Skate or Die! is a skateboarding game released by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1987 for the Commodore 64. It is EA's first internally developed game. Ports for the Apple II, MS-DOS, Amstrad CPC, and ZX Spectrum were released the following years. It was ported to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) by Konami, published under the company's Ultra Games branding. Gameplay In the style of the Epyx Games series, players can compete in five different skateboarding events, either individually or sequentially. When the events are challenged sequentially, up to eight players could sign up to participate. The game featured two half-pipe events - the freestyle ramp and the high jump, two downhill events - the downhill race (in a park setting) and the downhill jam (in a street setting), and the pool joust. The pool joust, downhill jam, and the downhill race (in two player mode only) were all head to head, while the ramp events were single player. Except for the joust, which was a hand-to-hand knockout competition (literally and figuratively), all the event winners were decided by a point system. Four characters were featured in Skate or Die!: Rodney Recloose, a wild man with a purple mohawk and a Marine Corps tattoo (and a facial resemblance to comedian Rodney Dangerfield) who runs a skateshop in the game, and his son Bionic Lester, an even wilder kid with a green flattop, who the player character was able to take on in the joust and the downhill jam. In the joust, Lester and his two cronies await the skater. Poseur Pete challenges beginners and Aggro Eddie takes on intermediate players, leaving Lester with the advanced pros. Development Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins was looking for a way to capitalize off of the success of the Epyx sports games, but at the time, only being a publishing/distributing company, there was little he could do. He decided to hire programmers to make a game that would cash in on this success. Right around the same time, several Epyx programmers and graphic artists quit over Epyx' decision to bring Atari Corporation in to market and manufacture their console project (later known as the Atari Lynx). Trip Hawkins found out about these programmers leaving Epyx and reached out to hire these programmers for the purpose of producing a sports series of games. The idea for a skateboarding style game came from Producer Don Traeger, who