Skateboard Games

There are times when you can’t get out and skate. Sometimes the problem is a raging downpour or a four-day blizzard. Sometimes a cold or flu is keeping you homebound, or a broken limb from your most recent attempt at the “Leap of Faith”. Sometimes you’re just grounded.

Being stuck at home rather than at the skate park doesn’t have to stop you from skating. From flash games to X-box skateboard games, virtually every video game format offers a variety of intricate electronic versions to challenge your reflexes and wear calluses on your thumbs.

Flash games are the latest rage for a few reasons. They can be enjoyed on any device with internet acces, so you don’t need to buy a special player. They are usually free to play, so you don’t have to break into your new skateboard fund. And finally they offer a level of interactivity not seen in other formats. Shockwave Flash is evolving with every update from Adobe Macromedia, so you can be sure that the technology will be moving as fast as the pavement beneath your (virtual) wheels.

Be sure to have all other applications and windows closed before playing Flash Skateboard Games. Here are a few of the best Flash-based Skateboard games we’ve found:

Thrash n’ Burn Skateboarding: From Splash Wave. This game takes a minute to load, due to the ads and high-quality graphics, but it’s well worth the wait. The controls are simple, making use of arrow keys and the space bar for basic movement, with tricks being accomplished with arrows in conjunction with the C, B, and V keys. The game lets you select the gender, clothes, race, and style of your skater, giving you choices between conventional and superhero avatars.

You also get to choose from among board styles. A few of the designs are a little cheesy and would be better suited for a baby’s bedroom. Fortunately there are a few hardcore designs as well.

You’ll want to practice first in freestyle mode before tackling the course, taking a moment to get used to the keyboard commands and how they respond to your pressure and connection speed.

G-Max Skateboard: This one gives you seven board style choices, much better than the design on Thrash ‘n Burn. Another bonus is that each design page shows the individual concave, weight, speed, flex, turning and size specifications for each skateboard.

The advantages end there, however. This one doesn’t include any avatar options, and the play course is a simple half pipe that gets old really fast, although there are three options for location. The “How to Play” link wasn’t working, and the game is also annoyingly slow because of a pop-under which appears at some points. Take a couple extra shots of spam repellent when playing this one.

EnviroBoarder: from Clever Media. This skateboard game is a little corny but strangely addictive. The graphics are pretty old school and you only get one avatar option, a rather dopey looking blonde skater boy, but you’ll find yourself jammin’ to the soundtrack. The point of this skateboard game is to skate around the city picking up cans, newspapers and bottles off the ground and dropping them in the recycling bins that you pass periodically. You can go into the street and even jump over oncoming traffic, just don’t hit the girl on the bike or get run over.

Satori Skateboards

The Satori Movement is more than just a company which manufactures skateboards. The founders built vehicles to move not only the body, but also the soul. They have created a brand which is the favorite of astrally-minded skaters, and a force for conscious change in the world as a whole.

Satori is a Zen Buddhist term meaning realization, enlightenment, sudden awakening, or to be at one. The word is associated with beat culture and evokes images of swamis achieving Nirvana while contorting their bodies into impossible configurations. The skateboard manufacturer of the same name has made a unique contribution to the culture as well as to the hardware of skating.

Unlike other companies who strive to maintain a clean image and appeal to the mainstream side of skating, Satori openly embraces a psychedelic, herb-friendly approach to the lifestyle. While not endorsing dangerous and destructive habits, the logo has become a symbol of the liberated “neo-hippie” skater, who rides the board though the narrow confines and unexpected bends of the path to enlightenment.

Satori Movement Skateboards is a grass-roots company based in Arcata, California. The city is a haven for new-age thought and home to a different breed of skateboarder. Satori borrows from traditions as diverse as India and the Caribbean.

The company and its icons rely heavily on an awakening group of skaters who identify their quest for the perfect ollie with the transcendent journey of the soul. These are the skaters who define the sport as a spiritual activity, relating it to Yoga; uniting the mind, body and spirit. The now infamous company logo is written in a font which imitates the look of Sanskrit while reflecting the red, gold and green of the Rastafarian Lion of the Judah flag.

Satori Skateboards presents their philosophy while showing off their talented skate team in the full-length movie, Satori Movement: In Search of Roots and Culture. Set to a rocking Reggae soundtrack, this high-quality video features Satori team skaters Brent Atchley, Aaron Suski, Jake Rupp, and Matt Pailes.

Satori regularly brings their team to local skate parks around the world for interviews and performances. After performing on the island of Jamaica in 2001, Satori Skateboards opened up the Jamaican Skate park Fund, in association with several non-profit organizations, which is dedicated to building the first free public skateboard park in Jamaica.

In accordance with the values of the company’s founders, the Satori Movement now offers clothing made from blends of organic and recycled hemp as part of their commitment to conscious living and a sustainable, ecological lifestyle. Yoga pants and mats are also featured in the catalog, which expands the scope of Satori’s mission beyond the skateboard itself.

Satori is the skateboard of choice at jam-band festivals and around the natural food store. Being featured in Heads Magazine’s Surf and Skate issue brought the label into the limelight for the many open minded skateboard devotees who share Satori’s enthusiasm for the ineffable glory of skating.

Candy Stores for Hardcores

When not at the skate park, the local skater communities tend to congregate around the local premium skateboard shops, where every conceivable type of gear for board and body can be compared and purchased at a premium price.

Many shops practice crossover with other board-oriented extreme sports, stocking equipment for similar forms of recreation like surfing, snowboarding, water sport,s dirt biking, and roller blading. But for the serious skater, none of these variety stores can match the selection and staff of a dedicated skateboard shop.

While general sporting goods might have a rack of boards and a shelf of shoes next to the T-shirts and hoodies, they aren’t likely to be able to help with customization. The boards will be commercial models, which are sold as complete sets without options. The staff will probably lack knowledge about such subtleties as the different needs of street and vert skaters. While the prices will be lower, the quality will be too. Unless you’ve already decided on your board and see it on the shelf for a bargain, skip the “all-purpose” store and focus on skateboard shops where they speak your language.

Plenty of skateboard shops sponsor their own teams that compete in big skate matches. Skate team Zephyr, named after Zephyr Surfboard Productions Shop, were the first sponsored skate team to achieve widespread fame, and brought quite a bit of recognition to their benefactor.

Skate shops have a reputation for being active in the general community as well. PUSH Skateshop, for example, has become a creative hub in North Carolina. Beyond selling a carefully selected array of the highest quality skateboard parts and supplies, PUSH sponsors their own award-winning skate team as well as up-and-coming artists, providing a venue for the creation and distribution of rising stars in the iconic contemporary art world.

Because the skateboarding community is still skating by on the fringe of acceptable society, skateboard shops also function as critical hubs of activity for those who don’t fit in so well at the coffee shop or the library.

Cal Skate Skateboards, one of the oldest and certainly the largest skate shop on the north coast, also runs Zeitgeist Art Gallery and helps to maintain a number of local skate parks. Cal Skate produces its own line of political as well as more abstract artistic skateboard decks, providing local artists with an opportunity to get their art flying all around town under the feet of countless skaters.

Skates on Haight, now known as SkateboardSF, has been doing a lot for the skater image since they opened their first store, called Skateboard City, on world-famous Haight Street in 1974. They’ve changed their name a few times, but are still located in the heart of skater country, hilly San Francisco, and stick to their same old-school ideals.