14 DAY TRIAL // Skateboarding games have been around for quite some time and have found a home on a lot of different platforms, using their controls to the maximum in trying to recreate a reasonable virtual skateboarding experience.
But with the upcoming Tony Hawk Ride title, everything will change, as it will be bundled with a special peripheral in the shape of a skateboard, but without the wheels, through which gamers can control their virtual rider.
While a lot of people thought that this was the idea of Activision, in order to gain more profit, it seems that Tony Hawk himself came up with this project. The famous skateboarder saw just how popular and mainstream peripherals had become, thanks to titles such as Guitar Hero, and went to Activision with his idea, at least according to Robomodo's Joshua Tsui, who talked with IndustryGamers about the title that would be made by his studio.
“That actually came from Tony Hawk himself,” Tsui said. “Tony is a big tech geek; he skateboards but he actually knows how to program and he hacks things all the time. He's been wanting to do this type of controller for quite some time and he felt that after the success of games like Guitar Hero and peripherals now being more accepted [the time was right], so he went to Activision and said it's time to start changing things up. Activision and Tony Hawk came to Robomodo to talk to us about this, and their big directions were, “We want you guys to work from a clean slate to do something new with Tony Hawk. And on top of that, it has to be on a board controller.” But besides that, there were very little other details. So we just took that direction and ran with it, started prototyping all kinds of boards and everything.”
So when Tony Hawk revealed that he worked closely with the team at Robomodo, he was quite serious and his input was crucial for the development of the game. Hopefully we will get to see just how the new skateboard peripheral works when the game will be out this fall.