720 Degrees

What if *Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater* had come out on the Atari 2600? Atari’s *720 Degrees* is the answer. In this game, you play as a skater who has to tackle various skating sections in a race against the clock. I played this title on the Game Boy Color and honestly found it pretty impressive, considering the hardware limitations. That said, I definitely can’t say it’s one of the most fun or intuitive games out there. Basically, there are only two modes: **training** and **expert**. The training mode is extremely short, and you’re almost immediately thrown into expert mode, where you fight against the clock trying to earn as much money as possible, even though I’m not really sure why. I’m also not sure why I’m supposed to be racing against time in the first place—I’m a skater, I should be chilling, and yet apparently not. In fact, if the countdown reaches zero, you’re chased down by some kind of weird pixelated monstrosity that kills you, leaving you with fewer and fewer chances to come back. Basically, you move around the main hub, and in less than a minute you’re told to rush to a skate park by a heavily compressed pre-recorded voice yelling, “Skate or die!”, and you have to make it to one of the skating areas before time runs out. Each area features a different skating style, so there’s downhill, ramp skating, and slalom. Honestly, I didn’t try the other modes. In the main hub, you can also buy skate gear, although to be honest it didn’t seem to make any difference at all. The controls are both good and bad. Pressing **B** makes you push forward, while **A** lets you jump. The game also gives you the option to either move your character left and right with the directional pad, or move them directly in the direction of the arrows. In both cases, though, the controls are fairly difficult to manage because the character moves way too fast for a skater. Still, I find the whole concept really, really interesting—again, especially because this is a very old game.