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Far Cry 3 And The Stranger In A Strange Land As posted earlier, Kotaku’s own Mike “Michael” McWhertor was impressed with Skate It‘s straight forward incorporation of the Wii Balance Board. But for some, maybe just the regular Wii Balance Board isn’t enough to get them in the mood for skating. Maybe they want something to sexy the board up. You know, like some sort of snap-on peripheral. Nothing’s been announced by EA, but rumours persist Skate It will ship with something like that. When asked if such Balance Board peripheral exists, EA replied:
That’s something I haven’t heard. So… Our focus is just working with what is provided by Nintendo. So there’s not an extra piece. You know, it’s really about working with the Balance Board. So if you have one, this is another game you can play with it. It’s not about fitness, it’s about skateboarding and having fun.
There’s a video after the jump. Watch it if you like.
We hope you’re ready for a world in which all games are controlled with your feet, because following the success of Wii Fit and the welcoming of the game’s Balance Board peripheral by third-party developers, it’s only going to ramp up from here. Fortunately, in the case of the Skate It at least, playing games with your feet may not be such a bad thing. It has the potential to be about as awkward as any attempt to ride a skateboard, if it’s your first time, but you might be surprised at how easily one can pull off nose manuals and nollie kickflips within minutes.
I was blown away with how fun it was to mess around with the early build of Skate It with the Wii Balance Board that Electronic Arts had on display last week during their event. The controls were fun, easy to pick up and felt much more rewarding when you pulled off a trick than doing the same with two thumbsticks or a remote waggle.
newVideoPlayer("skateit_wii_kotaku.flv", 480, 290,""); Skate It is the newly announced version of EA’s Skate for the Nintendo Wii and DS, and while Crecente did an excellent job of explaining the controls yesterday in his hands-on report, EA saw fit to release videos showing how things are done in the world of Skate It. Interestingly enough the two videos feature no actual gameplay, rather showcasing a real-life skater performing the moves with the controls displayed in a tiny box in the lower right corner. In fact, both the Wii and DS versions of the vid feature the same song and the same video, with only the control boxes replaced. Way to go the extra mile there. Hit the jump for the DS version of the clip.
Standing on the tiny white stage set up in front of the back bar of Supperclub last night, a drink sloshing nearly out of its glass in one hand, Skate It executive producer Scott Blackwood promised not to use the phrase “built from the ground up” while explaining his game.
Boo me off the stage, he insisted, if I do… and then he proceeded to use the phrase.
“If it’s not built from the ground up, is it a port? Not really.”
Blackwood explained that before Black Box started their work on the Wii and DS versions of Skate, they had to figure out if the controls would work.
“It we couldn’t get that great flick it feel, we weren’t going to do it,” he said.
Later on, while trying out the Wii version of the game for myself, I was told the team spent three to four months working on getting those controls right and for the most part, it felt like they succeeded.
To play the Wii version, you hold the remote flat, facing it toward the screen and then move it around as if it is the board you are standing on. The A button makes your skater push with his foot, and the B makes him hold the board. The rest is done with motion. You turn by tilting the remote side to side, manual and nose manual by tilting the remote forward or back and do tricks by snapping the remote up, to the side or in tight circles.
It won’t come as any surprise that EA is planning Wii and Nintendo DS “spin off” versions of its skateboarding franchise skate—IGN spilled the beans accidentally in April—but you might be surprised at how good it looks. It might not be on par visually with the Xbox 360 and PS3 entries, but Skate It, at least based on the trio of screen shots IGN secured, looks pretty good.
We may have a good idea what those Skate “extensions” are that EA Games president Frank Gibeau teased a couple months ago, as IGN reported earlier today that Skate It, a spin-off planned for the Nintendo DS and Wii, was in the works. Curiously, IGN has since pulled that report, hinting that either that information was wrong or not yet deemed fit to print by the powers that be.
