Pre-TGS: Koei announces PS2 skateboarding game

Koei has announced a new skateboarding game for the PlayStation 2. Titled Yanya Caballista featuring Gawoo, the game uses a cel-shaded visual style and features an eccentric cast of characters. In the game, a group of mysterious alien creatures known as the Gawoo has invaded Earth, and the player must defeat the Gawoo and save the world. To do so, players must skate around large city-based environments, find the Gawoo, and perform tricks that match that particular Gawoo's weakness in order to defeat them. In the final game, there will be more than eight playable characters, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. The cast of characters includes a spiky-haired hero, a magician, a winged female character, and a chubby blue guy.

According to Koei, the game will use a fingerboard skateboarding controller add-on, which is similar to the surf board attachment used in the Japanese version of Surfroid from ASCII Entertainment. In fact, the playable demo at Koei's pre-TGS event used the surfing peripheral, which was connected to the dual analogs on the PS2 controller. The game's control scheme, using the peripheral, is relatively simple and intuitive. The character moves forward by pressing down on the front of the peripheral and performs ollie and jump moves by pushing down on the back. The city-based courses have some half-pipes and ramps, but most of the tricks involve kicks, spins, and board flips--there were hardly any grab-moves in the level we played. However, we were able to grind on pipes and jump down flights of stairs.

Yanya Caballista will include a two-player versus mode and is being developed by Cave. The company has also developed Snowboard Heaven for Capcom. The game is scheduled to hit Japanese shelves in the third quarter of this year and is scheduled to hit the US sometime after that.