8 year old me asked for Skate or Die thinking it was the arcade game 720°, a game which shouted a sampled "SKATE OR DIE" continually. I did not understand what the weird 720 number on the cabinet meant, so when I saw this NES game I thought it was that game. I wonder how many other kids had the same experience. I was pretty disappointed.
I remember the ads for Paperboy being EVERYWHERE when I was a kid - TV, magazines, you name it - so that's probably why it was such a big seller. Sheer saturation.
I'm very curious to see his take on it. It was one of those games I got stuck with for a weekend, somehow got good with it, and keep playing it to this day. Not a great game by any stretch, but it's as good a waste of 15 minutes as anything else.
@@MrJWTH a perfect jumping off point for Sunsoft to realize they had a major hit with Blaster Master and, aside from one slip-up with Fester's Quest, to start banging out nothing but gold for the rest of the NES lifespan. And even then, Fester's Quest makes sense if you know the messed up development history.
Gleaming the Cube was definitely my favorite skating movie of my youth! I distinctly remember being home sick from school and watching Gleaming and House Party on HBO mid day while eating chicken noodle and drinking 7-Up!
I'll take issue with your depiction of the Freestyle event in Skate or Die. It's the best mode in the game with dozens of tricks and variation options when hunting for a high score. The tricks are context based, with the direction and/or you're pressing as you approach specific sections of the vert ramp.
Hey Jeremy, love the video, as always! One small detail that might be of interest: I believe Skate Or Die's skate shop owner Rodney is inspired not by Rodney Dangerfield but rather by LA-based punk rock DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, who hosted a popular punk radio show on KROQ called "Rodney on the ROQ." His appearance matches NES Rodney's nicely, and his occupation is more connected to skater culture than the blue comedian's.
@@Tim85-y2q I agree. After I posted this I started to wonder if Skate Or Die Rodney is a composite of Dangerfield and Bingenheimer. He has Bingenheimer’s hair and Dangerfield’s face.
Seems like a stretch as he looks absolutely nothing like the guy, especially contemporarily. And also he looks exactly like Rodney Dangerfield with a mohawk. You could be right though, who knows for sure
This brings back fond memories. The pizza place within walking distance of my house had the Paperboy arcade for a bit before swapping it out with Spy Hunter. And many nights were spent trying to master Skate or Die as a kid too, with the music being pressed deep into my brain. I really miss the weird and zany art of the very early issues of NP, too.
Oh boy, Skate or Die!… That feeling lasted for a nice 45 seconds before our host caused me to access ‘Nam flashbacks about what being a kid in the 1980s was actually like. …time for work! 😅
I had one of my many childhood surgeries in 1985, it might even have been my amputation. Best thing to come out of that was my mastery of NES Paperboy. I did, in fact, manage to finally win during my recovery. 😁
I’ve got to say suing your competitor just to get a look at its trade secrets in discovery and then instantly violating them with your own product is a pretty baller move…. Both of these games were one time rentals then thrown controllers for being insanely Nintendo hard (great work as always)
Does anyone else remember getting aggravated at the black cart Tengen games due to the fact that they had no cutout on the top part of the cart? Often when a game would get stuck just flashing a gray screen on your TV, one of the tricks I (and I assume everyone) used to get it working was to put your index and middle finger in the top 'nook' of the NES cart and rattle it left and right and then cycle power. This often worked after a few tries. With the black Tengen carts you could not do this.
14:37 "and eventually being shut down by the courts over the patent violations committed around this time" After Time Warner acquired a controlling interest in Atari Games in 1993, Tengen was renamed to Time Warner Interactive and stayed around for a few years as both a developer and publisher before Williams bought Atari Games and merged the studio into Williams Entertainment (formerly Tradewest).
Huh, I had read in a few different places that Tengen was shuttered due to the burden of legal issues resulting from its conflict with Nintendo. I'll have to revisit that.
@@JeremyParish Also, Atari Corp & Atari Games had no actual connection to each other outside of both coming from Atari Inc.'s original dissolution; they were simply two distinct companies that just had the same name & a shared origin story. So it was Atari Games that sued Nintendo & got into hot water with Tengen, not Atari Corp., which had no direct involvement with Nintendo outside of simply competing with them via hardware. That's why Warner Bros. owns the Atari Games arcade catalog today (because Midway eventually got the rights to Atari Games, & WB bought Midway), while the former Infogrames owns the old Atari Inc.-era catalog & the Atari name & logo (after buying everything from Hasbro). Atari history is just a mess, isn't it?
@@JeremyParish And then there's always the chance that someone might go "But what about Natsume-Atari over in Japan? Are they related?", and you just throw your hands into the air & give up.
Life long skater and Skate or Die fan here. There is a bit more to the game. The freestyle and downhill sections are the best. There are difficult maneuvers you are required to pull off in order to get a 9000 score. The controls are difficult but consistent and tight, kinda like real skateboarding. This was the best skating game until Tony Hawk came out and my skater friends and I played it often. Getting a 9000 in the freestyle event becomes trivial with practice but the downhill is hard.
I played some Skate or Die with my daughter not too long ago. It’s amazing in hindsight that, among people I knew as a kid, that was considered one of the “cool” NES games.
Wasn't Paperboy the first ever NES title 100% developed in the US? The Master System version of Paperboy was the first ever SMS game developed in the UK, by Tiertex of all people. Even if they did somehow confuse the theme tune to Paperboy with Moon Patrol.
Slalom was the first "western" developed game (Rare is British). Indeed, it looks like Atari Games (Tengen) was the second western-based developer on the NES. Then came Software Creations (UK), then Beam Software (Australia).
Gauntlet was developed and published entirely by Tengen, and shipped in both licensed and unlicensed variants; Gauntlet II was developed by Tengen and published (under license only) by Mindscape. And Dwedit, the question was U.S.-developed NES games, not Western.
I still prefer Skate or Die's C64 version soundtrack. It's amazing how much killer music can make a game feel more substantial, for without it, what is Skate or Die but a fairly limited mini-game collection? Paperboy has never been a game I've really enjoyed, but I remember it fondly for being Salwitz and Ralston's first big hit. Later they would make 720 Degrees (which is a much deeper, I'd say much better, take on the Skate or Die format), Cyberball, and what is probably my favorite of all arcade games: RAMPART. John Salwitz did a GDC talk a while back where he talked about the making of Paperboy. It's on TH-cam somewhere, but my favorite fact to come out of it is that in development, they had planned for much wackier graphics, including such obstacles as a family of humanoid ducks out for a stroll, but the impression they got was that people actually preferred the normal (well, relatively speaking) neighborhoods of the arcade game. Huh.
I hear you Jeremy. Although I prefer the way we grew up pretty much left to our own devices to the way kids seem to grow up nowadays under constant supervision.
I do not recall asking for paperboy when I was a kid. I imagine my mom or dad got it for me for Christmas As they were familiar with the arcade game, and probably because they could gather exactly what the game is from the Box, Which is a job simulator 🙂
Just from my anecdotal experience, I remember Paperboy being in that Tetris sphere where it had as much (if not more) appeal for adults as it did for kids.
Playing Skate or Die! as a kid was very frustrating, until one day inspiration hit and I suddenly completely understood the controls. After that, a friend and I played this game to death, especially the pool level.
Skate or Die was a game that my cousin and I both enjoyed on the NES. Nice to hear thaat EA got some of the Epyx people to creste the original and it's great that Konami could bring out that potential. As far as NES Paperboy, I think I rented that once. The Paperboy 2 episode of SNES Works is still a classic too.
I'm amazed you've made it all the way to episode 100, and that these are going so well, too. I really appreciate the Nintendo Power sidebar. I'm glad we're far enough in that it's possible, if at the very least because I adore the fancy layouts they used imported from Japan.
Even on the C64, I was never that fond of Skate or Die. It was always more well known for Hubbard's title music than for its gameplay. I can't say I really liked any of the events in it, which is pretty rare for "games" type games. Usually there's at least a couple that I like. That was true of all the Epyx "Games" titles.
I have such fond memories of playing Skate or Die. An incredible amount of character and skate culture vibes. it's obtuse control was just an assumed shortcoming of my own. The high jump was never good, but the other events all had charms. It was pretty much this and then Tony Hawk Pro Skater. (no one likes 720)
Skate or Die! is one of those bad games with cool ideas that really needs to be revisited. As for Paperboy, I'm also vexed by its popularity. It was big enough that Paperboy himself was considered for the lead character of what would become Captain N: The Game Master, and one episode of the finished show was still themed around the game. Yet, I've never in my life met anyone perky for Paperboy. Who and where are these people?
Great entry! Although I never actually owned Paperboy and never mastered Skate or Die, both of these games were childhood favorites. Seeing Radical Rodney actually jolted a memory out of my brain-basement: I distinctly remember being 5(ish), sitting in front of our wood-paneled TV, and having to ask my mom to come over and read what Rodney was saying to me. (She was always happy to do so. 🙂) By the way, have you ever played The VideoKid? It’s a love letter to Paperboy (plus the ‘80s in general), and a fun little $5 Switch game to play for a few minutes at a time.
Sharing random childhood memories... my Dad was a huge Hippie back in the day, he voted Dukakis in 88 and wouldn't let my brother and I watch He-Man and GI Joe cuz they were too violent. I distinctly remember him not wanting my brother and I to play "Skate or Die" if only because of the "Die" part in the title.
Take it from me, when I started skating I broke my arm and started disobeying traffic laws and bought my own drugs. The pipeline is real. Also, I played lots of "Ski or Die" on the DOS and it kicked ass.
Been a fan since the EGM/1up days and just recently discovered your TH-cam channel. Terrific work as always and major kudos for being a true historian to the wonderful, weird medium that is video games
The funny thing about Skate or Die is that I had a mandela effect about this game growing up, as I got confused with another skateboarding game called 720 Degrees made by Atari that would use the slogan "Skate or Die" if you lollygagged too long by siccing killer bees on you.
I loved Skate or Die and still have my cartridge. But man, it really felt like each event was made by a different team. The look, feel and control scheme just wasn’t consistent.
You can break a lot more than windows, my friend: those little trees, short driveway lamps, garbage cans, something I can only see as gravestones, etc. (Also, 14:15 is "Jonest" the superlative of Jone?)
Skate or Die! often gets knocked by modern retro-game enthusiasts; but the game was pretty good for the time. The Downhill Jam and Pool Joust events provided 1 on 1 simultaneous multiplayer which was the NES lacked. The game also had both a 1980's skating style and had the feel of late 1980's home computer games, something which the Japanese developers weren't good at creating. One reason why it hasn't held up is that the control has never been good. When your options for games like this were limited, you accepted some bad control. The other is the lack of depth in the content, particularly that there's only one Downhill Jam. EA probably would have done a lot better with the sequel if they had just made it all about new levels for Downhill Jam and Joust while loosening the still Downhill Jam controls. Instead they went for a very different game.
Love AVGN but I do think he contributes to viewing old games in a modern lens. Most of what he wold complain about I accepted as just how games were and didn't judge the game by that at the time.
I played a bunch of skate or die as a kid…always enjoyed it. We never owned Paperboy, but I know I played it a time or two. I think one of the draws to that game might be the relatability factor. You were literally playing as a kid doing kid things…like delivering papers and fucking up, lol. I never had a paper route myself, but I did engage in plenty of shenanigans.
Riding a bike on the wrong side of the road is the only safe way to do it. You can actually see the cars that are closest to you, and take manuvers if they (by accident or design) are over a few too many inches and on a collision course. The cars coming from behind you are safely on the other side of the road. To ride "the safe way" according to authortarians who always trust the goverernment, you face the cars that are no danger to you, and keep the ones that will end your life if they flinch where you have zero vision. Paperboy knew what he was doing.
I remember first playing Skate or Die! on a neighbors C64 long before it was released on the NES. On the C64 it was a fun game aside that made really good use of the C64's SID chip for audio. Only the load times from disk sucked. On the NES is was ok but nothing that we ever got excited about.
Paper Boy is a game I've only ever played in emulators, and never for long- the finer details of the game seem to require a lot of investment before you unlock the fun parts, and doing a paper route wasn't really a thing for Swedish youths of that time (except for during the winter with certain specialized magazines, long story). So it never really got big over here, or got a lot of fans. Just not an appealing premise, a "real" game with a setting we couldn't recognize as "real".
are you sure paperboy wasn't inspired by xevious though? multiple planes of interaction, pseudo 3-d, autoscrolling, tengen published rolling thunder which is a namcot game
i had this skate or die ! i got it at kb toy store cuz the cover looked cool and knew little about the game itself. it may have been a cheaper title as well $30-$40 and not $50
Will you be covering the unofficial Tengen games? They were pretty ubiquitous back then - almost everyone had at least one weird black cartridge. But if you do, where do you draw the line on unofficial releases? Do you cover Bible Adventures and Action 52 and the like?
I picked up a couple of Tengen titles at Long Island Retro Expo last weekend for this purpose. I will probably also cover other unlicensed games that received proper distro in the U.S., like Color Dreams and A.V.E. Might pass on Panesian tho.
Two games I consider generally better on the C64 this time. But this is usually the case. Commodore 64 games on the NES were usually not great and vice versa. (Or normally arcade ports brought to both machines. The NES tended to do them much better most of the time. Paperboy is one of the exceptions. And no the 2nd action button is not normally the reason though it helps. Its more whatever technical God powers Konami and Capcom programmers had back then. Remove sprite flicker and slowdown and lots of their stuff could be mistaken for early Amiga and Atari ST games.)
Wow, how have I never seen that Return of the Jedi game referenced anywhere ever? Interesting angle on Ultra Games; I didn't know they were explicitly angled as a publisher of US-focused software. I had Ninja Turtles & Gyruss, of course rented Metal Gear so I just thought of them as somehow connected to Konami at the time (my kid brain had no understanding of why there needed to be 2-3 company names on every game), then as Konami's release-limit overflow brand when I later learned what their deal was. As deliriously grateful as I was for the chance to play Fantasy Zone & Alien Syndrome on my NES (another weird business situation my kid brain couldn't wrap itself around), and as cool as those angled carts were, it's hard to look back at Tengen on the whole with much other than disdain. If there's a Temple of Apshai in video game heck, Jack Tramiel's gotta be doing time locked up in it.
Ah, Skate or Die. I had the much worse sequel, which is surprising when this was one of those anthology/compilation games to begin with. And Paperboy. Ah, the venerable classic that'll smack your hands for thinking there's more than one way to play.
At least the sequel had that amazing title music. I'm still amazed some madman actually got the NES playing tracker music. (or something like it anyway)
I tried playing skate or die like 10 actual times and I died immediately and thus did not skate and just like I've broken my skateboard a half dozen times I kicked the shit out of that catridge ....I may have been dealing with an anger problem.
The slower pace of the NES version of Paperboy really invited you to focus on mayhem and destruction instead of the main objective.
8 year old me asked for Skate or Die thinking it was the arcade game 720°, a game which shouted a sampled "SKATE OR DIE" continually. I did not understand what the weird 720 number on the cabinet meant, so when I saw this NES game I thought it was that game. I wonder how many other kids had the same experience. I was pretty disappointed.
That's how they get you!
I remember the ads for Paperboy being EVERYWHERE when I was a kid - TV, magazines, you name it - so that's probably why it was such a big seller. Sheer saturation.
Looking forward to episode 100, where a true 10/10 game will be covered - Platoon
I'm very curious to see his take on it. It was one of those games I got stuck with for a weekend, somehow got good with it, and keep playing it to this day. Not a great game by any stretch, but it's as good a waste of 15 minutes as anything else.
What does perfect 10 out of 10 mean in this context?
@@MrJWTH a perfect jumping off point for Sunsoft to realize they had a major hit with Blaster Master and, aside from one slip-up with Fester's Quest, to start banging out nothing but gold for the rest of the NES lifespan. And even then, Fester's Quest makes sense if you know the messed up development history.
There is no perfect 10/10 game.
Gleaming the Cube was definitely my favorite skating movie of my youth! I distinctly remember being home sick from school and watching Gleaming and House Party on HBO mid day while eating chicken noodle and drinking 7-Up!
Omg I discovered Gleaming the Cube home sick from school too! I got into skateboarding because of that movie and Skate or Die.
I'll take issue with your depiction of the Freestyle event in Skate or Die. It's the best mode in the game with dozens of tricks and variation options when hunting for a high score.
The tricks are context based, with the direction and/or you're pressing as you approach specific sections of the vert ramp.
Hey Jeremy, love the video, as always!
One small detail that might be of interest: I believe Skate Or Die's skate shop owner Rodney is inspired not by Rodney Dangerfield but rather by LA-based punk rock DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, who hosted a popular punk radio show on KROQ called "Rodney on the ROQ." His appearance matches NES Rodney's nicely, and his occupation is more connected to skater culture than the blue comedian's.
The graphics do kind of resemble Dangerfield though.
@@Tim85-y2q I agree. After I posted this I started to wonder if Skate Or Die Rodney is a composite of Dangerfield and Bingenheimer. He has Bingenheimer’s hair and Dangerfield’s face.
Seems like a stretch as he looks absolutely nothing like the guy, especially contemporarily. And also he looks exactly like Rodney Dangerfield with a mohawk.
You could be right though, who knows for sure
@@spuppy852 I flatly disagree that he looks nothing like the guy but ymmv
This brings back fond memories. The pizza place within walking distance of my house had the Paperboy arcade for a bit before swapping it out with Spy Hunter. And many nights were spent trying to master Skate or Die as a kid too, with the music being pressed deep into my brain. I really miss the weird and zany art of the very early issues of NP, too.
Oh boy, Skate or Die!…
That feeling lasted for a nice 45 seconds before our host caused me to access ‘Nam flashbacks about what being a kid in the 1980s was actually like.
…time for work! 😅
The only skate boarding arcade game was 720 degrees. It's a pretty fun game too.
The best thing about Skate or Die is the title screen.
Personally I can’t hear “Skate or die” without thinking of the 720 arcade game, which I always assumed was the inspiration for this game.
Yeah, I thought 720 might get a mention here. I'm pretty sure it was one of the first skateboarding games out there and a really good one.
I had one of my many childhood surgeries in 1985, it might even have been my amputation. Best thing to come out of that was my mastery of NES Paperboy. I did, in fact, manage to finally win during my recovery. 😁
I’ve got to say suing your competitor just to get a look at its trade secrets in discovery and then instantly violating them with your own product is a pretty baller move….
Both of these games were one time rentals then thrown controllers for being insanely Nintendo hard (great work as always)
I’ve been told I misunderstood the sequence of events with that lawsuit. Don’t quote me on it.
Does anyone else remember getting aggravated at the black cart Tengen games due to the fact that they had no cutout on the top part of the cart? Often when a game would get stuck just flashing a gray screen on your TV, one of the tricks I (and I assume everyone) used to get it working was to put your index and middle finger in the top 'nook' of the NES cart and rattle it left and right and then cycle power. This often worked after a few tries. With the black Tengen carts you could not do this.
One of my best Friends of the time owned Paperboy on Commodore 64 and we loved it
I still play Paperboy every now and again. The Game Gear port is more faithful, but the NES version is where I played it first. I love both versions.
We had a pirated copy of the C64 port I first saw it on.
14:37
"and eventually being shut down by the courts over the patent violations committed around this time"
After Time Warner acquired a controlling interest in Atari Games in 1993, Tengen was renamed to Time Warner Interactive and stayed around for a few years as both a developer and publisher before Williams bought Atari Games and merged the studio into Williams Entertainment (formerly Tradewest).
Huh, I had read in a few different places that Tengen was shuttered due to the burden of legal issues resulting from its conflict with Nintendo. I'll have to revisit that.
@@JeremyParish Also, Atari Corp & Atari Games had no actual connection to each other outside of both coming from Atari Inc.'s original dissolution; they were simply two distinct companies that just had the same name & a shared origin story. So it was Atari Games that sued Nintendo & got into hot water with Tengen, not Atari Corp., which had no direct involvement with Nintendo outside of simply competing with them via hardware. That's why Warner Bros. owns the Atari Games arcade catalog today (because Midway eventually got the rights to Atari Games, & WB bought Midway), while the former Infogrames owns the old Atari Inc.-era catalog & the Atari name & logo (after buying everything from Hasbro).
Atari history is just a mess, isn't it?
I have read through and written about Atari's post-dissolution history SO MANY TIMES and still get details muddled. I hate it so much.
@@JeremyParish And then there's always the chance that someone might go "But what about Natsume-Atari over in Japan? Are they related?", and you just throw your hands into the air & give up.
Life long skater and Skate or Die fan here. There is a bit more to the game. The freestyle and downhill sections are the best. There are difficult maneuvers you are required to pull off in order to get a 9000 score. The controls are difficult but consistent and tight, kinda like real skateboarding. This was the best skating game until Tony Hawk came out and my skater friends and I played it often. Getting a 9000 in the freestyle event becomes trivial with practice but the downhill is hard.
I played some Skate or Die with my daughter not too long ago. It’s amazing in hindsight that, among people I knew as a kid, that was considered one of the “cool” NES games.
Wasn't Paperboy the first ever NES title 100% developed in the US? The Master System version of Paperboy was the first ever SMS game developed in the UK, by Tiertex of all people. Even if they did somehow confuse the theme tune to Paperboy with Moon Patrol.
Gauntlet predates Paperboy by several months.
@@JeremyParish that was also mindscape wasnt it?
Slalom was the first "western" developed game (Rare is British). Indeed, it looks like Atari Games (Tengen) was the second western-based developer on the NES. Then came Software Creations (UK), then Beam Software (Australia).
Gauntlet was developed and published entirely by Tengen, and shipped in both licensed and unlicensed variants; Gauntlet II was developed by Tengen and published (under license only) by Mindscape. And Dwedit, the question was U.S.-developed NES games, not Western.
Paperboy’s mayhem play mechanics would be further explored in its sequel, Postal.
My brother and I loved Skate or Die. We had no problems doing the events.
Dude, the vert and freestyle events might have been the best parts.
Finally Gleaming The Cube gets some love.
I still prefer Skate or Die's C64 version soundtrack. It's amazing how much killer music can make a game feel more substantial, for without it, what is Skate or Die but a fairly limited mini-game collection?
Paperboy has never been a game I've really enjoyed, but I remember it fondly for being Salwitz and Ralston's first big hit. Later they would make 720 Degrees (which is a much deeper, I'd say much better, take on the Skate or Die format), Cyberball, and what is probably my favorite of all arcade games: RAMPART.
John Salwitz did a GDC talk a while back where he talked about the making of Paperboy. It's on TH-cam somewhere, but my favorite fact to come out of it is that in development, they had planned for much wackier graphics, including such obstacles as a family of humanoid ducks out for a stroll, but the impression they got was that people actually preferred the normal (well, relatively speaking) neighborhoods of the arcade game. Huh.
As a fellow 80's Latchkey Kid, this has been one my favorite episodes of all!
I hear you Jeremy. Although I prefer the way we grew up pretty much left to our own devices to the way kids seem to grow up nowadays under constant supervision.
I do not recall asking for paperboy when I was a kid. I imagine my mom or dad got it for me for Christmas As they were familiar with the arcade game, and probably because they could gather exactly what the game is from the Box, Which is a job simulator 🙂
Just from my anecdotal experience, I remember Paperboy being in that Tetris sphere where it had as much (if not more) appeal for adults as it did for kids.
Best part was smashing people's windows out
Paperboy was one of those games no kid ever sought out or requested, they just suddenly acquired or came across it
Paperboy was fairly popular on Indian Famiclones, along with Adventure Island.
Still remember playing with my family.
those two games have the same mapper
@@holdingpattern245 what's a mapper?
@@hemangchauhan2864a chip that is placed inside of a NES cartridge to upgrade the console's abilities
@@holdingpattern245 ooh
Thanks!
Love Skate or Die. Me and my brother use to play the Joust Mode and Race mode all the time 😂
The Skate Or Die joust level is actually a take off a scene in the movie Thrashin with Josh Brolin
Oh snap
I'd guess the joust event is influenced by the so-called jousting scene in Thrashin' starring Josh Brolin (1986)
So the final boss of Skate or Die is Thanos?
Inevitably
Playing Skate or Die! as a kid was very frustrating, until one day inspiration hit and I suddenly completely understood the controls. After that, a friend and I played this game to death, especially the pool level.
Skate or Die was a game that my cousin and I both enjoyed on the NES. Nice to hear thaat EA got some of the Epyx people to creste the original and it's great that Konami could bring out that potential. As far as NES Paperboy, I think I rented that once. The Paperboy 2 episode of SNES Works is still a classic too.
1:10. Nice credit for "The Scream" there.
1:23 - but if someone got hurt that would be such an inconvenience for the parents... They might even have to take off work! Can you imagine?
I'm amazed you've made it all the way to episode 100, and that these are going so well, too.
I really appreciate the Nintendo Power sidebar. I'm glad we're far enough in that it's possible, if at the very least because I adore the fancy layouts they used imported from Japan.
Even on the C64, I was never that fond of Skate or Die. It was always more well known for Hubbard's title music than for its gameplay. I can't say I really liked any of the events in it, which is pretty rare for "games" type games. Usually there's at least a couple that I like. That was true of all the Epyx "Games" titles.
Never skateboarded in my life but somehow the SKATE OR DIE! iconography captures my entire aesthetic.
Funny coming from a guy who chose to represent himself as a goofy little blob monster 😂
@@ValkyrieTiara my real life aesthetic. On here I am Dracoslime.
I have such fond memories of playing Skate or Die. An incredible amount of character and skate culture vibes. it's obtuse control was just an assumed shortcoming of my own. The high jump was never good, but the other events all had charms. It was pretty much this and then Tony Hawk Pro Skater. (no one likes 720)
Skate or Die! is one of those bad games with cool ideas that really needs to be revisited. As for Paperboy, I'm also vexed by its popularity. It was big enough that Paperboy himself was considered for the lead character of what would become Captain N: The Game Master, and one episode of the finished show was still themed around the game. Yet, I've never in my life met anyone perky for Paperboy. Who and where are these people?
Great entry! Although I never actually owned Paperboy and never mastered Skate or Die, both of these games were childhood favorites. Seeing Radical Rodney actually jolted a memory out of my brain-basement: I distinctly remember being 5(ish), sitting in front of our wood-paneled TV, and having to ask my mom to come over and read what Rodney was saying to me. (She was always happy to do so. 🙂)
By the way, have you ever played The VideoKid? It’s a love letter to Paperboy (plus the ‘80s in general), and a fun little $5 Switch game to play for a few minutes at a time.
Sharing random childhood memories... my Dad was a huge Hippie back in the day, he voted Dukakis in 88 and wouldn't let my brother and I watch He-Man and GI Joe cuz they were too violent. I distinctly remember him not wanting my brother and I to play "Skate or Die" if only because of the "Die" part in the title.
I missed this somehow, thanks for the recommendation!!
Take it from me, when I started skating I broke my arm and started disobeying traffic laws and bought my own drugs. The pipeline is real.
Also, I played lots of "Ski or Die" on the DOS and it kicked ass.
Odd that Paper Boy got an episode of Captain N about it considering the legal shenanigans that would go on between its publisher and Nintendo.
Something tells me Nintendo did not exert a lot of QC over that show…
Skate or Die 2 was my jam as a kid. Tell me more mr. Parish
Paper Route of all Evil is god darn right
Been a fan since the EGM/1up days and just recently discovered your TH-cam channel. Terrific work as always and major kudos for being a true historian to the wonderful, weird medium that is video games
Thx man these videos are helping me get through a really rough time.
Best wishes with whatever you're dealing with. Hope things start looking up for you soon.
Any time I see Paperboy, I think of the pizza launcher/castle doctrine bit.
1:20 You described my life!
1:37 not just one generation, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater make sure to keep that legacy going for a few more generations lol.
Thanks for this series! It's been invaluable to me as a game dev. Rare & unique insight that has practicable application is most welcome.
The funny thing about Skate or Die is that I had a mandela effect about this game growing up, as I got confused with another skateboarding game called 720 Degrees made by Atari that would use the slogan "Skate or Die" if you lollygagged too long by siccing killer bees on you.
I loved Skate or Die and still have my cartridge. But man, it really felt like each event was made by a different team. The look, feel and control scheme just wasn’t consistent.
Yeah, Paperboy definitely owes its success to being a kind of proto-GTA for little kids.
You can break a lot more than windows, my friend: those little trees, short driveway lamps, garbage cans, something I can only see as gravestones, etc. (Also, 14:15 is "Jonest" the superlative of Jone?)
I'm watching this on 1.5x speed, and the skate or die, and ESPECIALLY The Winter Games clips, are STILLLLL slow as shyt!!! Good god
Skate or Die! often gets knocked by modern retro-game enthusiasts; but the game was pretty good for the time. The Downhill Jam and Pool Joust events provided 1 on 1 simultaneous multiplayer which was the NES lacked. The game also had both a 1980's skating style and had the feel of late 1980's home computer games, something which the Japanese developers weren't good at creating.
One reason why it hasn't held up is that the control has never been good. When your options for games like this were limited, you accepted some bad control. The other is the lack of depth in the content, particularly that there's only one Downhill Jam.
EA probably would have done a lot better with the sequel if they had just made it all about new levels for Downhill Jam and Joust while loosening the still Downhill Jam controls. Instead they went for a very different game.
Love AVGN but I do think he contributes to viewing old games in a modern lens. Most of what he wold complain about I accepted as just how games were and didn't judge the game by that at the time.
In the Atari arcade game, 720, a voice will say " Skate or die!" As bees chase you.
I always thought this game was a clone of that.
I played a bunch of skate or die as a kid…always enjoyed it. We never owned Paperboy, but I know I played it a time or two. I think one of the draws to that game might be the relatability factor. You were literally playing as a kid doing kid things…like delivering papers and fucking up, lol. I never had a paper route myself, but I did engage in plenty of shenanigans.
Riding a bike on the wrong side of the road is the only safe way to do it. You can actually see the cars that are closest to you, and take manuvers if they (by accident or design) are over a few too many inches and on a collision course. The cars coming from behind you are safely on the other side of the road.
To ride "the safe way" according to authortarians who always trust the goverernment, you face the cars that are no danger to you, and keep the ones that will end your life if they flinch where you have zero vision.
Paperboy knew what he was doing.
Paperboy was popular enough to get an episode of captain n the game master based around it.
I still love paperboy. All jankiness, bad graphics and sound. Ah. Fun memories.
This series still at top quality. Inspired my content to be top quality. Can't wait til you get to 100.
I want a game that is just about breaking windows by throwing rocks and/or riding into them with your bike.
It's SHATTER BIKE for the NES.
Yo the writing on this episode was great haha
6:15 "[SoD] merits existing" that's all I want someone to say about me one day
ah Paperboy was my 3rd game ever. loved it.
Skate or Die!
I have beautiful memories of my youth full of post-traumatic stress.🤕
But I still can't get the title song out of my head.
Yes, PTSD has that tendency
I love your work so friggin' much.
Jeremy is amazing
Need to take a look at Skate or Die 2. I owned SOD but don't remember SOD2.
I remember first playing Skate or Die! on a neighbors C64 long before it was released on the NES. On the C64 it was a fun game aside that made really good use of the C64's SID chip for audio. Only the load times from disk sucked. On the NES is was ok but nothing that we ever got excited about.
I just realized today that I am one of those Latchkey kids.
I'm sorry did I mishear , did he say Konami was most remembered for Ninja Turtles???
I can identify with this opening.
I was hoping for some mention of the obstacle course at the end of each level in paperboy
This is the fourth time I've covered Paperboy here so I figured I didn't need to rehash every single detail.
@@JeremyParish my apologies I didn't realize
Skate or Die is a powerful early memory for me. I SUCKED at it but played it for hours
Paper Boy is a game I've only ever played in emulators, and never for long- the finer details of the game seem to require a lot of investment before you unlock the fun parts, and doing a paper route wasn't really a thing for Swedish youths of that time (except for during the winter with certain specialized magazines, long story). So it never really got big over here, or got a lot of fans. Just not an appealing premise, a "real" game with a setting we couldn't recognize as "real".
I always preferred T and C Surf Designs. I'd ride my Valterra Land Shark all around Mayport, Florida trying to jump over shit like Tiki Man
Now we're in "games every kid had" territory
Its funny, as I don’t think I know anyone who owned Paper Boy. I had rented it a tome or two
I rented skate or die a lot as a kid.
are you sure paperboy wasn't inspired by xevious though? multiple planes of interaction, pseudo 3-d, autoscrolling, tengen published rolling thunder which is a namcot game
Don't forget that Atari distributed the Xevious coin-op in the U.S.! This is now canon, thanks.
i had this skate or die ! i got it at kb toy store cuz the cover looked cool and knew little about the game itself. it may have been a cheaper title as well $30-$40 and not $50
I remember playing skate or die on the c64. Pirated.
Will you be covering the unofficial Tengen games? They were pretty ubiquitous back then - almost everyone had at least one weird black cartridge. But if you do, where do you draw the line on unofficial releases? Do you cover Bible Adventures and Action 52 and the like?
I picked up a couple of Tengen titles at Long Island Retro Expo last weekend for this purpose. I will probably also cover other unlicensed games that received proper distro in the U.S., like Color Dreams and A.V.E. Might pass on Panesian tho.
I predict the next game will be Ducktales. This is just a random guess.
I just hope it comes with a disclaimer stating that you shouldn’t actually jump into a money pit full of gold coins.
What's that thing with the rock band from the very beginning from? I'm so curious.
Two games I consider generally better on the C64 this time. But this is usually the case. Commodore 64 games on the NES were usually not great and vice versa. (Or normally arcade ports brought to both machines. The NES tended to do them much better most of the time. Paperboy is one of the exceptions. And no the 2nd action button is not normally the reason though it helps. Its more whatever technical God powers Konami and Capcom programmers had back then. Remove sprite flicker and slowdown and lots of their stuff could be mistaken for early Amiga and Atari ST games.)
Wow, how have I never seen that Return of the Jedi game referenced anywhere ever? Interesting angle on Ultra Games; I didn't know they were explicitly angled as a publisher of US-focused software. I had Ninja Turtles & Gyruss, of course rented Metal Gear so I just thought of them as somehow connected to Konami at the time (my kid brain had no understanding of why there needed to be 2-3 company names on every game), then as Konami's release-limit overflow brand when I later learned what their deal was. As deliriously grateful as I was for the chance to play Fantasy Zone & Alien Syndrome on my NES (another weird business situation my kid brain couldn't wrap itself around), and as cool as those angled carts were, it's hard to look back at Tengen on the whole with much other than disdain. If there's a Temple of Apshai in video game heck, Jack Tramiel's gotta be doing time locked up in it.
So is it Skate or Die 2 that has the second-best title screen on the console, then?
Haha. 2 games friends had that I we always played but were never really fond of
One away from the 100th episode. 😀👍🎮
Ah, Skate or Die. I had the much worse sequel, which is surprising when this was one of those anthology/compilation games to begin with.
And Paperboy. Ah, the venerable classic that'll smack your hands for thinking there's more than one way to play.
At least the sequel had that amazing title music. I'm still amazed some madman actually got the NES playing tracker music. (or something like it anyway)
Rad Racer 2, Skate or die 2, Zelda 2, Castlevania 2, Snake’s Revenge; All inferior sequels to better games
Hmm what couldn't Atari destroy?
Nintendo
As a Brazilian I have much more experience with the Master System version of Paperboy which is, like Double Dragon, much much better.
Will your books ever be getting a reprint? I'd love to get them all but far too late to that party
Soon
@@JeremyParish I can't pump into my savings account fast enough ❤️
I tried playing skate or die like 10 actual times and I died immediately and thus did not skate and just like I've broken my skateboard a half dozen times I kicked the shit out of that catridge
....I may have been dealing with an anger problem.
Yoots? What's a yoot?
Love it