Eddie "Skate" Hunter

Eddie "Skate" Hunter
Gender	Male
Occupation	Student
Fighting Style	Street
Height	147 cm
Weight	40 kg
Games	Streets of Rage 2 Streets of Rage 3 Streets of Rage 4

Eddie "Skate" Hunter, known as Sammy Hunter in Japan, is a playable character from the Streets of Rage series. He is the teenaged, kid brother of Adam Hunter from the original game and first appears in Streets of Rage 2, along with Max Thunder, to help Axel Stone and Blaze Fielding look for his kidnapped brother.

Biography

Appearance

Skate is a slim and non-muscular African-American pre-teenager with shaved dark hair - skin color and hairstyle shared with his older brother Adam. He wears a typical breakdancing attire, consisting of a red basketball cap worn backwards, red fingerless gloves, stainless steel chain necklace, a yellow tanktop tucked into white jeans shorts (in BKIII/SOR3 he also dons a black short-sleeved shirt beneath the tanktop, the former tucked into the shorts while the latter now flows freely outside), and his trademark red and yellow rollerblades (which grant him great speed in combat).

In the American port of SOR3, Skate's color scheme had some changes: his red rollerblades, gloves and cap are all sky-blue, his shorts are bluish-white instead of pure white, and his yellow tanktop was changed to red.

Personality

Skate/Sammy is a typical teenager at heart: possessing the latest style, the latest lingos in speech, and slightly rebellious, though with sharp street-smarts which prove to greatly help his friends in critical times. He looks up to his big brother, Adam, as he is also his mentor, and trains in martial arts alongside him. His warm acquaintance towards Axel and Blaze turns to loyal allies in order to save his older brother's life in SOR2. His bond with the others continues in SOR3.

Story

Streets of Rage 2

Eddie lived in the city with his brother, Adam, who had returned to the police force after the events of Streets of Rage. One day, when he returned from school, he found his house a total wreck, and there was no sign of Adam. He tried to call the police, but no one at the station had seen Adam that day. He then called Axel, who came over with Blaze to investigate. They found, attached to the front door of the wrecked house, a photo of Adam chained to a wall at Mr. X's feet. Realizing his older brother had been kidnapped by the Syndicate, Sammy joined Axel and Blaze to rescue his older brother from the Syndicate's clutches.

Streets of Rage 3 / Bare Knuckle III

When Dr. Zan revealed the Syndicate's latest plot, Adam was unavailable due to his duties to the police, so he sent Sammy to represent him. Sammy was slow to trust Dr. Zan, believing he was plotting to lure them into a trap.

Streets of Rage 4

Sammy/Skate does not appear in the story of Streets of Rage 4, his primary role as the light, fast fighter instead being taken over by his niece Cherry Hunter. Both his SoR2 and SoR3 appearances are unlockable and playable.

Gameplay

Signature moves

• Migraine: grabbing an opponent from behind, Eddie/Skate jumps onto the opponent's shoulders and lands 6 punches on his/her head, causing moderate damage. In SOR3, the migraine comes out quicker, but with less damage.

Skate is only vulnerable to another opponent's jumpkick, high kicks, uppercuts etc.. This move is effective when correctly timed. If timed correctly, skate may give multiple opponent's headaches.

Fighting Style

Eddie "Skate" replaces Blaze being the new agile fighter for SOR2. His basic jump is that of a few somersault and is the only character in SOR2 that can evade quickly; skate. Much like Blaze in the original, his agility makes him vulnerable to opponent's counter attacks.

Game Appearances

• Streets of Rage 2
• Streets of Rage 3

Sprites

Gallery

Streets of Rage 2

Streets of Rage 3

Skate's bio from Streets of Rage 4.

Trivia

• Adam's "OOAHH!" soundbyte from SOR1 lives on, as it was raised in pitch and given to Sammy.
• Skate's Corkscrew was actually in a early version of Bare Knuckle III (with slightly edited sprites) before being fully replaced. There are several SOR fan hacks that have replaced his rushing Special attack (>,A) with his signature Corkscrew kick.
• An unknown Skate taunt/gesture is located inside the Bare Knuckle III sprite tiles. It is unused ingame, and the exact usage has not been determined.
• Sammy is depicted as being older in Bare Knuckle III, despite his cutscene spriteset being arguably younger looking.
• He resembles the playable character from the game DJ Boy, another side-scrolling beat 'em up. This arcade game, developed by Kaneko, was later published by Sega on the Mega Drive. In fact, Sega changed the in-game name of the character from "Sammy" in Bare Knuckle 2 (Japanese release) to "Skate" in Streets of Rage 2 (U.S. release); American Sammy licensed the arcade game for U.S. distribution. Skate is the character's nickname in both incarnations; his first name in the non-Japanese versions is given as Eddie.
• Skate and Shiva are the only two characters in BKIII/SOR3 that can throw Big Ben (Bongo in Japan version) without being damaged.
• Skate is the only playable character to not have an Streets of Rage 4 design, nor even a bio detailing his present whereabouts. According to the game's developers, this was a conscious decision since due to the time skip between the third and fourth games Skate would now be an adult and thus redesigning him to reflect this would make him look too different from his older design.
  • Another reason is because the development team didn't want to commit to a visual design (like Skate appearing in a cutscene) without thinking of his gameplay potential.