The Kartel was able to talk with company president Josh Tsui last Saturday during Activision's exclusive event in San Francisco and we were able to dig into some interesting insight about the new peripheral and whether anyone busted their arse playtesting the game in prototype form.

We found out earlier that the overall concept for the Tony Hawk: Ride board actually came from Tony himself. It was really a whole separate set of sequences that brought Robomodo to the mix. Perhaps it was their background in doing arcade games that brought Activision calling. After all, the new game is really a move into an arcade oriented gameplay mechanic, reminiscent of Top Skater, a classic arcade game created by Sega where you could actually ride a board. Robomodo is mainly made up of ex-Midway guys, many who worked on arcade games before.

So what does it take to come up with a new peripheral that hadn't been created before? According to Tsui, well over 10 different prototypes were conceived before they got it right. "We had some crazy prototypes. Everything from a blank deck with game controls duct taped to it, we even played with a trackball. Our thinking was that we might as well go through everything we could think of until we had the final product down just right." The importance of the entire process according to Tsui was the no holds barred mentality that no single idea was bad. It was just a matter of going above and beyond those ideas and working with Tony Hawk to make sure the deck properly captured the essence of skateboarding.

In addition, it seemed that the Robomodo crew were forward thinking when creating the board. "The peripheral was built for the purpose of skating, but the tech is there to allow for other things. Obviously we can't talk about them under NDA. The obvious things that people can figure out, but there's also games that people don't even realize would work with a board," hinted Tsui.

Tsui then stressed the importance of perception, reiterating that gamers shouldn't look at the board as a controller, "but a platform to add on to." It's an interesting statement, considering the report of Robomodo's job openings for an "unannounced extreme sports game". 

Even Tony Hawk himself expressed interest in working on a  surfing game using the the Ride board when we talked with him. 

Making sure the board worked was important for Robomodo to nail down, so tapping into Tony Hawk's skateboarding knowledge was paramount to getting the feel just right. Tony Hawk would fly to Chicago at crucial moments during the development process to help with key decisions and also distill the motions for every trick.

Any broken bones or TVs?

The one question everyone wanted to know was whether any injuries from flying boards occurred during the creative process. Believe it or not, the game had not caused one serious injury or untimely death of a smashed TV. "It's funny everybody asks that because of the Wii-mote. But most people don't have their TVs on the floor. Luckily we didn't have any injuries. You really have to try hard to do something like that," explained Tsui.

E3 was also a huge play-testing session for monitoring players' variations of using the board peripheral. "When we got people on the board, it confirmed a lot of positives and negatives at the same time," Tsui clarified. "It was the ultimate user testing. We tightened a few things based on what we saw."

The testing was important for the company. Within the last several months, Robomodo and Activision were working in tandem to keep up with the constant "moving target" evolutions of both the board and the game. But with the level of passion and focus that Robomodo has for the board peripheral, the company will still continue to refine hardware technology. Tsui explained that Robomodo "can't simply stop and finish a product and conclude its process of evolution."

With Tony Hawk: Ride coming out tomorrow, gamers will be able to check out the game first hand, and see if the new way of playing truly adds a new dimension to the long running series. 

Those who missed our coverage of the Tony Hawk: Ride event, you can click here.