“‘Action sport’ would be the least offensive categorisation…” “I consider skateboarding an art form, a lifestyle and a sport,” once said that man, Tony Hawk. Because we’re not just talking about a piece of wood, are we? At its most romantic, the board is an extension of the user. It shouldn’t be that hard, right? A piece of wood, some wheels, a degree of speed and danger? And yet so often the issue in adapting the sport has been the absence of feeling. Game developers have been trying to capture the essence of skateboarding almost as long as the games medium has existed.

“You’ll get to buy some rad equipment to make you the coolest skateboarder alive!” it roared. I tried my first 900 3 years later #squattypotty /cHezkIdL92 The titular trick – the 720°, two full mid-air rotations – was actually named by Tony Hawk himself (he’d pulled it off in real life in 1985), though the marketing blurb that accompanied the machine suggested parties were involved who had less familiarity with the streets.ġ985: My first-ever 720 (at Eurocana Skate Camp in Sweden).

Like so many of the era’s brashest titles – this was a game that not only invited the player to practice their tricks at a surprisingly well kitted out skate park, but escape clouds of killer bees – it played best in the arcade, thanks to an iconic cabinet that put a boombox centre stage in the machine. Ports to the Commodore 64, the Amstrad and the ZX Spectrum would soon follow, before the game debuted on the NES in 1988 (and sometime after that, the Game Boy Color in 1999).

I’m happy to be corrected otherwise, but I can’t remember seeing a mass-produced skating video game in the wild until Atari put 720° into arcades in 1986.

T games street skating 2