 Snats drunk. Skate or Die is a hidden missport for the NES. This game is all over the place with five different minigames to choose from. There's the freestyle ramp, the high jump, the downhill race, the downhill jam, and the pool joust. Right away you're greeted at the skate shop by this Rodney Dangerfield looking dude who's got a Mohawk and a Marines tattoo. Alright? You're able to move this cursor around as he says different things and you get the vibe of this game right away with the super cheesy trapped in the 80s lingo. After that you're out to a menu screen where you can skate around at each event and immediately the controls are just strange. Intuitively you'd think you'd hold A or B to accelerate and steer with the D pad kind of like an erasing game right? Nah. In Skater Die you hold up to accelerate, down to slow down, hold right to spin clockwise and left to spin counterclockwise. It's weird to get used to, but I have to give the game credit for having a menu screen like this because it allows you to get used to it. The trouble with this though is that the controls vary between events. Each of the 5 minigames has its own feel to it and it can take a long time to get used to each. And that's where the game kind of falls apart because it's hard to justify putting the amount of time it takes to get good at any of these. The downhill race and the downhill jam are the two most similar and it's just so goofy. No, I mean literally one control mode is called goofy foot or you can flip to regular controls but it feels just as awkward. Then for the freestyle you hold A to accelerate here and do a button combination to pull off tricks. The high jump is about creating momentum and tapping the right direction on the d-pad. Make up your freaking mind game, jeez. Joust is at least similar to freestyle and high jump and it's probably the best game here. You do 5 passes avoiding getting hit and 5 passes to hit the computer opponent. Beyond that you get a practice mode that allows you to test out each event. And from there there's a leaderboard style multiplayer option where you can have up to 8 players compete for a high score for each minigame so that's pretty cool. However, there's no computer opponent scores here despite being pitted against an actual opponent to race against in the downhill jam for example. But yeah there's a lot of personality in Skater Die, the character animations are well done. I like the guy's disappointed dismissal when he gets a crappy score or falling down a manhole or jumping on the police car or falling in the lake. The music is also great throughout the game. Really there's a lot to like here, it's just the controls. It's annoying enough to have such an oddball way to go about things but it's really frustrating to have it constantly keep changing. Here's a sequel, Skater Die 2, the search for double trouble but that game is completely different and is more of an action side scroller. There's also Ski or Die but again that one would probably deserve its own video entirely. Anyway, yeah, a recommendation on Skater Die depends on how much patience you have since you have to learn practically 5 different ways to skate and none of them are easy. As much as I love the music and the little touches this game has I don't think I'll be playing Skater Die again for a while, it's too all over the place.