Street Sk8er 2: Information from Answers.com

Release Date: March 15, 2000
Genre: Sports
Style: Skateboarding
Similar Games: Top Skater (Arcade), 720° (Nintendo Entertainment System), Skate or Die (Nintendo Entertainment System), Skate or Die (Commodore 64/128), Thrasher: Skate & Destroy (PlayStation)

Game Description

Grab your skateboard and be prepared to grind the rails and grab some big air! Street Sk8er 2, the sequel to the first-ever skateboarding game for the PlayStation has finally arrived. More than an upgrade to the 1999 hit Street Sk8er, with Street Sk8er 2 you can now design and compete in your own skate park, hit wide-open skating arenas in five international cities and play with 10 all-new customizable characters.

With Street Sk8er 2, quarter pipes, half pipes, bowls, rails and ramps can be placed in any manner within the abandoned warehouse that serves as the skate parks' home. Killer combinations can be created (such as a long rail grind straight into a bowl, or ramp up into a quarter pipe). Spontaneity and imagination are the only tools needed to build a fun fantasy skate park. Best of all, the parks can be saved onto memory cards for trading or competing with friends.

You can also skate through five major international cities, unlocking hidden bonuses as you progress. San Francisco, Moscow, Miami, Washington D.C. and London are recreated in Street Sk8er 2 for your skating pleasure. Virtually every surface on the city streets is skateable. Players can grind off the curbs on San Francisco's world-famous curvy Lombard Street, jump off cannons in Moscow's Red Square, roll over taxis in London and pull off insane tricks in the empty swimming pools of a Miami hotel. Each city is also filled with an abundance of breakable objects that can be discovered and busted for added points. There are also numerous animated objects that affect gameplay such as the moving escalators in the Moscow subway. Evade police cars chasing you in the streets San Francisco, or watch the lunar modular being launched while visiting the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.

Street Sk8er 2's 10 customizable characters each have individual skater attributes that affect gameplay. Certain characters may excel in speed, others may be experts in maneuvering, while still others perform the best tricks. Four characters are available at the beginning of the game and as you progress through the game others can be unlocked. Building skills such as cornering and jumping will make the characters stronger, resulting in bigger air and more time to pull off `phat' tricks. The extra skills will also enable you to reach places within each city that were previously inaccessible. Once you build up a character they can be saved onto a memory card to be played later or against friends. Street Sk8er 2 also offers 30 skateboard designs to choose from, including the latest models from Powell Skateboards.

Skating takes place in three modes, Street Tour, Free Skate and Multi-player. In the five level Street Tour, you race against the clock while performing mind-boggling tricks for points through the streets of Moscow, London, San Francisco, Miami and Washington D.C. in addition to events such as Big Air, Bowl, Half Pipe, Rooftop Park and Noah's Park. In all, you will compete in 10 championship events in Street Tour. In Free Skate mode, you can explore tracks without the pressure of a timer, as well as practice moves and master courses. Multi-player mode features two-player split screen or four player serial skating action in addition to Pool Duel, a mini split screen game where the first player to break five of his opponent's boxes wins.

In Street Sk8er 2, you can choose from two trick control systems that determine the difficulty of each level. Those who want to jump right into grinding heaven can select Amateur mode for easy pick up and play with over 200 tricks at the push of a button. Skaters who want more of a challenge can go for ultimate control over executing fly tricks and dope combinations in Pro mode.

The soundtrack for Street Sk8er 2 includes music from seven Warner Bros. bands, including 12 songs from Deftones, Ministry, Citizen King, Showoff, Static-X, Shootyz Groove, 8stops7 and Del The Funky Homosapien. In addition, the soundtrack contains one song from the Chick Magnets, who had previously won a band search contest sponsored by Electronic Arts and Heckler Magazine.

Street Sk8er 2 was developed by Micro Cabin and published by Electronic Arts in North America. The game supports Dual Shock analog controllers.

~ Tara Hernandez, All Game Guide

Roots & Influences

Before the explosion of skateboarding games on the Sony PlayStation, there were only snowboarding games for skaters to try and satisfy their zest for digital boarding action.

Then along came Street Sk8er from EA Sports. Street Sk8er was the first skateboarding game on a console system since the 3D graphics invasion and only served to increase the hunger in gamers looking for extreme skating action.

On the heels of the release of Street Sk8er, appeared Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The graphics and gameplay of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater quickly dated Street Sk8er's 3D graphics with its use of a rich texture palette, realistic character designs and terrain.

Pre-PlayStation skateboarding games include the arcade legend 720 and its multiple console ports including the Nintendo Entertainment System, C64 and Gameboy Color.

The Nintendo Entertainment System and C64 also found success with Konami's Skate or Die. Skate or Die featured 2D graphics and saw the fruition of a sequel.

~ Tara Hernandez, All Game Guide

Review: Overall

"This is the greatest skateboarding game ever!" is what I would say if Tony Hawk's Pro Skater had never existed. Street Sk8er 2 is a noble attempt to dethrone Tony as king of the skateboarding games, but it fails due to some gameplay issues.

This is a shame, since the soundtrack is excellent. It features great tracks from some of my personal favorites, including The Deftones, Static-X and Del the Funky Homosapien. This is the only feature that Street Sk8er 2 dominates Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in.

The graphics are above average. It is very colorful and bright. However, sometimes a bad camera view rears its ugly head and costs you some time and points.

The levels are extremely large but lack the realism and complexity of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. I can actually imagine the Woodland Hills Warehouse existing, but not a cannon-filled park in Moscow. While it is interesting to ride through a subway, there's not enough room for combos. In Pro Skater you can do insane combinations and grinds, but in Street Sk8er 2 you seem to be much more limited.

There are more moves, but they are more difficult to pull off because of the button assignment. For instance, you may be attempting to perform a grind, but instead you might pull of a trick and slam into a wall. This is because the triangle button is used for performing both tricks and grinding.

Jumping is also limited. Most of the time I ended up jumping over my goal due to the lack of control. This is especially frustrating when you land in the water and, for some reason, lose 700 points.

Also, it is very difficult to actually fall. Insane tricks can be pulled off almost immediately and can be landed on a horizontal surface. This makes the game very unrealistic. For some reason, you can get points for smashing into things. I always thought that slamming into a trash can was bad on a skateboard!

The highlight of the game is the Edit Park Mode. You are actually given the opportunity to create a custom park, but even this option is limited. The size and shape of the park is preset, and it is not very large. You are unable to reshape the pools or ramps to your liking, either. Still, this is a great innovation and good sign of things to come for this genre.

In summary, Street Sk8er is very tolerable but doesn't quite measure up when compared to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, arguably the best skateboarding game on any system. Yet if you already own Pro Skater, the game is still worth a rental.