Like, you know, you're essentially like, this is the problem we have in a weird way to go back to those like game show NES games where like you win the car, but then you don't get to like do it.
car driving mini game like here it's like oh you you know you build the half pipe and then you get to use it but just oddly enough that mode's already unlocked in the main mode like you don't have to play the adventure you can just go right to the end of the game I think it's very much required. I understand what you're getting at, where that kind of undercuts any level of accomplishment that you might feel here. But I'd say that the half-pipe... Much more fun than the standard mode
even though it is a completely different play style. Um, And actually lends itself to those more, like, run-based minigames. So I think they had to, just to have anybody want to pick up the game a second time. Yeah, because here you can actually, I mean, it's a big half pipe. I thought it was pretty impressive.
not in the sense of like, wow, I'd like to see that thing in real life, but like for a video game, like, you know, like I think like it actually did get the skateboarding job done here and make you like feel.
the momentum of going up this half pipe and then skating all the way over to the other side and kind of building this momentum and then like you can do cool tricks here that i would have liked to have had like some kind of use in the game for right like it's kind of weird that you don't attack enemies with a kickflip, and instead you use a paintball.
yeah attack with a quick flip but the um i felt the same way at first like okay this feels like a really good like the physics of this feel good compared to like
I can't really remember exactly what it was like to play Skate or Die 1, but I feel like I didn't remember thinking the physics were as good. But then, I think, and this is not a knock against Skate or Die 2, I think I am just... like my expectations are colored by 3d world skateboarding games, you know, by Tony Hawk or, or even just other games of like three dimensional physics where.
i i as much as like this is great for its time it's just that it's great for its time it doesn't um and you know maybe it's just me because it's what i grew up with and like maybe if you're if you're more if you grew up with nes games and you're you're more used to that like are you you know you were you remember these maybe you're you have a higher tolerance for this but for me i'm i don't
This makes me want to play Tony Hawk and not play this. Not a knock on this. Even in this mode, I didn't particularly know what I was doing and wiped out more often than not.
But at least I could do tricks that I kind of recognized as tricks. And, you know, you can actually die and get completely... dismembered in this mode as well so that that plays into the title um and it just seems more of like that sports game that we were we were kind of expecting yeah yeah and i'll just say uh There was a lot of thought put into this.
mode though too it's not just like you're just building up speed going back and forth and then you just do tricks or whatever like there's obviously a score component and a time limit and everything but like if you go into the manual it's like several pages six or seven pages on just like
How to use the half pipe, like different zones of the half pipe and things to do in them and like different moves for like which speed you're at and like what's possible, like how high in the air you can go, like which move. the potential to pull off so like it is a little like it is a little like frustrating that this is just the minigame part and not part of Well, so now that you're mentioning this, let me ask you, do you think that...
that maybe they... Do you think that the game... was made with a story mode and then they're like well we need to give people some skateboarding so they added this absolutely do you think this was the game and they decided like wow there's not enough of this we need to add a campaign kind of like call of duty i will tell you they tried to make But I would have to imagine that...
the adventure mode is the focus for a good reason. And that's because that's just the, I mean, when you look at the 370 games we played so far, like most of them tend to be in this format and they probably just felt like they had to compete in that space. in order to get people to buy their video game and not just be Right. I'm just wondering which part they were passionate, which game they wanted to make and which one is the, you know, like which one is tacked on. I think that there is more.
Just judging on who I think these developers are, I think that there was more thought put into the campaign. I think that that was the game that they set out to make.
And always wanted... some other like mode because you know there's like you know the street style and the vert style or whatever that they they implemented that in the first one as well maybe it's not the same developers i don't remember um But I think there's too much, like, heart to the design, or at least, like, the characters and the things, the story there.
But I just want to see a game where you play as, like... mark mcguire with a baseball bat and you just walk around town beating the shit out of enemies with a bat and then at the end of the game it's like you did it mark you built the field of dreams and and then you can play a baseball game Now you can do the baseball mode because you beat the adventure game.
There has to be a version of that somewhere. Yeah, actually, I know this is a joke, but I actually really love that. Well, I do know, and I wanted to bring this up on the Roller Games episode, so I'm glad I get a chance to talk about it here, but like... There was a WWF Game Boy. called WWF Betrayal. Which, I'm like, oh, I wonder what that's like, playing a wrestling game. My mind is already racing. Yeah, playing a wrestling game on a Game Boy.
But instead, it was like a beat-em-up where you choose to either be The Rock, Stone Cold, The Undertaker, or Triple H, and you just have to like...
You know, like you're not really doing, like you're doing a little more wrestling, but you're doing more of the roller games thing again, where you're not doing the sport the way you intended to. Instead, you have this like... whole storyline and and you're out there in the real world fighting real people and it's just like i just wanted to wrestle in the ring
For a second, I thought it was going to be that it started out very much just a standard wrestling game, but then one of the storylines in wrestling fires you, and then you actually go on... a like revenge rampage uh like you know destroying the so so the storyline is close it's close to that uh It's just a time of when it was released. But Stephanie McMahon is kidnapped. She is the... the daughter of the owner of the WWF, Vince McMahon.
And Linda McMahon. Department of Education. Well, I don't know actually by the time of this recording if that's true, but we have... Stephanie McMahon gets kidnapped. You have to go basically go rescue her. And this is off the top of my memory. I'm not reading off Wikipedia or whatever, but I'm pretty sure at the end of the game.
It's revealed that it was Vince McMahon behind it all, which is like, of course, he would kidnap his own daughter. It's like, wait a minute. Am I watching Man on Fire? Like, what's happening right now? Uh, but wow, there's a lot of like segues, uh, to get away from skater died too.
I did want to go back to the game because I don't want to touch on every stage or every single enemy. No, no, it's important. It's important. Okay. I don't know. Like I certainly didn't get here, but did anybody get to the final stage with the where?
No. Yeah, I got to it in my YouTube video I was watching. Okay, very good. That's it. So then you would know, based off watching the YouTube video, that somehow, someway... deadly towers returns yeah wow i didn't make the connection but yeah it kind of does it's just like it's the only difference at least they're giving you a little more guidance here because you'll know that you're in a different place because the color of the walls have changed
Like, oh, what should we paint the third floor blue? Like, so, okay, paint the whole thing blue. So you're going through the warehouse. And it's all exactly the same background. And you're just kind of like, you either go through one door or go through another door. There's no map or anything. It's very, very large. You're going up and down elevators. You have no idea if you're really going to the right place, but you do have to like.
Trek through this whole massive repeating look where the only thing changing is the colors to eventually track down, um, you know, the final boss. And I think that like that, that's the final boss, by the way, his name's ice pick. Yeah, he's the bald guy. The bully? Yeah, yeah. The bald guy. That's not nice. It's the only discerning feature of him.
He's got your girlfriend tied up and he leads a gang of, I don't know, like evil skateboarders that use skateboarding for the dark side. And he's not very smart. like he just he just charges at you which you know can obviously like be a damaging attack but like he'll just continue to charge at that wall even if you're behind him like he doesn't have a sense of like i should turn around now and go the other way like he only charges at that wall
was mad at the wall and you, like, he didn't actually care about you. He's also, like, bigger than you, but, like, as a species. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like, oh, he's just, like, he's a different type of... Yeah, he's built different. Yeah. I mean, we already went over like the different styles that everybody is in. So maybe they are like completely different, you know, maybe they're all alien. I mean, even in this final fight, the...
The girl, what's her name, Ariel, that's tied up there, she's, like, drawn with, like, a big head in Microsoft Paint. Like, she's like a Peanuts gang character. And then you're, like, kind of this, like, proportionally realistic looking guy with, like, a... smaller head and then the other guy like you said this is like I guess he's closer to you than he is to Microsoft Paint Ariel there, but he still does not look like the same artist drew him. Yes, that's a good point. It does look like...
Just even the difference between the backgrounds and the characters, they do look like they were done by two different people. It's probably true. We love this game. Love this game. You know, it's funny, though. Gotta say, the consensus amongst those who have nostalgia, not nest- People like this game. So I bet we're going to get a lot of hate mail. And we haven't even done the most important part. The Essential Games List.
A lot of nice things could be said about Skate or Die 2. And maybe like we started the episode. like loving to hate it in a way that like, because it just wasn't what we were expecting. I don't want to speak for everybody, but that definitely for me. Uh, however, like, I think that the podcast. was a lot more interesting because we talked about all of the more obvious flaws. I don't want to just cover a game from page to page and just get through it. I want to talk about the interesting parts.
Somehow, all the interesting parts of this game are the stuff that didn't work. So that's got to be a sign that this is not. Joe? Yeah, I'm not really sure why Mike and Sean have been so down on this game. I'm with the listeners. I love Skate or Die 2, and direct your hate mail to them. But no, actually, this is not a good game. I think that maybe people must have a lot of nostalgia glasses on for this.
I think you could, at least in my opinion, it would be an improvement of this game if you were able to combine the two... the two modes you know make it feel like you're skateboarding maybe put a you know maybe you know it's silly anyways so why does not lean into it make it so you know when you're fighting the old lady at the end she challenges you to like a trick off
on a half pipe or whatever just just get that half pipe in there or these physics in there so there's a little bit of like serendipity between these two modes But even with that, I do think that, like I said, I think that my experience having come from the future and played games, you know, for decades after this. For some reason, with this skateboarding style, that has really affected me more than some other genres that I've obviously played.
more modern versions for like for some reason it's hard for me to go back to something like this it just doesn't feel that good to play uh overall so definitely not essential all right I think that the people that really love this game fall into three categories. There's... the people that really only played the half pipe and got really good at it. And like it's been hours just, you know, working on that, getting to that flow.
Which I, you know, I have respect for. Two, people that, uh... just really liked the music whether it's the ridiculous like opening and that just sort of like planted a seed in their head or even i would say that i don't know if this is the song that plays for the rest of the game but the level one song is really good That was playing long enough and looping long enough that I just actually noticed it, which is not something that we talk about too much in these episodes.
Roman numeral three They're posers spelled the French way, and they really just want to be contrarian and pose as one does when they wear a Volcom shirt. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I'm sorry I didn't let you finish your thoughts. You had me on the edge of my seat. I wasn't sure which way you were going to go. Well, I like your assessment, though, about the half-pipe section and people getting really good at it. Because I'll say, like, now I...
I'm this YouTube video that I'm just watching while we're recording has gotten to the end and now they're doing the half plate. And I'm like, wow, this is does not look like what I was doing at all. Maybe there's like a skill barrier that I had where it's like, almost certainly better at that. I could.
appreciate it more but like from what i was playing i did not appreciate it so so the interesting thing about the the half pipe and i think the most important part of it is that you don't just gain speed by going from one end to the other, like how you might in real life, like, you know, like just getting momentum, like physically. Instead, you know those darker shaded areas of the halfpipe? On the left side, it's like...
I guess they're technically on the, on both, but like, anyway, that area is shadow. Yeah. They're calling it the pump zone. Ah, the pump zone. It's almost like you want to, you want to press the A button. When you're in that zone, and that's how you increase your speed. And so then when you have like speeds, I don't know, I don't know, like when you have enough speed to go higher in the air, you're able to actually do, you know.
actual tricks you would expect at the x games as opposed to like holding on to the top of the ramp you know like that's like what what what most people would do if they didn't build up their speed they would just keep grabbing the top of the I wonder if that's how real half pipes work. Like if that's where you should like start your knee bend. Yeah, the pump zone. In the pump zone. Yeah, the pump zone.
I'm going to live the rest of my life thinking that now. I guess it's not darker shaded. It was just like... It's textured. Yeah. Yeah. And then what's up with the little half pipe? That's where you go to die.