Skate Rock is a highly entertaining and addictive skateboarding game for the Commodore 64. The idea is to navigate your character, a kid on a skateboard, through hazardous city streets, collect all the flags for that course, and then cross the finish line before the clock runs out. Move the next course, and start again. The big yellow flags you need are inexplicably erected in random or conspicuously perilous spots all along the sidewalks and streets. Of course, as you might imagine, there are many obstacles to avoid as you go.
Pot holes, cars, barking dogs, pedestrians, construction workers and toy airplanes all block your path to victory.
The control of your character is really wonderfully simple. Tap the joystick up to push forward, pull back to stop. Left and right are used to steer. Pushing the joystick button pivots the board onto the back wheels and allows the player to turn while in a stopped position. The control is a little hard to get used to because the directions are always from the point of view of your character and not necessarily his screen direction. However, once you get used to it, the game play feels very responsive and really gives you the impression of gliding along the street on a board.
There
is a good amount of variety and replay value in this game, probably more than you would expect. There are a variety of courses, (at least ten) that cover locations including suburbs, city streets and bridges under repair. Each course presents its own challenges, including tricky jumps off curbs and over ramps. The characters who appear as walking obstacles pack wonderfully comic personalities into their brief, low-resolution onscreen presence, making this game almost as fun to watch as it is to play.
There's not too much to complain about in this game, considering its age. The graphics are simple, but cartoon and quite appropriate for the game. The music is pretty cool and it really sticks in your head. The only thing that detracts from this title is its difficulty. Some of the courses are downright hard. And to make matters worse, sometimes after you crash the game restarts your character inches away from a curb, making another crash inevitable. That is definitely frustrating.
All in all, skate rock was a great game and it still is. It really makes me nostalgic for an era when a couple of unknown programmers could cook up a fun little game that could actually make its way onto store shelves and compete with more well known titles.
