BEST GAME EVER. The EA Skate franchise is considered to be the all time favored game amongst skateboarders today.  The 3 installments were not received as well by the general public. The game play and story lines were said to be slow moving and extremely difficult to maneuver.  The controls were designed to be so close to actual skating that the average gamer had a very hard time mastering the tricky balance and flick techniques it takes to complete even the simplest challenges. For your average skater these games were heaven. The game would transport you into a magical land in which all tricks were possible. Don't have the guts to kickflip backside tail slide a 25 stair handrail? No problem. Just pick up that controller and flick it into place and maybe even throw a 360 flip out. Why not?! The EA Skate franchise gave us the ability to visualize tricks in a way that was just not possible before. Of course, the Skate franchise was not the first skateboarding video game, we had the Tony Hawk series and a few other mild attempts. No discredit to Tony Hawk and what he and his game did for skateboarding as a whole, but the game was a fantasy land where 900's and 1080 backflip McTwists were possible off of 2nd story rooftops. Melon backflips to 500 yard nose grinds are fun for a bit, but can get very boring very fast.  When Skate came along it showed us a something different. It gave us a fantasy land where all tricks were possible, but it still made us work for those tricks. While learning to get a buttery kickflip in real life takes a bit longer than in the game, it still takes some practice to get it right in EA Skate. That is what we loved about it. Now we have the issues of new gaming systems coming to market without the ability to play older games. IT'S STILL A DISC!!! Get with it EA Sports, Sony, and Microsoft!! We are stuck having to hold on to older systems just to retain the ability to play our favorite games. Just hoping that the PS3 or Xbox 360 doesn't burn out. Not cool.  Now we have amazing systems that can link up in fractions of seconds with millions of people across the entire globe. Games can be played seamlessly by hundreds of people in hundreds of on-line rooms with hundreds of different games, but we can't get a new EA Skate? Come on guys. Hook us up!