It’s another day at the wonderful office, tidying up papers stacked up as high as buildings and seeing more names than an aspiring mother, shit’s great alright. All I want to do is skate, but not in real life, no no no, and I’m not talking about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. I’m talking about Electronic Arts Blackwood Studio’s newest skating experience available for the Xbox 360 and PS3 simply called “Skate.” One of the most anticipated titled to come out this year in September on my list this game has definitely wowed me over the past couple months.

First of all the game houses an enormous and vast city comparable to the size of Vice City of GTA fame, and combines all the great skating elements of three major cities: San Francisco, Barceleona, and Vancouver. Entitled nicely enough, San Vanelona, this city is open to you mostly all from the start and is breathing with traffic, pedestrians, and yes even security guards. It’s a built to be a skating mecca with various areas which all have their ups and downs and style prefrences. If you wanna bomb some hills, then you can hit up the hills similiar to hills in San Francisco outside of the main city or if you want to take some time to practice you can skate on down to the community center to get down the basics.

The most amazing part of this game is its innovative control scheme which takes full use of the two analog sticks, kind of like in Fight Night Round 3 if you have ever played that game. Simply put, your left stick controls your body and turning while your right stick controls your feet and board movement at all times. If you want to crack an ollie you simply hold down the right stick to begin crouching then you flick it up and watch your character soar in the air. This game certainly has it all, with a create-a-skater feature which is expected to be extremely deep, tons of sponsored pros who are passionate about skating, a film reel mode and feature which allows you to capture footage and make skate parts editing all the angles and timing, and a fantastic online mode in wh, that’s what this game is about.

This simply is going to be the most organic skateboarding experience ever seen in a video game and it is about time. With a demo dropping on August 15 on the Xbox Live Marketplace (sorry PS3 users, no demo yet because of the damn strict and not as easy approving process at Sony) and the official full game dropping sometime on September 12 for Xbox 360, if you care about skateboarding and you butt hurts after a long hard day of shredding, then come home, sit on a nice comfy chair and skate in EA’s dream world without ever worrying about your butt again. This has been one of the most anticipated games for me ever since I began to see its beautiful progression and improvement after its early stages.

In the 1990s the arcade was the place to be to get the most amazing and innovative gaming experiences. While home consoles were just starting to see the light of day during this time, arcades still provided the most flare. While many other games like Mortal Kombat and X-Men: The Arcade Game were impressive, a game called "Lucky & Wild" struck my attention more than all the others. It was a game which seemed to bare a resemblance to the television series "Starsky & Hutch." But more importantly the 1993 Namco released game was set up like a car with two seats, a steering wheel, and a pedal (one person drove the car) and also two pistols (one for each player). The set up alone made me want to play the game right away. So I strapped in, pumped the last of my quarters in and set off. I was amazed, even to this day.

I think about how remarkable the game actually was. Video games in today's world aren't like this anymore. Games with blazingly fast car chases with shootouts and incredible boss battles with a huge 18-wheeler with baddies throwing hand grenades at your car. Lucky & Wild is simply a game in which whenever I come across one, I always feel a need to play it. It's one of those few games that you can play and feel completely like a kid again. The coolest part about the game was when you successfully completed a mission and defeated the boss at the end of the stage, you were shown a scene where Lucky & Wild are in a bar and get rewarded with kisses by babes and your points would go up. That was probably the most badass and radical thing I'd had ever seen in my life up to that point, so you can feel the excitement.

Throughout my travels as a young lad, I would come across this arcade cabinet every once and a while and wonder if people still love it as much as do. I even remember the one time my Dad and I decided we were going to beat it and we got a ton of tokens and dominated it with only a few tokens to spare. I think it would do really well with the angered business man, who just got out of his nine to five job and wants to blast some baddies and chase national criminals through his alternate ego..Lucky & Wild. This is only one of those games you can describe only so far until you can only experience the rest by playing it. So what are you waiting for? Go search high and far before you let this arcade gem slip away from your hands and feet.