The Ones: Street Sk8er (PlayStation, 1999)

In the late 1990s, despite the height of the Mall Era being over, mall arcades were still very much a thing. As a mid-20s adult with a full time job, I was no longer constrained by lack of money– so I could easily drop a $20 bill into a changer and play some arcade games when time allowed. The one I frequented in Holyoke, MA had several games that I kept coming back to in 1997, like Midway’s NFL Blitz and SEGA’s Top Skater.

Top Skater is unique in that it uses a skateboard deck as the controller, so 25 year-old me would play it and have delusions of being a “skateboarder” while pulling crazy air tricks and listening to Pennywise tracks. I dumped TONS of tokens into this machine wherever I found it, whether it was at the mall arcade, a laser tag location nearby, or even at seasonal fairs in makeshift arcades. The game never had a home port, and that makes sense given the special controller.

But we did get something close in early 1999, and that’s Street Sk8er… a game that I’ve been coming back to time and again for more than a quarter of a century.

When the game came out, I was working at a FuncoLand store as an Assistant Manager. The holiday rush was over and store traffic was back to being slow during the day. When Street Sk8er came in, I unsealed a copy for demo purposes and popped the disc into a demo station. It only took about 10 minutes for me to decide to buy that copy at the end of my shift.

Street Sk8er takes some inspiration from Top Skater. Skaters navigate set courses, sometimes with minor path branches, and pull off tricks when launching off of half pipes or ramps. Street Sk8er allows for a wider variety of tricks through the use of different D-Pad inputs when jumping and bases the trick off of the skater’s stats and speed. Higher-level skaters can execute higher-level tricks, up to Level 8, which can lead to huge scores… but the timing of the launch or jump needs to be good so that there’s enough speed to execute the trick. There’s also some grind options here, but these are inconsistent and often aren’t worth the risk of a bail (or fall), which can mean lost points.

Points are everything in Street Sk8er. It’s a score attack game, and each course has a score that players need to meet or exceed in order to open the next and earn various rewards. These score quotas can be challenging to hit early on, as skaters are fresh and their stats are low… so trick points are lower. In fact, playing the game for the first time can be a bit frustrating as final scores too often seem to be just missing the target forcing another run. That said, most players will learn the best scoring lines and how to vary tricks for higher scores. The frustration doesn’t last long.

The bigger problem with the game is that it’s short. Very short. It can be beaten with one skater in about an hour. Additional skaters can be unlocked, and players are meant to replay the game to see everything… but that kind of arcade-style design isn’t for everyone. Some will also argue that the game doesn’t really look all that good, or that the trick system is shallow and even a bit too simple. While these criticisms don’t bother me, personally, I get why Street Sk8er is generally overlooked or forgotten.

One aspect of the game that’s memorable to me is the licensed soundtrack. This was my first exposure to many of the bands who have songs on it, like Less Than Jake. Like some other PlayStation discs, you can pop Street Sk8er into a CD player and listen to the music outside of the game. (Tokyo Highway Battle is another game that I used to do this for.) Much like how the soundtrack within Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, which came out about six months after, the music here absolutely enhances the atmosphere and adds to the overall experience. We’ve seen licensed music tracks play big roles in other games, like it did in Top Skater and a later coin-op hit, Crazy Taxi. There was a time when it seemed like every video game licensed Rob Zombie’s Dragula, too. What’s here in Street Sk8er, at least to me, works really well.

Street Sk8er for me, in 2026, is a “comfort food” game. Kind of like macaroni and cheese, it’s not the best (or best for you), but it sure makes me feel good when I play it and can perk me up when real life is kicking my butt. It’s the game’s arcade-style approach. It’s the similarity to Top Skater and the memories that brings forward. It’s remembering life back then, working in a video game store and living a pretty good life. It’s another example of how the original PlayStation was– and still is– such a cool console to me.

And, hey– if I feel compelled to get in front of the camera and talk about Street Sk8er for a few minutes, that means that it’s pretty special. It’s one of The Ones for me.