There haven’t been a ton of surfing video games. Probably the biggest release was Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer, an attempt to cash in on the massive popularity of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater franchise. It turned out to be pretty fun, but didn’t exactly take the world by storm. That was followed up by even less well-known efforts like Sunny Garcia Surfing, Transworld Surf, Virtual Surfing and a WSL-branded mobile title called True Surf. Most recently, indie game studio Bungarra Software has thrown their hat into the ring with Barton Lynch Pro Surfing.
However, all those surfing games have had one fatal flaw: they’re trying to be fun. As we all know, that’s an extremely unrealistic way to approach simulating the experience of surfing a crowded break. Surf comedian Luke Cederman’s Raglan Surf Report just released a sketch that envisions a world in which surf video game developers actually attempt to replicate the feeling of getting stoked, suiting up, paddling out…and getting yelled at by some random middle-aged local.
“Of course the buttons don’t work. The developers coded it so the buttons only work fifty percent of the time, which perfectly simulates the kind of frustration you get from surfing crowded Snapper Rocks,” says Cederman’s character to a harried friend in the sketch. “It’s very realistic.”
He ain’t wrong.
