It's the game everyone's talking about! Just try and navigate TikTok without being inundated with Street Skater 2 clips.

This is such a weird, scruffy little project. Micro Cabin are a studio you won't have heard of unless you swim in the very, very deep end. Most prolific during the MSX era, they appear to have toughed out the nineties as a porting studio, and their biggest projects are things like the 3DO versions of Myst and Bust-A-Move, and the Saturn version of Tunnel B1. Co-developers, Atelier Double, are a company I'd never heard of, and they mainly seem to be a support studio, with credits on Umihara Kawase, Boku no Natsuyasumi and Game Boy spin-offs of games like Quest 64 and Lufia. Though they're not credited on the box, they appear to be the driving force behind Street Skater, with a host of c-tier skateboarding and snowboarding games under their belt. These are the people behind Zap! Snowboarding Trix, Snowboard Racer 2 and Disney Sports Skateboarding. A weird transition, and one that appears to have killed the studio, as they closed in 2004.

Anyway. I have a soft spot for Street Skater 2. Japan never really seemed to catch on to skateboarding games, and there isn't a lot of space in the culture for the sport to thrive over there. The unwarranted success of the Cool Boarders series was responsible for many crimes. Street Skater takes much more of an arcade-style approach than THPS, with you keeping an eye on the time as you attempt to rack up as many points as you can between checkpoints. It has its own internal logic behind trick execution and point distribution, and it doesn't feel very technical or satisfying, but there's still fun here, albeit quite superficial.

The trick system in Street Skater 2 doesn't bare much resemblance to THPS or any of the games it inspired. You're more rewarded for performing simple tricks across different stretches of the course than complex ones in a single spot. This results in amusing moments like pulling off a fingerflip 900 and hearing the Crazy Taxi-style commentator bluntly stating "your family should disown you". The game defaults to an "Automatic" trick system, and there's little rhyme or reason to what you end up pulling off in this mode. You launch off a ramp and the game determines whatever trick it thinks you ought to pull off, given your speed. It doesn't matter if you land mid-trick, even if you're not even on your skateboard at the time. The only way to wipe out is by bumping into a wall at speed. You'll land everything else. There's also a "manual" mode, which appears to have been patched in to satisfy THPS fans, but it's not very well incorporated, and just makes score-chasing more frustrating.

The soundtrack is quite insufferable, featuring Deftones, Static-X and multiple tracks from "Shootyz Groove". There's also a Del The Funky Homosapien song here, and given that the game allows you to pick a track before starting each level, I relied on it many times in my playthrough.

Street Skater 2 isn't very good, and you shouldn't put a lot of effort into picking up a copy. It is, however, frequently very cheap, and it's enjoyable enough. If you're diving into sub-£5 second-hand PS1 games, you're hoping for a small mercy like a Street Skater 2. It's very dumb and forgettable, but it retains a bit of charm, and serves as one of the more playable 90s Japanese extreme sports games. It's over in an hour, and you may be glad to find something so modestly-designed and quirky to sink those minutes into. I just can't bring myself to talk too negatively about it.