Tony Hawk’s American SK8Land for the Nintendo DS

Developer Diary #1

Hey Readers,

My name is Leo Zuniga. I’m the lead designer on Tony Hawk’s American SK8Land for the Nintendo DS. We’ve been developing the Tony Hawk games on Game Boy Advance for several years and bringing the game to the DS presented several new opportunities for the team.

One of our key goals was to recreate the feel of the console game while providing for some unique mechanics. First, we identified Neversoft’s new feature set for the console version and tried to pack as many of those features as possible into our game. First of all we did away with the ISO approach from the GBA versions and went for a full 3D game at 60fps. In addition, the bottom screen opened up a lot of opportunities for us. One of the first ideas was to create a map screen. The map is extremely helpful and assists players navigate our massive levels to scout for story pedestrians and goal items.

We didn’t want our touch screen features to feel like afterthoughts, so we came up with a feature set that enhances the core gameplay in critical ways. The touchscreen graphical editor for tags and skateboards was a given, but we packed it with some nifty drawing tools that brings out the artist in anyone, and it has plenty of undos. Got a favorite “special trick?” You can map any of the game’s “special tricks” to be accessible via the touch screen. Each “special slot” automatically changes from a grind, manual or air trick depending on your situation. If you bail during one of your combos, our “Freak Out!” game allows you to recover some of your lost score by tapping a series of touch screen bars. Want your voice in the game? With the DS microphone you can record your own quip that can play during a bail, “special trick” and other game events.

One of the coolest things about SK8Land is the inclusion of the Nintendo DS Wi-Fi Connection. We are privileged to be the first third-party game to take advantage of this great feature. Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection allows players to challenge friends or others on a head-to-head match, upload and download custom graphics, post and view high score replays to learn from the best players, and even download additional goals posted by us over the coming months.

One of our favorite features is the Warehouse Editor. While playing in Story Mode you earn cash to buy and customize your own warehouse skatepark. The warehouse has 10 individual spots each with 3 available pieces, you can preview a piece, skate it, buy it and change it, so the layout is evolving and can transform at any point during the game. The final challenges take place in your warehouse, which means everyone will have their own customized level layout featured in the game.

Finally, we wanted to make our game could accessible to new Tony Hawk players, while maintaining the core game difficulty for veteran players. At the start, the players choose between two difficulties, Rookie or Pro. The Rookie difficulty has some handling tweaks, which help the player with general skating, rail balancing and performing tricks. The Pro difficulty maintains the feel of the console games, so any player familiar with the Tony games will feel at home.

-Leo Zuniga

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