its no secret that i liked skate. a lot. as i eagerly look forward to skate 2, the promise of balance board controls on the wii have me looking forward to getting a double dose of skate in the forthcoming months. earlier today, (don't wanna do it, don't wanna do it) joystiq had a pretty detailed post on what we have to look forward to.



so manuals are performed by leaning forward or back on the balance board, you turn by leaning to either side, and positioning your body forward or backward while keeping your feet perpendicular will send the board into a powerslide. so far, sounds pretty much like skateboarding to me.



the balance board appears to have 6 sweet spots for dictating the trick. nose and tail are for nollie and ollie respectively, while the vertical corners are for spinning your board (shuv-its, varials), and the sides are for kickflips and heelflips. again, very much like the real deal. one thing that is not explained is what will case the board to 'pop'. logistically, i'd imagine one foot would dictate whether you are popping off the nose or the tail, and the second would dictate the rotation of the board, but again the pop is not defined.

the balance board experience will not be wiimote free, as the controller is used to handle grabbing your board. using the left and right options on the dpad will cycle through flip tricks (prob change varial/shuv-it to more complex tricks like 360 flips, laser flips, etc). personally, i would handle this through combinations of where the feet are located (front foot on kickflip, back foot on varial would produce a varial flip, pop handled by wiimote a button). either way, i'm intrigued. still have no idea how spinning will be addressed, but i'm sure they have a trick or two up their sleeves.

this looks promising, and i'm psyched. gonna have to start hunting down used copies of wii fit, or find a way to get a balance board separate. i had fun with top skater back in the day, this looks like a giant leap forward.