“Oh I Loved Skate 3!”, No, I’m Talking About the DS Version, ‘Skate It’

Cover image made using Midjourney. Prompt: a skater doing a kickflip over marios head, all set in a new york city street, 2023.

Whenever someone mentions skating games, most people will either gravitate towards Skate 3 or any of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, but my mind (and heart) will always be reminded of Skate It, the Nintendo DS port of the ‘Skate’ franchise. Now, this is a forgotten game in the sense I have never met any other person (besides my sister) who enjoyed let alone played this game as much as me. Same goes for online discussion, bare-none mention to its presence itself. Except for one guy on Reddit calling it a “VERY HIDDEN gem”.

Source: Amazon

In order to analyse this forgotten game, I would take a nostalgic framework approach.

Firstly, I’d examine the fanbases of skating games and potentially sports games in general, and look for disparities in the genre not being as successful in handheld ports. Asking questions such as; are sports games fans usually playing on home consoles? Is/was there even a demand for this genre amongst handheld gamers? By doing this I can initially frame the demand (or their lack-of) for this game around release, and see what gamers wanted to see from a port like this. Even further, if the handheld port was viewed as an uninteresting paratext for those fans of the home console version, rather than it being a text itself, with handheld ports being usually risky business prior to the release of the Nintendo Switch.

Secondly, I would look to the cultural significance of the ‘Skate’ games and see what aspects of these games the fans are familiar with. This will aide my search into what emotions are evoked when playing these titles. As nostalgic games have been seen to promote self-affirmation and connectedness with others (Bowman et al. 2023), I can then compare them to those who have played handheld version. 

Finally, I would look at the mechanics of the game, controls, graphics etc. and see what players took away from the experience. The use of the touch pad to do skateboard tricks was almost reminiscent of a Tech Deck, except players were using virtual ramps. The mechanics being a core part of any game, this is the first thing the player needs to be aware of when entering into a game, leaving the question if these mechanics left a sour taste in gamers mouths (or hands). 

References:

Bowman, ND, Velez, J, Wulf, T, Breuer, J, Yoshimura, K & Resignato, LJ 2023, ‘That Bygone Feeling: Controller Ergonomics and Nostalgia in Video Game Play’, Psychology of popular media, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 147–158.

CreatoMan 2023, Skate It, underrated VERY HIDDEN gem, Reddit, viewed 1^st August, <https://www.reddit.com/r/3DS/comments/4h0d25/comment/j5xca7r/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3&gt;.

Electronic Arts 2008, Skate It Cover, image, Amazon, viewed 2^nd July 2023, <https://www.amazon.com.au/Electronic-Arts-15768-Skate-Game/dp/B001AZFSGK&gt;.

Ludo 2022, ‘Why are game mechanics so important?’, blog post, viewed 1^st August 2023, <https://ludo.ai/blog/why-are-game-mechanics-so-important&gt;.

Wojnar, J 2021, ‘9 Games Whose Handheld Ports Are Actually Better Than The Console Version, The Gamer, August 22, viewed 1^st August 2023, <https://www.thegamer.com/handheld-games-better-than-console-version/&gt;.

analytic framework, bcm, BCM 215, Skate 3, Skate It, Tony Hawk Pro Skater, UOW, video games

Updates:

9/9/2023 – Fixed Soundcloud link.

13/9/2023 – Shortened post, minor edits and re-recorded audio content.