The Simpsons Skateboarding is a skateboarding video game based on the animated sitcom, The Simpsons that was released for the PlayStation 2 in North America on November 13, 2002. The game was developed by The Code Monkeys and published by Fox Interactive and Electronic Arts. The story and dialogue were crafted by writers from the show, with all character voices supplied by the actual cast.
In the game, Springfield has been converted into a skate park for the Annual Skate Tour, full with skate-able objects and landmarks from the television series. Players are able to choose one of the nine characters available to compete for the grand prize. All of the characters' voices were recorded by the actual voice actors from The Simpsons.
Each character has over forty unique moves. Players can test their skills in either a two-player head-to-head skate off or in one of the fast and furious modes: Freeskate, Skate Fest, Trick Contest, and a game of skateboard H-O-R-S-E. Players can unlock additional characters, locations, and skateboards and can also choose to learn all the skateboard moves and tricks before they begin the actual game in the Skillz School mode.
The Simpsons Skateboarding contains the following tropes:
- Acrofatic: Homer and Chief Wiggum are both overweight, yet neither of them have any trouble skateboarding.
- Amusement Park of Doom: Itchy + Scratchy Land is just as dangerous as it was in the show, with giant axes and acid pits making up different portions of the area.
- Artifact Title: Skillz School's name makes sense for the first few levels (which revolve around teaching the player various abilities and techniques), but becomes a Non-Indicative Name in the later levels (which don't teach the player anything new and instead revolve around combo challenges).
- And Your Reward Is Clothes:
- Each character has an alternate costume obtainable by beating the game with them: Homer wears his underwear, Bart and Lisa wear baggy skater outfits, Marge becomes a grey demon, Nelson wears a ballerina outfit, Otto wears a black suit, Professor Frink wears a multi-colored skating outfit, Krusty wears a business suit and Chief Wiggum wears a prison uniform.
- Each character (barring Chief Wiggum, who gets cheats instead) has ten different board skins obtainable by finding all the collectables in a level.
- Cap: Reaching 60 tricks in a single combo causes the game to reset the counter and doubles the points earned from that combo.
- Collection Sidequest: Every level has four sets of collectables: five "easy", three "medium", two "hard" and one board skin. The collectables vary in appearance depending on the character, and Chief Wiggum gets cheats instead of board skins.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: For some reason, the Skate Fest and two-player variants of the Springfield Gorge contain colorful rails that give the skater a tint of that color when grinding on them.
- Construction Zone Calamity: The fourth map takes place in a construction site consisting of half-finished buildings, monorail tracks and an army surplus store with tanks.
- Crunchtastic: Completing a letter challenge by spelling out a word results in the game congratulating you by saying "Well done - You are [word]tastic". This results in strange words like SKINNERtastic and EXCELLENTtastic.
- Double Unlock: Unlocking board skins requires completing two tasks: completing a secondary mission to unlock the secret area to skate in and collecting all of a character's collectables in a level (which will then spawn a board in the secret area). After completing both tasks, you then have to find and collect the board skin in the secret area to unlock it for your character.
- Fake Difficulty: The game's main source of difficulty comes from the extremely clunky controls and poor object placement, making it very difficult to get between areas without bumping into walls or tripping over rails.
- First Town: Springfield Elementary is the first level, and it's a comparatively basic, open town world with no real obstacles and easy objectives.
- Guide Dang It!: The game has a nasty habit of expecting you to perform tricks without actually telling you how to perform them. For example, one of the Skillz School challenges in Mr. Burns' Mansion requires you to perform both a front flip and a back flip and lists the buttons required to do so, but not that you have to hold the required button before jumping to perform them.
- Hollywood Acid: The Acid Bath section of Itchy and Scratchy Land is a mini-skate park over a pool of green liquid. Falling into this counts as a regular bail.
- Missing Secret: The game displays a message stating that "You are on your way to unlocking a secret character" every time you unlock one of the Secret Characters. However, it also states this message once you unlock Chief Wiggum, implying there are more characters to unlock even though he's the last unlockable character.
- Secret Character: Otto, Nelson, Professor Frink, Krusty and Chief Wiggum are unlocked by beating certain scores in the Skate Fest mode.
- Xtreme Kool Letterz: Skillz School is spelt with a Z replacing the second S in "Skills".
