"If you expect the worst, you'll never be disappointed"

                                                               - Sarah Dessin, Lock and Key

I'm afraid if I go any lower with my bar after trying to leach something from Skate or Die!, I'll hit the mantle. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing bad video games because they give me a chance to play contrarian. That doesn't mean there AREN'T ones that draw my ire, and this is one of them. 

Skate or Die! is Electronic Arts' first internally developed game and was released for the Commodore 64 in 1987, with ports to other home computer systems, like the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, MS-DOS, and the Apple IIgs. The NES port was handled by Konami and distributed through their Ultra line of published games.

I was incredibly young around this time and cultural awareness clearly isn't going to resonate with a seven year old, but I think skateboarding was still in its rebellious phase, at least here on the more central portion of the country. Not quite the massive mainstream trend it was by the late 90's, but more a calling card of degenerate punks. Hollywood and entertainment tried to teach me early that anyone involved with skateboarding was bad news. Anyone involved in the development of Skate or Die should be listed as a threat to national security.

Now this would be another one of those games that I should take it easy on, as there is a "for its time", but even for its time, Skate or Die was a cumbersome and near unplayable endurance test. The clunkiness begins at the poorly responsive select menu, where you have to list your name for the records. I never understood Nintendo games that did this without battery backup to save scores. 

Skate or Die! has five different mini-games with differing play styles and objectives, and a full heat where you run through each event. Credit where it's due, it at least has a practice mode, so you can try your best to grapple with the controls. Jousting, Race, Jam, Freestyle Ramp and High Jump all seem promising, but without an instruction manual, I'm left in the dust with terms, physics, and mechanics. 

The graphics are fine, I don't mind that there appears to be a different sprite set for each mode. Gotta give credit to the NES for the variety. Well, providing you're okay with many of them being so tiny, it's difficult to tell what they're even doing or reacting to, but I'll cut the limitations of the medium some slack. 

Skate or Die's controls, ooh boy. The best way I can describe what they were going for was, imagine if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's scheme was implemented as an overhead game. Pressing "up" on the d-pad rolls you forward, and it feels like your momentum is carried clockwise and counterclockwise, depending on which direction you're trying to turn. But every direction I attempt to face, the rules seem to change. How can a system with only four face buttons and a d-pad produce a game that feels so helpless to manage? 

- High Jump? Can't even get it to work, and I can't figure out how to quit it.

- Halfpipe? Can't land a second trick in a row after barely knowing how to execute the first?

- Jousting? What the hell is the perspective? 

- Downhill? Do I have to sacrifice the blood of a virgin to perform a successful ollie?

- Jam? Feels slightly better, but repeat Downhill

I have to remind myself to not mash the controller any harder, hoping to the stars above that SOMETHING feels intuitive for fear of grinding the device into a fine powder. Honestly, if the entire game was built around the Jam mini racing contest, I would be far more forgiving, as it feels like Road Rash (or something akin to that). 

Skate or Die is not good. So not good, that I forgot to add the exclamation honorific to the title of the game. T&C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage, which I've talked about before, I at least felt like I was getting better the more I played it. And I hate that game almost as much. Nothing about Skate or Die works on any level. Regarding the game's ultimatum, I'm more than comfortable choosing the latter.