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> Results: Disney Extreme Skate
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Kids love skateboards. Kids love Disney. Kids love video games. Put them all together and you have a winning combination, especially when coming from Activision. Disney Extreme Skate Adventure for all three of the major home consoles is best described as a Tony Hawk Pro Skater game for kids. Incidentally, Activision publishes the popular Tonk Hawk games as well. Choose from 12 Disney characters (not all are available at first, youﾒll have to unlock them), and skate around ten areas based on Disney movies. The Disney characters you can play as come from the Toy Story, Lion King, and Tarzan movies. Thereﾒs Woody, Buzz Lightyear, lion cub Simba, Timon & Pumbaa, and young Tarzan, among others. Then you have them skate around a world from that characterﾒs respective movie. So donﾒt expect to be gallivanting around Pizza Planet as Rafiki the baboon. Toy Story worlds are for Toy Story characters only. Youﾒll scoot around giant winding Hot Wheels tracks in Andyﾒs Room, roll on jungle vines in Tarzanﾒs treehouse, and grind down ancient elephant bones in The Lion Kingﾒs elephant graveyard. You can talk to various other minor characters, both friends and villains, in the worlds. Each one has a goal for you to complete in a given time limit. Some of these goals include finding hidden letters to spell SKATE, performing certain tricks, or grinding on specific objects. Grinding means that you balance your skateboard on a narrow rail while moving. Other goals have you herd wildebeests to a watering hole or help the little green aliens from Toy Story find their frozen sleep chambers (cups of crushed flavored ice!). Completed goals unlock new characters, levels, and accessories for the create-a-skater mode. In create-a-skater mode, you can design your own kid skater and have them skate around a fictional city called Olliewood. It even has a McDonaldﾒs! Since this is a kidsﾒ game, you can make some pretty wacky skaters with the items you unlock. My skater looks like a giant troll with huge green paws and a sack over his head (with eyeholes), and an Activision shirt. You can also choose to skate as a member of the ﾓExtreme Skate Crew,ﾔ a group of real life boys and girls who auditioned for the opportunity to appear in the game in cartoon form.  Graphics are excellent and the character animations really bring out their personalities. Woody tips his hat, Buzz fiddles with his communicator, and young Tarzan pounds his chest after doing a really good stunt. All of the characters, even minor ones like Wheezy the squeak toy penguin and Zazu the hornbill are voiced by the original actors (or pretty darn good imitators), which adds to the authenticity of the Disney theme. You would think the background music would be theme songs from the different Disney movies, but like the Tony Hawk games, the music in Disney Skate features real world singers and bands. But all the songs in this game are stuff youﾒd find on Radio Disney. Play control is easy to learn. Press one button to speed up and jump, and the other buttons to perform tricks. Disney Extreme Skate Adventure is an all around great game for kids. Kid Factor: Best kids game Iﾒve played in a long time. Itﾒs got fun characters, cool worlds, plenty of things to see and do, and nothing is too frustrating challenge-wise. Younger players may need help with some of the tougher goals and tricks. Players fall off their skateboards, but since theyﾒre all cartoon characters nobody gets hurt or bloody like in real life. The music, being songs frequently played on Radio Disney, is all family friendly (albeit annoying after a while). Disney Extreme Skate Adventure is definitely a great and appropriate kid alternative to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater game series. Heck, even I liked it better. Who wouldnﾒt enjoy defeating Zurg as Buzz Lightyear on a skateboard?  Reviewer Recommended Ages: 6+ Genre: Sports Platform: (GameCube, PS2, Xbox) ESRB Rating: E for Everyone Publisher: Activision Developer: Toys For Bob 
Best kids game Iﾒve played in a long time. Itﾒs got fun characters, cool worlds, plenty of things to see and do, and nothing is too frustrating challenge-wise. Younger players may need help with some of the tougher goals and tricks. Players fall off their skateboards, but since theyﾒre all cartoon characters nobody gets hurt or bloody like in real life. The music, being songs frequently played on Radio Disney, is all family friendly (albeit annoying after a while). Disney Extreme Skate Adventure is definitely a great and appropriate kid alternative to the Tony Hawk Pro Skater game series. Heck, even I liked it better. Who wouldnﾒt enjoy defeating Zurg as Buzz Lightyear on a skateboard?
Kid Factor by Cary Woodham
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