Skate or Die!

01 · The game

Rodney's shop, a town, and five events

The game opens in Rodney's skate shop. Rodney, a man with a purple mohawk and a tattoo, leans on the counter and talks back to whatever the player points at: QUIT YER YAKKIN' AND GO PRACTICE ($220E). Up to eight skaters sign in at the counter and each picks a board colour. From the shop they either practise or compete.

Practice leads out into a town square, and the edge of town the skater rolls off decides the event ($1793). On the Freestyle ramp the skater has ten passes to score tricks. High Jump uses the same half-pipe and asks only how high the skater can go. The Downhill Race is a run through a park against the clock, and the Downhill Jam is a race down an alley against a second skater who can be punched and kicked. In the Pool Joust, two skaters ride an empty swimming pool and the one with the padded pole tries to knock the other off.¹

In a competition every skater takes a turn at each event, and the first three get 5, 3, and 1 points ($F7E0), and the best scores go into Rodney's records, the only thing the game saves to disk.

02 · The cast

Rodney's dear boy, and two more to beat

A player with nobody to skate against gets Lester. Rodney asks HAVE YOU MET MY DEAR BOY LESTER? ($2352), and Lester is the computer's skater in the Downhill Jam, following eleven waypoints down the alley and swinging at the player whenever they come close. In the Pool Joust he is the hardest of three opponents. The other two are Poseur Pete, who decides slowly and turns at random, and Aggro' Eddie, who decides twice as often and drops in when the player is high on the right wall ($2F61).

03 · The makers

From Epyx to Electronic Arts

The title screen credits Michael Kosaka, Stephen Landrum, and David Bunch. Landrum had been at Epyx, the maker of Summer Games and Winter Games, and joined Electronic Arts in February 1987: "At Electronic Arts, I was the lead programmer on Skate or Die! for the C-64."² The Retrogaming Times names Kosaka and Landrum among the Epyx team who "moved on to EA and began work on a skateboard-themed compilation of events".⁵ Bunch and Landrum also left their names in the Downhill Jam, as text nothing reads.

Rob Hubbard, the British composer, came to the game from across the Atlantic: "The first thing I did for EA was Skate or Die C64."³ Mark Lewis of EA had asked him "if I wanted to do a couple of months working in the US. That's when I did 'Skate or Die' C64 with the sampled guitars mixed in with the SID chipsounds. They then offered my a permanent job in California."⁴ The guitars are recordings played through the SID's volume register, and the Music and sound tab plays each of them.

04 · The reception

A Zzap!64 Sizzler

Zzap!64, the British Commodore 64 magazine, gave the game 92 % and its Sizzler award in its Christmas 1987 issue.⁵

05 · Inside the game

Explore how Skate or Die! works

• Loading and title: a one-sector loader that runs itself from the stack, a loader decrypted in layers ($0340), a disk check the drive does with its own code, and a title picture that moves only its colours.
• The town: Rodney's shop as a menu and everything he says, a square whose edges choose the event, and the table that loads each one ($F8A0).
• Controls: the joystick and keys in the shop, the town, and each event.
• Freestyle: a trick decided before the coping ($1C81) and a bonus for variety.
• High Jump: speed from waggling the stick ($16E3), and why the height of the last pass is the one that counts.
• Downhill Race: a course where every cell knows its ground, and a score that is mostly time ($0B14).
• Downhill Jam: twelve attacks, rubbish worth points, and a time bonus that drains away ($23F8).
• Pool Joust: first to three by two clear ($1B3C), and three computer skaters with their own habits.
• Graphics: the half-pipe picture and its moving crowd, and all 158 poses of the skater drawn from the game's data.
• Music and sound: Rob Hubbard's sampled guitars, and one sound driver that plays every event's music at random.
• Discoveries: rules the manual leaves out, credits nobody sees, and code nothing calls.