| Sky Skipper | |
|---|---|
 Japanese arcade flyer | |
| Developers | |
| Publishers | Nintendo Parker Brothers (2600) |
| Designers | Genyo Takeda Shigeru Miyamoto |
| Platforms | Arcade,Atari 2600 |
| Release | Arcade 2600
|
| Genre | Action |
| Modes | Single-player,multiplayer |
Sky Skipper[a] is a 1981actionvideo game developed and published byNintendo forarcades. The player pilots a biplane and must save animals and a royal family from gorillas holding them captured. This is done by dropping bombs on the gorillas to knock them out and unlock the cages, then diving down towards the cages to pick up the freed characters before the gorillas lock the cages again.
The game was poorly received in location testing and was never widely released; despite this, anAtari 2600 port was released byParker Brothers in 1983 in North America. The cabinets were converted intoPopeye machines for release the following year. Nintendo of America stored one cabinet in its archives which is now the only knownSky Skipper cabinet remaining in the world. The cabinet was scanned and photographed by arcade enthusiasts in 2016, who also sourced one of four known remainingSky Skipper arcade boards to build a faithful cabinet restoration. The board from the Nintendo of America cabinet is the only known unmodified boardset of the game.Hamster Corporation were able to reference the only known working Sky Skipper arcade board in Japan via the cooperation ofexA-Arcadia and used theROM image from this board[4] to release it on theNintendo Switch eShop under license from Nintendo in 2018 as part of theArcade Archives series.
InSky Skipper, the player pilots abiplane through scrolling mazes to save animals caged by enemy gorillas. The player must drop bombs onto the gorillas which will temporarily knock them out and unlock the cages. Then, the player must swoop down to pick up the animals before the gorillas get up and lock the cages again. Flying into a gorilla or wall destroys the plane, resulting in the loss of onelife. The plane's fuel gauge goes down while flying, and is replenished by picking up the animals. There are four stages in total, which are repeated on increased difficulty.[5]
In 1981,Nintendo developed and releasedSky Skipper in Japan; the game was produced alongside Nintendo's highly successfulDonkey Kong arcade game, with both titles releasing in July of the same year.[1][6] It was designed byGenyo Takeda andShigeru Miyamoto with assistance from the companyIkegami Tsushinki,[7] a company that helped Nintendo program many of their early arcade games.[8] The cabinets were produced inupright,cabaret, andcocktail variations[6][9] with cabinet artwork done by Miyamoto.[10][11] The game performed poorly in test markets in Japan and was not widely released there.[7] Around a dozen cabinets were sent to Nintendo of America inRedmond, Washington for location tests,[7][11] but the game was poorly received there, too, and was never widely released in America.[11][12] Because of the poor reception, Nintendo converted theSky Skipper cabinets intoPopeye, released in 1982.[6][13][14] One of the ten North American cabinets escaped this fate and was put in storage atNintendo of America.[11][15]
Although the game was never widely released in North America,Parker Brothers negotiated for a license to publish a home version of the game for theAtari 2600 as part of its licensing deal forPopeye.[15][16] The port was naturally of lower production value than the arcade version.[16][17]
DuringE3 2018, Nintendo revealed the impending release ofSky Skipper on theNintendo Switch eShop in July underHamster Corporation'sArcade Archives series, after numerous arcade games from Nintendo was released in the series. The ROM image for the game had been copied from the board in the cabinet at Nintendo of America because it is the only known unmodified boardset.[12] According toNintendo World Report, the rerelease may have taken years to come to fruition due to legal issues with Ikegami Tsushinki.[8]
Reviewing the Switch release, bothNintendo World Report andNintendo Life said the game was enjoyable when playing for a high score, but it lacked variety.[8][18]Nintendo Life enjoyed "striking a balance between completing the levels quickly and plotting a route to maximise your point-scoring."[18]Nintendo World Report did not like how the game repeated the same few stages and felt as though the game was not finished. They also panned the stage graphics, calling them "extremely crude" compared toDonkey Kong.[8]Nintendo Life agreed in that the colors were garish in places and the environments were blocky, writing this: "The simple design and plain backgrounds ensure everything is easy to follow, butSky Skipper certainly shows its age."[18] Both praised the extra options included with theArcade Archives release.[8][18]
Having played the original arcade version, Nintendo of America's gameplay testerHoward Philips calledSky Skipper a "confusing thematic mess"[7] akin to anLSD trip.[19]: 12:55
Atari HQ found the vintage Atari 2600 port to be average in quality, with simple gameplay and unremarkable graphics and sound.[16]
Julian Eggebrecht, founder of game developerFactor 5, made a deal with Nintendo that if he was able to shipStar Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (2001) on schedule, he could borrow theirSky Skipper cabinet for his company's arcade. Factor 5 shippedRogue Leader on time and so received the machine. One of the ROM chips was dead, so they contacted Genyo Takeda who pulled the original files from Nintendo's archives, enabling Eggebrecht to repair the machine.[7]
In 2016, a group of arcade restoration enthusiasts decided to build a restoredSky Skipper cabinet.[20] No complete cabinets were known to exist in private collections. Four boards owned by collectors, containingPopeye ROMs, were known to have been converted fromSky Skipper based on their serial numbers.[15][21] Using ROM images available online,[15] they converted a board toSky Skipper.[7] To get information on the cabinet, they asked video game playerBilly Mitchell to connect with Nintendo of America.[7] Nintendo said they still had aSky Skipper cabinet[7] and granted them access to examine it.[11] With the scans they took, and sourcing one of the four known boards, they were able to create a recreation of the arcade game in Nintendo of America's archives.[21]
