Hidden Gems #21 Thrasher: Skate and Destroy & Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure

Today's hidden gem I will review two games that are pretty underrated in there respective sport in which i'm talking about skateboarding was a thing back in the late 90's/ early 2000's. Thanks to games like Tony Hawk, and Sake they show how fun it is the play these games in video games. Yet today's games show that they were pretty unique for there time, and they weren't the biggest household names.

Thrasher Skate and Destroy: Our first game comes from the PlayStation era that is none other than Thrasher Skate and Destroy. Coming out the year 1999 I first tried this out on a winter 99 disc back when demo discs were at their peak when the internet was still slow. The game was made by Z-axis whose commonly now known as Underground Development. There mostly known for making the majority of the BMX games. This game is actually pretty unique for the fact it does something that no other skateboarding game has, and that's an actual police officer on the screen with his one hand holding a taser is something to behold. Your goal is to pretty do a combination of tricks and rack up points, and escape the level without getting busted by the police with your time is up. The controls are not the greatest, but good enough to have fun to get the hang of it, now if this was on the the PS2 then yeah this would get some bad rep for its not very fluent controls, but for the PS1 its understandable since they didn't have a analog sticks quite yet (I might be wrong though). There is no unloackable characters in this game the six characters you get from the start is all you end up having which could of been a bit better since most of these look generic that was excepted since there games they generate generic characters looks too obviously. The soundtrack is surprisingly great for a genre of music I was never into Hip Hop, but here it was good enough where I could get a great beat into the game where its just fine. the multiplayer mode has seven different match types. Session has you competing against your friend in trick points to see who pulled off the highest score before the time runs out. Nickel Bag is pretty fun, and challenging for a two player game where all you do is do one move, and see if you can top it with another combo trick. H.O.R.S.E is basically a simplistic version of doing the tony Hawk's SKATE missions which was alright. Top Dog has you and your buddy doing tricks in certain assigned areas, and its like Nickel Bag only you can't really exit the area if you tried. Sick Fix is kind of weird in you must use the ''ragdoll physics in order to inflicting the most damage to the player by crashing into different objects'' why not just say Kamikaze Fix. Long Grind which is self explained there's no need to say much about it, and finally Big Wall ride which is pretty much going on a side, and pulling off a big trick while wall riding. For 199 it was fun for its time, but graphically its not very impressive. While that means nothing to the overall game its pretty dated compared to Pro Skater 2 which i'll admit was way more greater then this, but this wasn't bad either. I'll give this a 7.5 out of 10.

Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure: I played this game on the gamecube while it was also out for the XBOX and the Playstation 2 at the time, as we go into the year 2003 where we find Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure which is very nostalgic for those that have played it will tell you a lot about this game. The engine comes from the mind of pro Skater, and that's not a bad thing to add in this case since its basically a lot more easier than the previous game Pro Skater 4 which is arguably the hardest in the series. Since the fans were kind of frustrated with the difficulty they figured the answer to that was this game which wasn't a bad route to go in since the majority love Disney, and well actually there's one Disney representative in this game. Those that are featured are Woody, Buzz, Jessie, Zurg from Toy Story. Tarzan, Jane, Terk, Tantor from Tarzan which actually makes sense if you think about it. Finally Simba, Nala, Rafiki, Timon & Pumba from The Lion King. You have a total of 10 levels one in which is your custom character is suppose to live with the three other words you can also go into. The Adventure itself is not too bad in fact it looks nice, and creative. My favorite level is the Graveyard the whole scenery looks fantastic. The controls are very smooth, and crisp making the game almost too good. I enjoyed the single player that much it has great replay value I was always hopeful for a sequel, but you know this is fine after seeing how bad Pro Skater 5 was. The multiplayer in this game is very basic, and identical to Pro skater 4 in which you could pick what you wanted to do within the pause menu. Finally this game has some really good choices in music like songs like Somewhere in Fullerton was so 2000's, but seem right for this game. Audiovent's one hit The Energy was pretty great for 2003 it was put in multiple games I encountered like Madden 03 and among others. Pacific Coast Party by Smash Mouth was pretty good its not quite all star, but good enough to recognize its greatness. Oh, and do I need to say the awesome Downfall by one of the most underrated bands of the 2000's in TRUST company. Point is this game had a lot of great things to it while some things are just alright you can't help, but like its one time attempt and only. I give this game an 8 out of 10.

That is all for now until the next review.

Comments