![]() ![]() The game is pick-up-and-play by design: Balancing while doing a "manual" (a wheelie that lets you continue a combo after landing a jump) or while sliding across a handrail is incredibly easy to do even with a non-upgraded character. "A lot of the decisions we made about the game were making it more approachable." And that's where Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5 comes in. Tsui's workstation even has an Xbox and a copy of Pro Skater 4 at it, which should help allay fan fears instilled by the lesser, later games. A hot pink Mattel hoverboard is propped up against one wall a copy of Electronic Arts' 2007 physics-based skateboarding sim Skate lies on one desk while a strategy guide for the Xbox launch title Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x is on another. ![]() "We don't have that burden here so that's really freed us up a lot."Ī quick tour of Robomodo's Chicago office reveals the latest game's back-to-basics inspiration. "With the later games, had to keep adding stuff to justify the yearly release," says Robomodo President Josh Tsui. Pro Skater 5, despite its nomenclature, is not a direct sequel to what came before it. In the years that followed, the franchise went through a handful of name changes and became bloated with features that made no sense, like racing around in tuner cars and the ability to jump off your skateboard to climb onto rooftops. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4featured huge levels you could combo all the way across, a timer that only kicked in once you started a mission and end-game challenges designed to test the most hardcore of players. An example of the objectives from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD The two releases that followed changed the formula slightly with added tricks to string out combos even further and take scores even higher, but it was the fourth entry that significantly altered the series. The addictive, arcade-like pursuit of getting a perfect run led to massive sales and publisher Activision ordering a raft of sequels. Oh, and each run lasted a grand total of two minutes. ![]() The first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater debuted in 1999 on the original PlayStation and was a runaway hit: Nine tightly designed levels each with a handful of goals (e.g., hit a high score collect the five letters that spell out "S-K-A-T-E" find a hidden VHS tape). And that's including the horrible pair of plastic skateboard peripheral-based games he worked on: Tony Hawk Ride and its follow up, Shred. ![]() The idea, as Dwyer explains it, is to treat anything that released past 2002's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 as if it never existed. "The originals are great and then the rest weren't as good." He's referring, of course, to the high bar set by the first four games in the storied extreme sports franchise as compared to the middling releases that followed. "It's like making a new Star Wars movie," says Patrick Dwyer, lead designer on developer Robomodo's upcoming Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. ![]()
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