Skate or Die

720º

This game is commonly confused with the Atari coin-op 720º. The confusion stems from the spoken "Skate or die!" yelled in the coin-op.

Credits

A line in the credits reads: "If you like Skate or Die, drop us a line and we'll see that the nurses read it to (the developers)."

Fences

Not sure about the PC version, but on the C64 version if you could skate through steel wire fences, only to fall into little pieces a moment later.

Milestone

Skate or Die! was Electronic Arts' first in-house game, i.e. the first developed by full-time employees. All prior EA titles had been done by independent contractors.

Rodney

Rodney of Rodney's Skate Shop is an obvious, blatant reference to Rodney Dangerfield. It's funny just how much they ripped off his image.

Spectrum version

The manual for the Spectrum version states:

"There is no abort key on the Spectrum version of Skate or Die due to the ease of simulating the same key value from other input devices, this removes the chance of accidentally aborting the game."

Leaving aside the woeful grammar, this isn't very good design. Although most Spectrum joysticks did map to certain keys, it was easy to choose which ones these were.

Awards

• Commodore Format
  • March 1994 (Issue 42) Heaven – The Path to Righteousness: 20 Essential Games
  • March 1994 (Issue 42) – Heaven: Music of the Gods

Information also contributed by Joshua Dove, Martin Smith, and Terok Nor