Download PORTABLE Extreme Skater

Platforms: PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, GameBoy Advance

Current Price (new): $15-$20 (some stores out of stock) Amount of Game Played: 50%-ish

A skateboarding game for kids, you say? Ummm. Maybe. Not sure. Why do you ask?

A video game with Disney & Pixar characters, you say? I'm listening, though I've been burned before (see Finding Nemo - I'll review that clunker in the next few weeks).

How about a video game featuring many of your kids' favorite Disney & Pixar characters, as well as customizable characters the kids can create themselves, using the game engine that powered the highly-acclaimed Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4?

Actually, that sounds pretty cool.

As it turns out, you'd be right. Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure is pretty cool.

There are many levels to skate in, and most are based on Disney or Pixar films. For example: Buzz, Woody, Jessie & Zurg can skate in Andy's Room, Pizza Planet or Zurg's World; Simba, Timon & Pumbaa, Nala & Rafiki in Pride Rock, the Elephant Graveyard or Scar's Canyon; and Tarzan, Jane, Tantor & Terk in the Jungle Treehouse. Note: There are more levels, but we haven't unlocked them yet.

By completing challenges and achieving various goals, you open up new places to explore/skate, as well as new clothes to use on your customized characters (more on that in a bit). However, while the game is easy for kids to skate around and have fun, it isn't very easy to accomplish many of the goals in the game. Basic skating is very easy, but complex, intricate moves are no easy feat.

That said, there should be enough in this game to hold your kids' interest without them feeling they have to "finish" the game. In our case, we've been playing on & off for several months, and we're barely halfway through, if that.

If this is the only game that your kids play, then perhaps they'll be frustrated if they can't progress very easily or rapidly through the game. In our case, since this is just a part of a 6-7 game rotation (approximately - it's pretty fluid, and counting the PC, it's more like 20), my kids end up not playing it for a while, which means that when they do play, it's both familiar and new again.

Depending on how old your kids are, the difficulty isn't necessarily a bad thing. Given that the core gameplay is that of a non-kids game (the aforementioned THPS4), it certainly has plenty of challenge to keep your older kids interested as well.

One thing that all kids should like, though, is the ability to customze their own characters. My kids loved creating and playing with their own, special skaters.

Other than the difficulty issues, Activision made a good decision when they borrowed the Tony Hawk engine to make this game. But they made a bad one when they borrowed the Tony Hawk soundtrack. It isn't that the music is offensive (though a few are a little hard-edged for my taste, and I'm a musician my damn self); it's that it doesn't fit the content.

Young kids don't need amped-up, adrenaline-pumping rock music to play a skateboarding game. They want music they like - music that makes sense for the surroundings. How about some music from the movies, then? You've already licensed the characters. Is Hakuna Matata or even the slower You've Got A Friend In Me too much to ask? Guess so.

Bottom line, this is another fun game for the family to play together. My wife doesn't play very many games, and along with Dog's Life and Super Monkey Ball, this is one of the few that she likes to play with the kids. Did I forget to say I like it, too? I do.

Both kids love what they call "the skateboard game."

Favorite Characters:

Buzz LightyearJessie Nalatheir custom-made skaters

Favorite Levels:

Andy's Room

Elephant Graveyard

Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure allows players to skate in stages inspired by Pixar's Toy Story and Disney's Tarzan and The Lion King, as well as two customizable featuring licensed characters and two child skaters, Ryan and Mallie Ann. The game features the same engine and gameplay mechanics as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4,[1] with minor changes to simplify the control scheme, in which tricks and manuals are performed with the press of a single button and the performance of different tricks is differentiated by the type of obstacle. Players are able to revert to a more complex, combination-based control scheme by enabling 'Pro Controls' featured in the game's settings.[2]

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The game features several gameplay modes. In 'Adventure', players complete a series of levels by completing various challenges across levels, the completion of which unlocks new goals, levels, and clothing for customized skaters.[1] In 'Free Skate', players are able to play all unlocked with available characters, with challenges disabled. The game supports multiplayer play in 'Versus', allowing players to complete various challenges including a one-on-one best trick contest, a best score challenge, and a 'king of the hill' mode in local split screen play.[3]

Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure was developed by Toys for Bob, a California based development studio contracted by parent company Activision to create a Disney-licensed extreme sports game. Development of Extreme Skate Adventure was based upon the RenderWare engine used by Activision subidiary Neversoft to create Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4,[1] with minor additions added to the game to include "multi-stage tasks and more conversational interactions".[5] CEO and Director Paul Reiche stated that production of Extreme Skate Adventure faced several challenges. Whilst described as a "perfect" relationship, development involved close input and approval from Disney and Pixar, with the developers cautious on where the studio could take "creative latitude" or "stick to the movies" in the game's visual design and animation. The developers also faced the challenge of making design decisions about where the studio should imitate its predecessors and "do what Tony did" or where it was appropriate to "step outside that framework", finding the simplification of the control scheme to a younger audience to be the "most difficult" part of the development process.[6]

To market Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure, Activision launched a casting call for an 'Extreme Skate Crew' to seek ten child skaters to appear as playable characters in the game,[7] with two of the winners, Ryan Fullerton Holleran and Mallie Ann Torres, voted by users to have their name featured in the game and appear in the opening cinematics.[8] The soundtrack features licensed songs from artists including Reel Big Fish, Simple Plan, Smash Mouth, and Lil' Romeo,[1][2] and the Xbox version allows players to load custom soundtracks.[1] The game was released in North America on September 3, 2003, and in Europe on September 5.[9][10]

The Game Boy Advance version received "mixed or average" reviews according to Metacritic.[11] Cam Shea of Hyper praised the game as "quite solid", noting that whilst the gameplay was "greatly simplified" and "a little dull".[19] Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot observed that the game's presentation was not "as realistic or technically ambitious" as its counterparts, noting that the environments were not "colorful or detailed enough".[21] GBA World condemned the game as an "extremely cynical attempt to cash in on the popularity of Disney characters by sticking them into a Tony Hawk style skating game."[28]

The Extreme Skate Park is located in McCarthy Park, behind Tinley Junction and the McCarthy Park ball field. The skate park is open daily from 8:30 a.m. to dusk (weather permitting). The park offers a variety of ramps and rails and will challenge even the most experienced boarders and skaters. Check it out!

Visuals in Extreme Skater are not the most detailed, but they allow the game to flow at a great speed. The environments have a cartoon look, and the same goes for the character you play. There are not a lot of animations in the game, and a lot of the time you are focused on the orientation of your skater.

To give yourself the option of visiting any stage in the game automatically and without having to unlock it, insert "extremepassport" (minus the quotes) in the in-game cheats menu. If inserted correctly, you'll be given the option to select from any stage in the game.

Kids across the country also entered the search by mailing in a photo of themselves along with a videotape of their skateboarding skills. To continue involving kids across the country in the creation of this game, Activision created a special game Web site, www.extremeskateadventure.com, where these 10 kids had their information posted so that their family, friends, and general public could vote online for the top two "Super Stars" during the month of April 2003, giving the game a reality programming twist. These two "Super Stars," who were chosen by their peers, became featured members of the "Extreme Skate Crew" and appear on The Skate Stage at the beginning of the game alongside the film characters and have their names and stats on display. The two kids chosen were Ryan and Mallie Ann.

Activision and Disney have joined forces to try and woo 6-14 year olds with Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure for PS2 and GameCube. Based on Tony Hawk's fourth Pro Skater engine, the game will feature characters from three animated films; Toy Story 2, Tarzan, and The Lion King - 12 in total - with the usual Create-A-Skater option customised to help build youthful skating representatives. Furthermore, Activision is to hold a nationwide casting call for 10 real kids to become digital skaters in the final game. 2351a5e196