Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

While Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the umpteen sequels it’s spawned have become the defacto standard for skateboarding games, ask anyone who spent time gaming on the Commodore 64 and they’ll tell you that Skate Or Die was where virtual cube-gleaming got its real start. Even for the C64 the Skate Or Die graphics and music were actually quite impressive, and it was definitely one of those games you could play with a group of friends since there were several two-player modes. That is, as long as you had a 2nd joystick, since no one wanted to get stuck playing with the keyboard.

And anyone who played Skate Or Die on the C64 has to remember this dude. He was the owner of the local skateshop and even though he appeared to be on the rough side of 40 going on 50, he still sported a wicked purple mohawk. His shop also served as the game’s main menu allowing you to keep track of high scores or enter various competitions. You made your selection by moving a cursor around the screen, and depending on where it was this dude would spit out rad skateboard phrases (all text-based of course) like “Don’cha like my ‘do’” whenever you passed over his mohawk. If I had to assemble a top ten list of C64 games, Skate Or Die would definitely be in there somewhere, and all these years later I can honestly say I still like that guy’s ‘do’.

[ Lemon64.com - Skate Or Die ]