Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam

In examining the best gaming franchises in recent years, we’ve found the best titles to be those that tweaked a significant portion of the core mechanics. On the surface, gameplay is largely the same, yet with different environments (see: Halo or almost every Nintendo game from Twilight Princess to Mario Galaxy).

When Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam hits the PS2 in May, it'll do so with a ton of new features, not the least of which are three new faces in its lineup of cartoonish skate-thugs. To give you a first-class introduction to the new guys, we've scored a few exclusive clips of their kick-flipping, cliff-grinding, opponent-kicking antics during the insanely high-speed skateboard races that set Downhill Jam apart from the rest of the Tony Hawk series.

Lately, we've been seeing a rash of last-gen games getting rush ports to make them Wii-compliant, but Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam is a rare case. Starting life as a Wii game, Downhill Jam - which features a bunch of fictional skaters (and Tony Hawk) racing at breakneck speed through steep downhill obstacle courses - is jumping ship to PS2, and it's bringing a whole mess of new features with it. To find out exactly what Hawk's PS2-owning fans can expect when the game arrives in May, we hit up