Pro skater Tony Hawk announced on Twitter Friday that he's working with Activision on a new addition to to his awesome skateboarding video game franchise, "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," for the latest-gen living room consoles. He's also working on a mobile game.
Hawk had been working on a mobile game, called "Shred Session," which was announced in January. According to TouchArcade, the game soft launched but was pulled entirely from the App Store last month.
Hawk said on Friday that it's been put on hold indefinitely, presumably so he could focus work on a console game.
I’m currently working with Activision on a console game for 2015 (along with a new mobile game). I think fans of THPS series will be hyped.
An Activision spokesperson confirmed to IGN that "Shred Session" was on hold and that the new games were in the works.
There's no word yet on how the new console version will play, what it will be called, or how the new mobile game will work. Or if it will make use of the "skateboard" accessory. But if the console version is as good as his previous games — especially early in the series — then players have a lot to be excited about.
"Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," developed by Neversoft and published by Activision in 1999, was a critically acclaimed bestseller on the Nintendo 64, PlayStation 1, and Sega Dreamcast. Each game was a smash hit, but reception of the games started petering off around 2006, with the release of "Tony Hawk's Underground 2."
The last console version of the main series, "Proving Ground," came out in 2008.
A US startup skateboarder clothing company has been criticized and mocked on Twitter for its choice of brand name: Impact Reduction Apparel, or IRA for short.
The Belfast Telegraph reports that the company was forced to distance itself from any connection with the Irish Republican Army paramilitary group, tweeting on Thursday: "Impact Reduction Apparel is who we are. We have no affiliation with ANY terror groups. We make products that keep people safe."
The company had been the target of hundreds of tweets, mostly from Irish Twitter users, poking fun at the brand name, while some deemed it "offensive." @IRA_Apparel even started trending in some parts of Ireland on Thursday, according to Trendsmap.
@IRA_Apparel but seriously, this is as offensive as me making a company and naming it KKK or ISIS even if it isn't intended.
It's not entirely clear why IRA Apparel suddenly became the target of Twitter users this week. The company, which is based in San Francisco and appears to specialize in skateboarding helmets, according to its website, first set up its Twitter account in September. The brand has also been busy on Instagram since September. IRA Apparel's products cannot be bought directly from its website, and it's unlikely Ireland is one of its target markets.
This is not the first time a brand has come under criticism for using a name, or product names, that could potentially offend those affected by The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
This amazing video was captured by Max's dad as he timed Max riding his electric Evolve skateboard around a parking lot. He hadn't noticed Max giving himself a pep talk until after he reviewed the GoPro footage.
Artist Mac Premowas contacted by the World Wildlife Fund to contribute to their "Everyday Things" collection for Earth Hour. The collection's goal was to repurpose daily objects to show how creativity can lead the way in encouraging people to live a greener lifestyle. Mac collaborated with skateboarding company Sanford Shapes to create skateboard decks made entirely out of construction buckets.
Shot & directed by Mac Premo Edited by Ann Lupo Production team: Pete Treiber, Adrianna Dufay & Divya Gadangi Sound design by Mac Premo & Ann Lupo Sound mixed & mastered by Luciano Vignola Shot in Leucadia, Encinitas and Carlsbad, California on location at Sanford Shapes.
When you're riding around on a one-wheeled skateboard in New York City, a lot of people stop and stare, perplexed by how you're managing to maintain your balance while traveling so fast.
That's the sheer draw of the Onewheel, the smartly named electric skateboard that allows you to balance atop a spinning rubber wheel while you surf around the streets — it just looks like good old-fashioned fun.
I've been itching to try the Onewheel for myself ever since I first saw it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. After finally getting to ride around on one, I can confirm that it's as fun and exhilarating as it looks, and it's all thank to the intelligent self-balancing sensors that make the physics-defying skateboard possible.
The Onewheel originally started as a side project, invented by Kyle Doerksen in his free time before he got a prototype working and took it to Kickstarter. The Kickstarter campaign quickly took off, crushing its $100,000 goal and eventually raising over $630,000. Fast forward to today, and Onewheel has fulfilled its Kickstarter pre-orders and is shipping consumer orders as fast as possible.
To test drive (or test ride?) the Onewheel, Doerksen and I walked to a plaza near Madison Square Park — a relatively open area with less of the frantic foot traffic that typically plagues the city's sidewalks.
While the magic of the Onewheel is its self-balancing sensors, it turns out that the trickiest part is learning to get a feel for how this balancing works.
To mount the Onewheel, you first place your back foot on the rear of the board, and then you place your front foot on two pressure-sensing pads on the front of the board — which engages the motor resting inside the wheel — while you slowly lean forward.
The torque of the motor then kicks in, and you're balanced. Lean forward, and you'll accelerate, lean backwards, and you'll slow to an eventual stop. If you keep leaning backwards while at a standstill, you'll start to reverse, though that's a bit trickier as people usually prefer to ride facing a certain direction, just like on skateboards and snowboards.
Turning also takes some getting used to, as you need to remember to continue leaning forward through the duration of the turn, but by the end of the session I felt I was getting the hang of it. For something as foreign as balancing and turning on a single wheel, I'd say the Onewheel is still pretty easy to pick up compared to other board sports.
You also really notice the benefits of the only having one wheel when you're turning. On a skateboard, sharp turns are pretty difficult and most of the time you turn by leaning — but the four wheels cause your turns to be more sweeping and broad. Thanks to the Onewheel's single wheel, it's much easier to weave your way around people or rotate around by leaning heavily in one direction while keeping your balance tipped forward.
The Onewheel is also surprisingly fast. It used to only travel at speeds up to 12 miles per hour — which still feels pretty zippy when you're riding around on only one wheel — but thanks to the ability to update the board's firmware through the Onewheel app, it can now hit 14 miles per hour.
The Onewheel app is your hub for checking the battery life and fine-tuning the feel of your ride. Onewheel refers to these customization settings as "digital shaping," and the various settings such as "Classic" and "Extreme" tweak various speed settings to alter the feel of the ride.
The "Classic" is best for beginners — it causes the board to tip backwards slightly and slow once you hit about 8 or 9 miles per hour. "Extreme" is looser setting for more experienced riders that doesn't feature this limitation and allows speeds up to 14 miles per hour.
One of the coolest features of the Onewheel is that its app enables riders to update the firmware of the board wirelessly via Bluetooth. That means that in the future, Onewheel can introduce more customizations and riding settings and all riders will need to do is stand close to their board with their phone in hand.
The Onewheel's battery is good for 4 to 6 miles of riding, but it recharges in only 20 minutes, making it feasible for riders to carry the charging cable with them in their backpack and plug in to extend their range.
There's no doubt that the Onewheel is a ton of fun, but unfortunately it all comes at hefty cost — the Onewheel retails for $1,499. Over 30 people came up to us while we were riding to ask more about the Onewheel, but when I told them the price a majority of them laughed. While you could compare purchasing a Onewheel to the cost of a nice bike or tricking out a snowboard and purchasing ski lift tickets, the $1,499 price point is still going to be far too steep for a majority of riders.
If you're in a position to drop that kind of money on a fun way to commute and have a blast on the weekends, the Onewheel will certainly deliver — I can't wait to try it again and walking to work has never seemed more boring.
You can learn more about the Onewheel or one for yourself by clicking here.
But no one ever said anything about riding a skateboard. Frankly, so few people owned them in the country's capital, that it was never an issue.
Now, thanks to non-profit Skateistan, girls from marginalized and displaced families can learn to ride for free at the largest indoor sports arena in Afghanistan. And they become all the more badass for it.
Photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson visited Skateistan's Kabul location, one of the largest indoor sports sports facilities in the country, in 2012 and captured these portraits of the participants.
Skating in Afghanistan?
In 2007, Australian skateboarder Oliver Percovich relocated to Kabul when his former girlfriend took a job there. He began cruising on his skateboard to pass the time, and noticed crowds of children marvel as he passed. They would follow him around, asking for rides and lessons.
Shortly after, Percovich dedicated himself to the creation of a small non-profit skate school, the country's first. Using the three boards he brought with him from Australia, he began teaching a handful of young adults on the streets of Kabul. Fired up by their rapid progress, Percovich, who the kids call "Ollie," set out to build an indoor skatepark and education facility.
Using land donated by the Afghan National Olympic Committee, his dreams came to fruition in October 2009. Today, the organization operates schools in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and South Africa, and reaches 1,200 youth each week.
Blazing a new trail
The opportunity is especially meaningful for the school's female students, who make up 40% of the class. For them, the skatepark serves as a platform for personal development.
As recently as 10 years ago, almost all women were excluded from education systems and institutions in Afghanistan. Skateistan seeks to overcome those deep social barriers by bundling academics and skateboarding in one school.
Students enrolled in lessons may also participate in an arts-based curriculum, which focuses on developing the tools young people need to express themselves, think critically, and solve problems abroad in their own backyard. In addition, Skateistan offers an accelerated learning program and a leadership initiative.
The little girl shown below was just seven years old at the time the photo was taken. She's since passed three educational grades and enrolled in the national school system — an incredible accomplishment. Photographer Fulford-Dobson credits her success in part to skateboarding.
"I met so many impressive woman and girls in Afghanistan," Fulford-Dobson wrote in a press release, "[who were] passionate about being seen as strong and willing to fight for themselves, rather than as victims of circumstance."
She met teachers "as tough and determined as any man," and children who lit up with the unadulterated fun that can only come from sports.
To learn more about the skater girls, you can check out Jessica Fulford-Dobson's website and her upcoming book, "Skate Girls of Kabul." A photography exhibition of the same name is now underway at Saatchi Gallery in London.
Last year, a company named Hendo Hover launched a Kickstarter that raised roughly half a million to develop a real hoverboard. The product won't launch until the end of 2015, and will wind up costing around $10,000 dollars. Few have had a chance to really try the product outside of the company's facilities; however, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk did try it, and he gave us his thoughts on the product.
Once upon a time, "Tony Hawk" gamesruled. Slick tricks, goofy stories, and killer soundtracks made the series endlessly re-playable. 2003's "Tony Hawk's Underground" still holds up, even! Trust us. But then Activision took the series down the rabbit hole of ugly, expensive plastic peripherals. Players lost interest. The company has only released one new title – the 2012 remake "Pro Skater HD"– since 2010. Now they're back with a game stripped of that bloat that looks primed to bring back old fans and make new ones.
Produced By Rafi Letzter. Video courtesy of Activision.
"In 2011 we set out as one Youth Worker and once Social Worker to use the positive energy and influence of skateboarding to engage with children and young people.
The transition from swimming pool to skate park has been seamless, it is like the building was always meant to be a skate park. Phase two will introduce a cafe that will really create an impact with the local community, providing them with a space where they can enjoy the building without having to ride a skateboard or scooter."— Andre Seidel, Campus Skate park
Video courtesy of Michael McKelvaney. Music by Pretty Lights - Done Wrong (Opiuo Remix).
Skateboarding Legend Tony Hawk, wasn't always able to sustain himself from his skateboarding career. Even after he went pro in the '80s, it still wasn't always enough to sustain himself. Here's the three jobs Tony Hawk had besides being a pro skateboarder.
Surfing and baseball could both be included in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after organizers Monday announced their final list of new sports to the world governing body.
The Tokyo Olympic organisers will propose five sport categories -- a baseball/softball joint bid, karate, skateboarding, climbing and surfing -- to the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which will formally announce new entries for the 2020 Games ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics.
The list will be officially submitted to the IOC by the end of September, public broadcaster NHK said.
The Tokyo organisers narrowed down their previous list by dropping bowling, squash and wushu, a type of martial art.
Fujio Mitarai, chairman of the committee for selecting new sports, said it picked the five sports as they are popular among younger generations and have wide support in Japan.
Under the Olympic reforms approved last December, the IOC has abolished the cap of 28 sports for the summer games while maintaining a limit of 10,500 athletes and 310 medal events. Host cities can propose additional events.
In baseball-mad Japan, the sport -- dropped from the Olympics along with softball after the 2008 Beijing Games -- would be a money-spinner for Tokyo organisers, worth an estimated extra $50 million in ticket sales.
In their past presentation to Tokyo officials, surfing highlighted its "sex appeal" to win over organisers, with the option of implementing cutting-edge artificial wave technology.
Climbing flagged up its rugged, windswept image, while the roller sports federation promised NBA-style razzmatazz.
Karate officials gathered some 720,000 signatures from across the world to be listed, creating promotion videos showing demonstrations by top players.
Local media reported on Monday Tokyo organisers plan to hold some first round baseball/softball games in Fukushima to support its recovery from the 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster.
Fukushima has two baseball stadiums with a capacity of 30,000 each, and "decontamination work was finished in both the stadiums," a government source told the Sankei Shimbun daily.
The tsunami, triggered by a 9.0-magnitude offshore earthquake on March 11, 2011, swamped the emergency power supplies at the Fukushima nuclear plant, sending its reactors into meltdown as cooling systems failed.
Many of the tens of thousands of people who evacuated their homes and farms are unlikely to return owing to radiation dangers.
The two stadiums are both located in Fukushima prefecture but tens of kilometres (miles) away from the "difficult-to-return zone" designated by the government.
Just like the Madden video game franchise, Tony Hawk's name has become synonymous with skating games since "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" in 1999. While the franchise has been on hiatus for the past five years, both Tony Hawk and Activision are trying to revive the billion dollar franchise with "Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5." We spoke with Tony Hawk about his billion dollar gaming franchise.
A new "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" game launched on Tuesday for the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. It's apparently a huge mess.
And:
And:
No joke! Gaming website Eurogamer put together a video breaking down the many issues in the game (they have the PlayStation 4 version with the updates installed).
But that's not all! Gaming website Polygon has similarly extreme issues — they could barely get the game to run on their Xbox One, and ended up using a bizarre workaround to even get the game to launch. Here's their video, further detailing the many issues in "Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5."
Despite the fact that "Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5" has only been available for one day, those who've played it are suggesting against picking up the game... Unless you love glitches, of course, in which case you should definitely buy the game, make some funny YouTube videos, and send them to us.
Marty McFly from the "Back to the Future" series is pretty much a pro skateboarder.
But when he finds himself transported to the future in "Back to the Future: Part II," he has to adapt his skateboard skills to a hoverboard (Great Scott!).
The movie was made back in the 80s, so this "future" scene actually takes place this week, on October 21, 2015. (Maybe keep an eye out for McFly zooming by on a hoverboard, you know, just in case.)
Unfortunately we don't have hoverboards that are that impressive today, but we're getting close. The closest we've come are models that operate like tiny helicopters that the rider stands on top of, or boards that use electromagnets or superconductors to hover over a metallic surface. A real, working hoverboard will probably use a variation of one of these techniques.
The HoverBlog made this graphic that shows how hoverboard technology has improved over time. The first attempt dates all the way back to the 1950s:
The luxury stroller manufacturer Quinny has just released the hippest way for parents to get around with their children: The Quinny Longboardstroller. It's just what it sounds like too, a longboard with a stroller bolted to the front.
How about tracking how you landed your last trick, or the distance you've skated this week?
That's what FlipMotion aims to do with RideBlock, a device that attaches to a skateboard and — paired with a smartphone — can keep tabs on everything from how high an ollie (jump in skateboard terms) is to mapping your latest skating route.
"This tiny device goes into the truck of your skateboard or longboard and can do all the magic [of skateboard tracking]," said Jibin Jose, CEO and cofounder of FlipMotion. Jose demonstrated the RideBlock prototype on Wednesday at an event sponsored by Make in LA, a hardware startup accelerator.
Packed with sensors inside, the shockproof, water-resistant device goes right behind a skateboard truck (the hardware used to attach the wheels to the board). Once installed and paired with a phone, it collects all kinds of data, which can be analyzed later or shared with others. Much like FitBit has its "challenges" between friends, RideBlock aims to make skateboarding competitive, just on a worldwide scale in real time.
"The best feature that I like is the video syncing ability," Jose said. "RideBlock lets you sync the video of the trick that you are performing and overlay the stats on top of it."
It's an interesting way to settle debates on who landed the better trick, which founders Jibin Jose and Abimanyu Nair say is how their initial idea was formed. Instead of the two skaters (who are also engineers) arguing over it, they created hardware paired with an app that will definitively tell you.
I tested it out at the event, and two things happened: I quickly realized my skateboarding skills are rusty but still adequate enough to ollie, and second, the device recognized the trick and said I did pretty well.
However, there is room for improvement in the device's ability to understand what tricks are happening. It can't yet understand every flip or move a skateboarder performs, though Nair told TI it can track an ollie or kickflip with 90% certainty.
There is still plenty of excitement over what the device can eventually do. After the company showed off RideBlock earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show, it received around 200 preorders of the product, which it plans to sell for $79.
FlipMotion is planning an Indiegogo campaign for March, and hopes to have the device out to skaters by the end of 2016.
