Kingdom Hearts meets Tony Hawk

The good: You can do a mission for McDonald's.
There's a child Rastafarian hippie.
Good time capsule with the Nokia brick cellphones.
The soundtrack, while limited, actually has some bops on it.

A stripped down version of THPS 4 that takes place in a few Disney worlds, specifically Toy Story, Lion King, and Tarzan, with a hub world based on College. The level design's pretty whatever, not particularly fun but not excruciatingly bad. Tricks are incredibly limited, the goals are sort of in line with THPS 4 goals, but easier, and there's some that are locked behind playing specific characters which kind of sucks. Pretty forgettable experience, it exists if you're really itching for fresh THPS adjacent content.

THE MEME GAME TO END ALL MEME GAMES. this game has everything dumb that i enjoy in licensed video games. Licensed characters doing things they probably wouldn't in their worlds (we see woody shreddin andys room like nobodys business), outdated and blatant product placement (help the hip teens find their nokia ringtones!), all topped with the gigantic cherry on top which is the licensed soundtrack being disgustingly early 2000s pop music. We are talking like "DJ at an elementary school dance in 2003" energy. I can't hate it at all, in fact quite the opposite i actually can't get enough of this game. The gameplay borrows the engine and mechanics of the tony hawk pro skater games so it doesn't even play horribly and even runs at 720p on xbox! this game is based and i will hear nothing from the naysayers of the extreme skate adventure.

Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2022/10/27/disneys-extreme-skate-adventure-2003-gcn-ps2-xbox/

I imagine that not a lot of people have actually played this back when it was first released when they were the right age to play it when growing to have played in the first place. It doesn’t exactly have the most interesting of covers, with an awful looking cartoony character on the front surrounded by mediocre 3D renditions of Disney and Pixar characters, and from the look of both the front and back cover, it was pretty obvious that this was more of a tie-in for multiple popular Disney movies that had come out in the decade before this games release.

I’d be willing to bet that more people have probably heard about this game through the mod for PC version of Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 called T.H.U.G. PRO that takes all levels and characters from every other game that ran on the same game engine that came out on the sixth generation of consoles, which included Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure. Yep, this runs on that same engine as those sixth gen Tony Hawk games, but more about that later.

There is no plot to Skate Adventure, nor is there even an attempt at one. Since the game entirely exists to promote multiple Disney and Pixar movies as easily as possible, along with the product placement that they could shove into the game, as it just gives you a choice between several characters from three different Disney and Pixar characters and lets you ride around in three locations from the movie that they’re from.

These movies include Toy Story 1 and 2, Tarzan, and The Lion King. Why these three movies? I guess it was a mix of their popularity and that they were the easiest films to make a level based on. I have no idea is Disney or Pixar made any demands other than “get a game onto store shelves”, but this reeks of both studios not caring. The characters that are unlocked right from the start are Woody and Buzz from Toy Story, Young Tarzan and Young Terk from Tarzan, and Rafiki and Young Simba from the Lion King.

Unlockable characters include Jessie and Zurg from Toy Story 2, Young Tantor and Young Jane from Tarzan, despite the fact that Jane only ever appeared as an adult in the Tarzan film, but whatever, and Young Nala along with Timon and Pumbaa from The Lion King, with Timon and Pumbaa skating together on the same skateboard.

Locations from said movies include Pizza Planet, Andy’s Bedroom, and Zurg’s planet of Xrghthung from Toy Story 1 and 2, Tarzan’s Treehouse, The Human Camp, and Clayton’s Ship from Tarzan, and Pride Rock, The Elephant Graveyard, and Scar’s Canyon from The Lion King. The game does try to make each location visually distinct enough from every other level and it works well enough, and it’s a decent enough selection.

Although you can only play level only with the character from the movie that the levels is based on, so no Woody skating around Pride Rock or the jungle or Turk skating around any of the Toy Story levels. It’s a tad disappointing, but what are you going to do.

As I mentioned earlier, this game runs specifically on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 engine, which actually fits with this game way more than it did with THPS 4. Tony Hawk 4 was more focused on giving the player goals than letting you just skate each level with a time limit, which works perfectly for a game like this, as having Disney and Pixar characters tell you want to do is pretty good motivation for a kid who loves those films

The Little Green Men from Toy Story do everything in the name of The Claw and Sarge from the green army men tests you on your abilities, like getting a high score or knowing how to perform a certain trick, or the Gorillas from Tarzan get you to mess up the human’s camp along with the Elephants getting help from you as their friend, or the trio of hyenas from The Lion King making bets with you or Zazu getting you to do jobs that help train you to become king, just to name a few.

Aside from the regular goals that are accessible by all characters, the game also has a few goals which are exclusive to certain characters based on plot points from the films that they’re from, such as having to defeat Zurg as Buzz Lightyear.

The least interesting goals are collecting the 25 tokens throughout a level along with one special collectable, which you have to do for every single character for every single level that they access to. It’s especially tedious and obnoxious on the confusing Elephant Graveyard level and the area in the Human Camp from Tarzan where you have to grind on some vines. It makes the game quickly go from kinda fun to tedious busywork.

Aside from the characters from the Disney and Pixar characters, there are 10 real kids that are playable known as “The Extreme Skate Crew”, and that’s because during the development of this game, Activision decided to do a nationwide casting call search in the US as a promotional tool for this game to put 10 lucky kids into this game. Kids could either show up and skate live or send in footage into the company. You can briefly see footage of the competitions in the opening credits along with a bigger montage of footage in one of the unlockable videos. The top two kids ended up being highlighted on the cover for the game and the ones who were featured the most in the game.

These kids can not only skate in Olliewood, but skate in any of the levels based on the previously mentioned movies, being able to do a few of their own goals exclusive to the level, which are just finding Olliewood tokens and the Disney Extreme Skate Adventure logo.

The game might not be technically impressive, but it does run constantly at a solid 60 FPS, and it uses the art style of multiple Disney movies from the 90s along with the Toy Story films, even if characters faces can dip into the uncanny valley, which has helped it age better than some games from the same console generation. And the lighting in a lot of areas looks good, even if some of the areas are a bit too dark, like the Elephant’s Graveyard.

The controls are pretty much the same as THPS 4 except for one difference. There is both a set of “Basic” controls aimed at children to go along with the “Pro” controls that are just from THPS 4. The “Basic” controls seem to be context based and yet they never seem to work as intended, with tricks seemingly happening when the game feels like letting them happening. Manuals would always just happen and took me by surprise every time. I don’t see how kids could learn to play the game when every time you want to do something and the game just does it with little input. I think kids could put on the “Pro” controls and use them in the more simple levels in Skate Adventure and be fine.

There’s even a split-screen multiplayer if you want to play with your friends. There is no online play for any version of this game or a system link with other consoles, which is probably for the best as I don’t see multiple kids being able to have their own consoles, or their parents allowing them to use the internet like that in 2003.

Each level plays pretty well for the most part, doing a decent enough job of adapting the locations of the movie to work in a video game like this, and I had no real problem with any of them except for one, and that was the Elephant’s Graveyard, which was a little too confusing to navigate, with tunnel entrances feeling like they go to random locations and what feels like areas just randomly shoved wherever. I did learn a large chunk of it through memorization, but if I’m having trouble learning it as an adult, I think kids might have a worse time depending on the kid. Plus some parts of the level could easily be too dark if you’re playing on the intended hardware, and was easily fixed by playing through emulation.

I’ve also noticed that the levels based around humans are a little easier to navigate than the ones centered around animals.

However, there is one brand new location that takes place in the “real world” called Olliewood, although it’s pretty much a cartoony version of the real world, and it features it’s own unique characters for this games, and goals centered around the characters one basic characteristic, like one character being a captain of a boat or a character who is conscientious of the environment.

But these characters are pretty obviously here to advertise to the kids playing these games since they can’t shove the advertising in the levels based on the films. Like how one goal has you delivering McDonald’s menu items to each of the four characters, or how you have to deliver Nokia ringtones to them since this was at a time where phones didn’t have access to the internet and you had to pay for a ringtone since you couldn’t just use whatever songs you had on your phone because the internal storage was tiny and the thing could only play midi files.

Along with the two kid skaters who won the competition, you can unlock Lil’ Romeo, the artist for one of the songs on the soundtrack. Although I have no idea who would be excited for him to even appear on the soundtrack, let along as an unlockable character, even at the time when this game came out. Even the characters made up for this game were more memorable than this real person.

Every time you complete a goal you unlock something. The unlockables range from a piece of clothing or new design for you skateboard for your user created skateboarder or a new skate trick for whatever character you happen to be playing at that time, or some sort or video, mostly music videos of the songs from the soundtrack or clips and trailers of the movies that this game features, you’re always unlocking something. It always feels like you’re making progress, as trivial as that progress might be, so you’ll always have something new to look at or use.

There are even videos to unlock when you clear all of the goals in every level for all of the skaters that have access to that level. These unlockable videos include music videos of some of the songs featured on the soundtrack of this game, a video focusing on the skate competition to get featured in the game that’s pretty much just a montage, and clips from the movies that this game has taken characters from, but they are all edited to the songs from the soundtrack of this game and all come across like AMVs from 2006 – 2009 YouTube.

This soundtrack is so 2003. I don’t know if it’s the most 2003 soundtrack, but you’re not mistaking it for anything other than something that obviously came from the early 2000s. Some songs make sense for the soundtrack like “Grown Up” by Simple Plan, but other songs don’t really fit. Were kids allowed to listen to “Where’s Your Head At?” by Basement Jaxx? It technically doesn’t have anything on the soundtrack that a kid couldn’t listen to, but I wouldn’t say the song is for kids. And this game was released at a time when music videos were still aired on TV, and the music video isn’t something aimed at kids either. It also doesn’t really belong on the same soundtrack as “Live in Stereo” by Newsboys, which is on this soundtrack for some reason.

And if you get the Xbox version, it even lets you use your own music that were ripped onto the hard drive. So you could easily play the soundtracks of the movies that were featured in this game, or maybe some better annoyingly catchy 2000s pop music, like the soundtracks to the English dubs of “Pokemon: The First Movie” or “Digimon: The Movie”. At least those were trying to capitalize on what was popular instead of trying to sell you on a soundtrack.

The best songs on the soundtrack by far, and by best I mean the only good ones, are “Pacific Coast Party” by Smash Mouth along with “Sell Out” by Reel Big Fish. Whoever put “Sell Out” on the soundtrack knew exactly what they were doing considering that this whole game is not only trying to tell kids on Disney products but has advertising for McDonald’s burgers and Nokia phones too.

Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure is mostly harmless, even if it’s entire existence is purely to advertise movies, fast food products, and now incredibly outdated phones to children. It’s competent enough, though that’s because of the engine it’s on, not because of the game itself. I doubt any kid these days is going to want this outside of whatever popular thing is going on, unless they just so happen to really love older Disney and Pixar films.

But there’s just one last thing. Have you found all of the secret Mickeys in this game?

Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure is a lot more unhinged in theory compared to other traditional sports, and I'm glad Disney themselves tried out a concept like this.

The result is a game that's loads of fun. It's very Tony Hawk-inspired, and rightfully so, as that game series unanimously defined the genre as a whole. The stages are locales from the movies with themed objects all turned into half-pipes and guardrails. Meanwhile, the skaters themselves trade in ordinary skateboards for more fitting contraptions, like Tarzan's wooden plank or Buzz' rocket pad.

It's obvious the developers put a lot of love and care, and the effort shows. Instead of just a skating game with a haphazard Disney label, it's fortunately a skating game that comes in a full-on Disney flavor.

it's thps4 with a disney coat of paint; it's serviceable and fine for the most part. the playlist sucks and is way too short but it's a kid's game so it's a little understandable that they cheaped out on it. some of the levels are ass to navigate (graveyard and the jungle portion of human camp) but the rest are good. it's a decent timekiller if you're just looking for something to dick around in and you're already familiar with thps. it's somewhat shameless in how little it brings to the table mechanically but i do get the vibe that the people who worked on this game did care and had some amount of passion for both the disney IPs and skateboarding games in general.

best song on the playlist is "sell out" by reel big fish, do not FUCK with me on this

Disney characters and skateboarding sounds like one of the oddest combinations possible. Could you actually imagine Simba from the Lion King riding about on a skateboard and pulling off sick tricks?

Well somebody at Toys for Bob must have done that because here we are with Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure, a truly oddball skateboarding game which not only uses the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 engine but manages to cram three Disney franchises (Lion King, Toy Story and Tarzan) as well.

And yet, it somehow works with the incredibly fun levels (from the Elephant Graveyard to Clayton's Ship) and characters on offer. You can even make your own kid skater and revel in the glorious product placement going on in their world from sending Nokia ringtones to (and I kid you not) doing a McDonald's delivery because everyone is too lazy to get their food themselves.

Ooh, those lazy arseholes.

Kinda sucks the Disney crew are relegated to their own levels though. Would have been cool to have had Woody messing around in the Lion King levels or Timon and Pumbaa making a visit to the Toy Story world.

And the music selection's not bad with some solid tunes but it can get really repetitive after a while with only about 10 or so in the game.

Still though I did manage to have plenty of fun with this title and that's what matters the most. I could definitely see the little tykes enjoying this as their introduction to the world of skateboarding.

So well done Woody and friends, you've somehow managed to do the whole Disney skateboarding schtick better than how Mickey and pals fared over on GameCube.