As soon as I heard that Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was coming to Game Boy Advance, I started wondering just how they were going to do it. How could they cram one of the best Playstation games ever into a GBA cartridge without making a completely different game? Well, I have good news: Activision has done it with style. Tony Hawk plays better than I ever thought it would.

Everybody's seen the gigantic MPEG video on the web. I'll confirm that indeed this game does look nice. All boards are true to their Playstation cousins, although I'm not sure if they contain the secret areas (the only board open on the E3 build was the Hangar, and I couldn't figure out how to do the grind on the Helicopter that usually opens up its secret area).

The fixed isometric-view camera is never a problem. Anytime your skater may be obscured, the ramp he's on becomes translucent so you can see what your skater is doing. Needless to say this is extremely helpful. Your skater moves very fluidly with great animations, making every move taken from the Playstation version immediately recognizable.

As for gameplay, I'll admit that if you're a die-hard Tony Hawk 2 player it takes some getting used to. To start off with, grinds appear to be automatic. All you have to do is ride up to a lip the right way and voila. The A button switches your stance (I figured that you'd hold it down to gain speed but apparently not) and the B button jumps. The Left and Right shoulder buttons are used for tricks. I was a bit confused with the controls at first, but once I figured them out I was pulling off all kinds of tricks.

Make no mistake about it, THPS2 for Game Boy Advance is excellent. Once players learn the control scheme (it's hard to break the habits taught by the sublime control of the Playstation version) it should make for a lot of fun. It's definitely one of the best GBA games at E3, and I'm going to pick it up as soon as it comes out.