Tag: Skateboard »

A new game starring Tony Hawk, famous in gaming circles for the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, is coming to iOS.

Tony Hawk's Shred Session takes after lane-based runners such as Subway Surfers, having players swiping to do tricks in skatepark levels across two different game modes. Six real-world skaterboarders, including both Tony Hawk and his son Riley, will be available. See more about the game in this hands-on video of Tony Hawk playing the game with Hodappy Bird protagonist Eli Hodapp.

Tony Hawk's Shred Session is planned for this summer, with a soft launch in the coming weeks.

Pocket Gamer reports that, in a recent video on Bloomberg TV, Tony Hawk has confirmed that another game in the iconic is bound for iOS.

There's not much else to go on, really. It's going to involve skateboarding, and Pocket Gamer mentions that the mogul seems pretty "enthusiastic about the project," but that's pretty much it. Although it's a little odd that he thinks there hasn't been a Tony Hawk game on mobile yet, given that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 has been available since 2010 (and hasn't been updated in years). Maybe what he really means is that it'll be the first game in the series that was developed specifically for mobile?

Regardless, a new game is coming and we'll be keeping an eye out for more details.

Steve Robert, producer of Electronic Art's Skate It, released May 10, 2010, is a former pro-skater who helmed the development and creation of the game's port to the iPhone. I sat down for a phone interview with Steve and spoke at length about the game and its subsequent port from the Nintendo DS to the iPhone. Steve provided us with much insight on the game's development and how it came to fruition on the iPhone.

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Jason (148apps) - First of all, thanks for putting time aside from your busy schedule to talk with me. I'm stoked to be speaking with you. For people who aren't familiar with you, what's your background and how did you get involved in skating?

Steve Robert (EA) - Well, I grew up in Huntington Beach, CA, which is a coastal town in Southern, CA and, probably as early as 6th grade I got immersed in the culture of skateboarding. It was a very popular hobby in my neighborhood and I had a bunch of good friends who were all into skateboarding. We kept pushing each other to learn and get better and then it sort of evolved as some of my friends, like Jason Lee, who's a good friend of mine, went on to become a famous actor, was the first of us to go on and get sponsored and turn pro. I skated with him all the time and he got me sponsored by the same company he was. From then on, I started entering amateur contests and then we shot a video in 1989 called Rubbish Heap and everything just unfolded from there. I was attracted to the culture and it was fun learning tricks and being competitive with my friends and progressing in the sport.

Jason (148apps) - It's easy to hit a plateau if you don't have people around you who you can learn from.

Steve Robert (EA) - Yeah, absolutely. I think being surrounded by people like Jason Lee, Ed Templeton, Mark Gonzalez and the older, big pros, they all came from Huntington Beach and we would all gather at night at Huntington Beach High School or these schools you see in all the videos, while others were out partying, we would be spending our nights skating at the schools together and you just kind of get obsessed with it. It was everything I did until I graduated high school, it's all I really cared about. Skating was just kind of a sub-culture because it wasn't as mainstream back then, as it is now.

Jason (148apps) - How did you come to get involved in developing Skate It?

Steve Robert (EA) - Well, I've been working in video games since 1997. I slowly got out of skateboarding and went to college. When I graduated from college, I got my first job at Interplay in 1997. I found it interesting because the culture was very similar to skating in many ways. It's obviously less physically active, but the people were the same.

Hit the jump for more with Skate It Producer Steve Robert.

In May of last year a mysterious video popped up on YouTube showing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 running amazingly well, it seemed, on the iPhone. That video was created to celebrate Tony Hawks birthday and to hopefully present a product idea to Tony and Activision.

Well it looks like the game might really be coming out. Tony Hawk revealed this picture on his Twitter stream over the weekend. That tweet has now been removed, but the image remains on the image hosting site. The original tweet from Tony was "In the PR world, this is considered "going rogue," but I'm too excited to contain it. This is real & dropping soon."

Activision have the rights to the Tony Hawk franchise so the game will be released through them. We connected with the developer of the version we saw last year to see if they were the developers of this new version. The bad news is that they are not creating it. It was apparently created by someone else for Activision or possibly internally by Activision. I've contacted Activision to see if they have a comment on this game, but have yet to hear back.

Hit the jump for the original YouTube video to see Tony Hawk running on the iPhone.

Update: 5/13/2008 6:30pm Pacific

We heard back from Dan Chavez from LTI Gray Matter today. They are the company that ported the game to the iPhone and released the video yesterday, for Tony Hawks birthday.

The rest of the story is that it was done as a tech demo to show that there is a desire by users for the Tony Hawk franchise on the iPhone. Will we ever see it released, not too likely at this point.

Not that Tony Hawk is scheduled to announce the next version of his franchise on Friday. It's possible that the iPhone may factor into that, but then again, they might just focus on the third gen consoles.

LTI Gray Matter have removed the video from YouTube, but it was copied by someone else and we've switched it out below for the mirror.

Touch Arcade has more details.
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Earlier today, this video started making the rounds, raising quite a buzz.

[youtube 2PFZDt5VpXo]

The video shows what is reported to be Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 running on an iPod Touch. Make sure you watch it in HD for the best picture.

We can confirm that it's 100% real.

That's right -- we had a chance to talk to an inside source and got the full story. This is a full port of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2, soundtrack and all the levels included, running flawlessly on an iPod Touch. In the video, the white cord you see coming from the device is running sound directly into the camera.

The developer was tight lipped as to whether or not we'd actually see this port in the iTunes App Store. But what we do know is that if the buzz raised over this game video is any indication of the buzz that the full app would receive, the people clearly want it.

In a year when we'll see some of the biggest game franchises coming to the iPhone and iPod Touch, we want to, no we NEED to see Tony Hawk on the iPhone as well.

By the way, happy birthday Tony Hawk!

Thanks to Touch Arcade for bringing this game to our attention.