![]() “It goes back to what Simon was saying, it’s about skating how you want to skate. If you don’t want to do that, if you found that too difficult in the previous games, then it’s up to you.” But what we’re now doing is we’re saying, if you want to do that, great – you can go and do that and go and test your skills. Eventually, we did start toying with the idea of, do we remove it completely? Do we have it as an assist mode? Eventually we got to where we did with OlliOlli World where you can still press to land and you can still get better scores having that correct timing, and therefore you’ve got that ethos of what we’re trying to do. It was kind of like the Holy Grail of what made OlliOlli 1 and 2 so successful. “We went back and forth for ages on whether we could even touch this mechanic. “In the previous two games if you didn’t time it right you got a sloppy landing and eventually slammed if you didn’t time it right,” says Hegarty. While Ribbins is still more into what Bennett describes as “ankle-breaking radical skateboarding” and offers to a do kickflip for me during an office-bound Zoom interview, it speaks of different skating philosophies, both of which OlliOlli World represents. I think there’s a lot of people during lockdown that have reacquainted themselves with skating, and maybe a different kind of skating than the skating they did when they were younger and realising it’s just as fun to push down a hill and do simple turns.” ![]() Going fast and carving, and really enjoying it, headphones in and sort of enjoying going for a cruise. For me, skateboarding now represents the flow of cruising around and going fast, and being away doing something childish and fun, and getting in that flow. It’s where I did my last few ollies, 180s, and kickflips and stuff. When we were making that game, we started skating around Deptford together. “but actually, OlliOlli 1 was the reason I got back into skateboarding with John (Ribbins). “When you hit 40 – to be honest it happened to me at 35 – you realise your knees don’t work in the same way.” adds Bennett. Unlike the real world, there’s no long-lasting effects to each bail – you’ll heal up between every tap of the reset button – but you can still feel every single crunch. It’s invariably only the tenth time you got it, but that success – that feeling – is really awesome.” I used to go out and throw myself at a series of steps until I landed something, and there was something inherently satisfying about trying something that’s really hard and succeeding. “When I was young I tried to do tricks, sort of, broke my knees and my coccyx and various parts of my body over the years. “The reason I get out and go on a skateboard now has changed fundamentally from when I was younger!” says Bennett. NME has sat down with the studio’s co-founders Simon Bennett, Thomas Hegarty and John Ribbins to talk about their love of skateboarding, how that’s infused into OlliOlli, and how the forthcoming OlliOlli World is a reflection of their changing attitudes to skateboarding. It’s probably not a surprise to anyone that’s played their games to know that each of the studio’s founders are keen skateboarders. That kineticism is when Roll7’s games really shine: action shoot-’em-up Not a Hero also has that similar feeling of momentum, except here you’re kicking through doors and shooting goons instead of hurtling down a staircase on a plank of wood at improbable speeds. ![]() ![]() Manuals, grinding rails, there’s a sense of momentum to it. The reason for this success – for me, at least – is the game’s sense of flow. READ MORE: ‘OlliOlli World’ preview: heaven is more than a halfpipe in Roll7’s expanded skater.A skateboarding series that’s just the right mix of frustrating and compulsive, OlliOlli and its sequel, OlliOlli 2, still remain two of the most authentic-feeling skateboarding games – despite the 2D perspective. Roll7 has worked on a few different games, but it’s best known for the OlliOlli series. ![]()
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