THE MAKING OF SKIDMARKS AND SUPER SKIDMARKS
The name Skidmarks was probably unfortunate, in hindsight. No doubt thousands of bumfluff-chinned, Amiga-owning schoolboys across the UK got a good giggle out of the fact that this racer shares a name with embarrassing Y-front stains. But beneath the slightly rude-sounding title is an absolutely solid multiplayer racing game that was one of the best on the Amiga. And the sequel, Super Skidmarks, was even better.
The developer behind it all, Acid Software, was probably unfamiliar to most gamers at the time. This tiny software studio in New Zealand would go on to make the excellent top-down racer Roadkill and the phenomenal Guardian, which scooped the number three position in Amiga Power’s Ultimate All-Time Top 100. But in 1993, about the only major release Acid had to its name was the fairly mediocre platformer Woody’s World. Then along came Skidmarks (stop laughing at the back).
Chris Blackbourn was the eager young coder behind this fancy racing game. “I was fresh out of high school and just starting university when I started working at Acid Software,” recalls Chris, who went by the name ‘Andrew’ at the time, and is listed as such on the game’s credits. “Everything was wild and exciting! Game dev back then was a lot like the indie scene is now, very experimental, everyone cribbing from everyone else, no one really sure how to get the results they wanted, and
