At a recent event in New York City, Nintendo World Report got to catch up with skateboarding legend Tony Hawk and talk to him about the latest game in his eponymous skateboarding series, Tony Hawk: Ride.

With a new skateboarding peripheral created by developer Robomodo that was more or less demanded by Hawk himself, Tony Hawk: Ride is a motion-controlled skateboarding game that is launching today for Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3. Robomodo developed the HD versions, while Oregon-based studio Buzz Monkey handled the Wii version.

Nintendo World Report (NWR): So earlier you were talking about how you went to Activision and asked about making a skateboard peripheral game. Was it a response in any way to how the later Tony Hawk games came out?

Tony Hawk (TH): A bit. It was more about seeing all the new technology available on the new consoles and wanting to embrace that and use it for our game series.

I mean, definitely, we were going as far as we could with button-mashing games and it was starting to become more like Simon Says than feeling like you're skating. And that was fine, but at the same time, with how much technology was available and how people were embracing virtual interactivity with the Wii Remotes, the Wii Balance Board, and Guitar Hero, they really wanted to submerse themselves in these actions so I felt it was time to do skateboarding on that level. And to be honest, what Robomodo did is better than I could have imagined.

NWR: I heard Robomodo came up with many different skateboard controller prototypes. Did you see any of those? And were there any humorous ones?

TH: Yes I did. I think the funniest-looking one had track balls. In the concept form, that could work for real skating. When you do slide your foot, that's how you get the motion. You actually slide your foot along the top and get it to flip right as it takes off. In that respect it could be really technical, but it just looked ridiculous. To slide a foot off you generally need to be in the air anyway, and we don't expect people to know how to ollie to play this game.

NWR: Was there ever any talk of making the game with the Wii Balance Board?

TH: We got a Wii Balance Board when it was first available in Japan to try out and I didn't think it was the right fit, mostly because it only registers weight distribution. We wanted something that was absolutely motion-sensitive for all types of motion. And to be fair we wanted for it to be for all the systems.

NWR: Is there anything that you could see being improved upon in future installments?

TH: In all honesty, the game came together so quickly after the board got developed that we've only begun to discover what's possible in this skate genre.

NWR: It seems it is almost like how, when the Wii first came out, there were some simple ideas that eventually got transformed into more advanced ones as the system aged.

TH: Absolutely.

NWR: Do you think other sports or other game types would be able to work with the skateboard controller?

TH: Yeah, I think that we're ahead of the curve in terms of the technology available in current consoles. We're right on cue with having it wireless, and having accelerometers and motion sensors. So, the sky's the limit. We could do skateboarding, surfing, snowboarding. We could do our own exercise activities.

That was one of the goals of doing this, that we're going to create a peripheral that will outlast just this game.

NWR: I know that when Microsoft unveiled Natal at E3, they showed a clip that looked to be using something like Tony Hawk: Ride to show off the controller.

TH: That was their own game. To be fair, in the demo they showed the guy wasn't even on a skateboard; he was just jumping around. I still feel strongly that if you're going to have a skateboard game and feel like you've accomplished something, you've got to be on a skateboard.

NWR: I agree. I pulled off a 360 in the game earlier and I felt very accomplished.

TH: Exactly. That's exactly how I feel about it. You link a trick, like you do a grind to a manual to a trick and you did it, you physically did it!

Thanks to Tony Hawk and Activision for the interview!