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#skate #retrospective #skateboarding

- Chapters -
Intro: 0:00
Laying The Groundwork: 1:02
The Expression: 9:07
The Best Part: 9:57
The Expression: 11:19
The Rebellion: 25:52
The Utopia: 39:22
The Future: 1:01:11
Post-Script: 1:05:12

Created by: That Boy Aqua

Skate is by far one of the most popular skating simulators of its time and even to this day. Is it the best skating game? I’d say yes, but the Tony Hawk series and the recent rise of both Session and Skater XL make that question worthy of a full video in itself. It’s a difficult comparison too because while Tony Hawk had an arcade approach to romanticised skateboarding, EA’s Skate series initially nailed an identity in grounded realism. After releasing Skate to generally favourable reviews, many sequels and spin-offs were created and released within a few years. EA and BlackBox had struck gold, and it was clear that there was, and still is an audience for this kind of game, as the current development of Skate 4 would have you believe. The Skate series, despite having such short development times for their many entries, went through a metamorphosis that many games couldn’t dream of… so let’s talk about it.

Of course, the defining feature of skate, is its flickit control scheme which sees the player flicking their control stick in specific directions to perform tricks. These controls are intuitive and make sense when compared to real life. An ollie simply sees you pulling the stick down, and up. But a kickflip or heelflip sees you pulling it down and up but slightly to the side. Meanwhile a shuvit will require you to curve the stick from 6 o'clock to 3 o clock. By the way, the clock lingo is just an easy way of explaining where your thumb needs to go. You’ll notice when viewing the trick book in the first skate game, it shows the direction to flick the stick, but it also has notches all around the circle, representing the stick, that look clocklike, hence the jargon. Everything in the game starts with either a kickflip, ollie, or shuvit. Every trick is built upon or around those three starters, so if you can master those, then anything is possible.

This is a Skate series retrospective. This Skate Retrospective will focus on skate but feature a Tony Hawk retrospective lens for comparison sake. These comparisons are not meant to determine each other's value but to highlight just how fundamentally different they are. this will feature Skate Review, Skate 2 Review, Skate 3 Review, and is essentially a Skate Years Later video. This video will answer what Skate game is the best, but the best Skate game may change with the release of Skate 4. If this video does well, I will likely make a Skate 4 review or a Skate 2022 video. Either way, enjoy this Skate Critique and Skate Analysis, which I believe is the best skate game. An obvious commission here was discussing Skate vs Session and Skate vs skater xl. I understand that those are relevant topics, but discussing what the best Skate simulator is is a video in itself. Thanks to Radrat video for joining me. I loved working with RadRat, and I highly recommend the RadRat Skate videos. Skate is the best skateboarding game, and if the skate alpha is any indicator, the skate reboot could continue that legacy.