The Simpsons Skateboarding

"What's more fun than being RAD?"

I've noticed something about the sport of skateboarding. Back in the day, a typical skateboarder wore short shorts, Californian, long hair, and loved turning really fast in pools. A typcial skater today is usally a baggy clothes wearing punk with bleached hair. Quite an evolution. Yet, as more and more skateboarding games are realised onto the market, the virtual skateboarding scene seems to be evolving backwards. I have yet to play most of the mini-mes of Tony Hawk's revolutionary title, but this is one of the few I have let myself play. Tony Hawk 1, realised three (i think) years ago on inferior systems, blows this away in every aspect. Fox's interpritation of skateboarding is so far off the mark it makes you wonder if the harder part of thier jobs was making the game, or getting the motivation to attempt simple programming. Simpsons Skateboarding (hereby caleld SS) is obviously the latter.


Since the first thing you'll do after turning on your Playstation 2 is to wait for the main menu to pop up, we'll start here. As nice of a luxury it is to lack loading times, us PS2 owners have gotten used to them, much like a man with a broken leg learns how to use crutches. However, if loading times were a broken leg, and patience was a crutch, i can guarentee I would never be able to move forward again. The loading times are downright terrible. The opening has TWO 6 second loading times, in addition to a 6 second force fed logo. That is not a good first impression. Yet, you will have as much fun in game as you will waiting for it to begin.


Let's move on to the skating. If you've ever played any of the (far superior) Tony Hawk games, you know what to expect. You know the formula works. Yet, as much as I know about programming (nothing) I'm sure I could have programmed the controls way better than this team of 'professionals' (although that might be stretching it) did. I literally have no idea how they could have screwed up so bad. The first thing I attempted, moving, has a love-hate relationship with me. Press forward, and I will sit through a two second delay (not good), and then suddenly I'm off at 30 miles and hour. Quite an achivement for any skater, biker, or car driver. Turning is also something considered very important by many people. Think of where we'd be if nobody could turn? We would likely be forced to eat mud becuase we could turn to get food, and then we'd gradully die out over ten years. With that extreme comment said, the entire town of Springfield would be dead in ten years. Turning is in a word, limited. I know from personal expirience skateboards turn very poorly compared to anything, just slightly better than hollowed out computer on wheels. SS perfectly digitizes this little enjoyed element of skateboarding, and heavily emphasises it. Just like real life, turning is a living hell. If you can turn effectively, without losing speed, then you have turly mastered the game.


Moving on to the skater's themselves, Simpsons Skaters of course, they first impression is ewwwwww. Seriously. The first time I saw Homer, I literally said eww. I have no idea what various chemical what forced into the artists drinks, but whatever it was was not beneificial. If you ever played Simpsons Wrestling for the old PSX, just polish it slightly and you have this. The models are so simplistic, if they were placed into a Nintendo 64 game you would think why does that one look worse than every other one? Textures are non-existant, the game seems to have been made without the belief of texture. Obviously this could be acceptable since the cartoon itself has no texture, but the graphical style is pre-Mario 64 3D and not the cel-shading that should have been done.


As important as the skaters is the levels. This is what I like most about the game, the levels are cleverly designed and are reconiseable from the show. They are large, and contain a (small) number of residents walking the streets. However, the texture hurts what could have been some extremely high quality towns. If the sidewalk was the same colour as a car, you would not notice any diffrence.


Skaters are usally quite similar from dress to trick style and real life, as are the skateboarding games themselves. However, if SS was a skater, it would be the one attempting to do things the others did years earlier, with style so poor it could be mistaken for an accident. This has every element from Tony Hawk 1, and with the manual from TH2. Grinding is actually quite fine, you can do realistic switchups unlike TH. Everything else is poor. Vert is ghetto, the camera acts like a homeless man, lumbering around with no intentions and generally inconsistant. Sometimes the problem was not actually doing my vert, it was trying to figure out what i was doing from looking at obscure camera angles. Manuals are the wierdest parts of the game, they seem to happen only when you never want them to. They seem almost as random as the programming intentions of this game. As for career mode, its nothing you haven't seen (years) before.


Hopefully you will never have to play or view this game. I would not reccomend this to anyone. I got this as free rental from a friend that works at Blockbuster, and I still feel ripped off! I can't imagine PAYING for this, let alone the $50 retail. If you want some skateboarding game, I reccomend Tony Hawk 1, if you haven't already played any of the other ones. It's dirt cheap, and completely superior in every possible aspect, except maybe carrying the Simpsons license (though that is debateable), to SS.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/24/02, Updated 12/24/02