It’s the same idea as HORSE in basketball, only with tricks on a skateboard. It’s the game named SKATE. You don’t have to adventure around the world to play it, your own driveway will do (heck you could do it in the house if you didn’t care about destroying your house). You can implement it in your adventure for even more fun. The best videos of SKATE show it in interesting locations. If you’ve ever gone on an urban skateboard adventure, you know how a public place can suddenly transform into your own personal playground / skate park. Traditionally, it’s a competition done on flattop, each skater having nothing but their board and the ground to outperform their competition. And there’s no event that pushes the purity of this competition more than the ESPN X Games Game of Skate.
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Day of the dead skateboard
That’s what the game is about, purity. All those Tony Hawk video games took the sense of weight from tricks like the kick flip (right arrow & B / O am I right). Of course a kick flip isn’t going to pose much of a threat in a game of SKATE on a professional or amateur level. You’ll have to adventure a little deeper into your bag of tricks if you want to win.
What’s important to understand is that a lot of these guys can do the big air, lay down a lot of flips and spins, and transition everything with smooth grinds and stalls, and all of this requires fearlessness and determination, but the small game of flattop tricks still demands an incredible amount of skill. Perhaps they’re not risking as much because they’re not bombing at high speed or launching to an altitude only mountain climbers and skydivers normally dare, but what they are doing is still highly demanding, and there’s something highly satisfying about that bare bones nature of the game, which actually does a lot to breathe in room for creativity for these skaters.
This year, Mike Mo Capaldi won Game of Skate. He did so with his signature trick, which, funnily enough is named the Impossible Late Flip. Forgive the following pun, but appears that Late in the game, the Flip was Impossible for PJ Ladd to replicate. If there’s one thing about playing SKATE, it’s that it always helps to be able to do something that no one else can.
Photo Courtesy of wallpoper.com
