"THPS3? Bah, these kids these days and their lousy games... Way back when, we had real skateboarding games, like Street Surfer... Now that was kewl, d00d... You bet these PS2-hugging kids these days wouldn't last a damn second in Street Surfer."
An odd little game for Commodore 64. Released in 1986 by Mastertronic. The game was developed at Sculptured Software by David Barbour. The music was done by David Whitakker.
Street Surfer's idea was pretty simple. You controlled a really kewl skater dude (shown from third-person perspective from behind) who was going along the highway (...not really Street Surfer, right?) with the Mission to Collect Some Empty Bottles people had carelessly thrown away. In addition to this, some very kind motorists hold full bottles of cola out of their cars for grabs - go ahead and drink! So, the game is consciously trying to tell you "hey, recycling is fun!" (a noble goal) and "Coca-Cola Is It!" (not really a noble goal. =) In the end of the level (easier said than done - you may get easier flattened by the cars), you throw the bottles to the basket of a recycling station and go on.
The thing that makes Street Surfer to irreversibly stick to the mind is the unusual schtick: The music. It's not that the music would be a particularly amazing technological feat or that Whitakker would be a True SID Virtuoso Worthy of Hubbard Himself™. The music is still okay and definitely pretty neat. However, what makes the music so unusual is the change in tempo. The tempo of music gets faster as you move faster with the skateboard! That was probably the greatest funbringer in this game. And, if you get hit by a car one too many times, the lone skateboard will go along the road with funeral music...
(There's one pretty nice remix of the game's music by someone called "Q" at remix.kwed.org, but that one doesn't get faster. Maybe that's because I don't move while I listen to it? Maybe I should, as an audiophile...Too much information.)
Okay, so maybe Skate or Die was better afterall, but this game is remembered =)