Arcade Archives Sky Skipper

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-2 Alternating (Local)

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Review:

Sky Skipper is an Arcade-style game released in arcades in 1981, with a drastically different version releasing on Atari 2600 in 1983. Interestingly, due to poor reception in arcades, nearly all original arcade machines were converted into Popeye arcade units (yes, Nintendo made a Popeye game – Shigeru Miyamoto was involved in its design), and the only surviving original arcade unit of this game is in Nintendo of America’s archives, and Hamster was able to make use of it to produce this first-time home console port of the game. This lack of home ports over the years is apparently due to some sort of rights dispute with the game’s original creator.

Okay, so this is a game with an interesting history. The game itself is… well, unique, but unique doesn’t mean “good”. In Sky Skipper, players pilot a biplane dropping bombs onto gorillas who are apparently holding hostage… characters from the playing card-themed kingdom in Alice in Wonderland? Anyway, upon doing so, these characters can briefly hop out of their cages for you to rescue, and players must rescue all of them to beat the level.

The bomb trajectories here are difficult to get used to, but even once you do so, you have to deal with the sluggish speed of the apes, blocking off cages and pathways you need to take, forcing you to either circle around for a while as they sluggishly shift around, or perhaps just come back later and hope that things have changed. This all makes the game’s pacing drag and adds a lot of frustration.

Sky Skipper’s visuals use some pretty rough 2D pixel art, accompanied by chiptune sound design that are… sufficient, I guess, but it definitely looks like the game is being held together by chewing gum and duct tape, and this can interfere with the gameplay, such as your character randomly flashing for no reason making you think for a moment you might have gotten hit.

This release of the game also includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to make as many points as they can in one run. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes. In addition, this release of the game gives players a decent array of options, including various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

So, that just brings us to the final question… at $8, is this game worth it? And the answer is… not really? Yes, it’s a lost piece of Nintendo history and collectors will certainly want to pick it up. But for the average player, this simply isn’t some hidden masterpiece finally revealed. Rather, it is an okay but very dated and very flawed game that’s just not worth the asking price.

tl;dr – Sky Skipper is an Arcade-style game where players must rescue a kingdom’s inhabitants from apes using a biplane. This is a rare release of an early Nintendo game, and it has some unique ideas, but “rare” and “unique” don’t translate to “good”, and unless you’re a collector, you’ll want to skip this one.

Grade: D

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