Go! Go! Hypergrind

Select a wacky character, learn crazy stunts and go before the camera on the 8 massive themed movie sets.

NA release: 18th November 2003
JP release: N/A
EU release: N/A
Developer: Poponchi
Publisher: Atlus
NGC Magazine Score: N/A
Mods Used: Widescreen Hack

This one certainly looked interesting, a skateboarding game for focused on cartoon hijinks, with Atlus assisting in development and publishing. Animation studio Spümcø, best known for Ren and Stimpy, also assisted with the character designs. The story even touched on their struggles: traditional cel animation is being replaced by computer made animations, so Spümcø asks the toon world for help to revitalise the genre. This ended up being their last released work.

The game acts as an audition as the characters compete to become the star of the show. There’s some interesting designs and you’ll get some cutscenes for each one as you play through the story. You’ll play multiple challenges in each level, such as a high score, single combo, pulling off specific tricks and a battle mode.

Traditional skateboarding tricks are less of a focus here, instead you want to maim your character. Special hazards are dotted throughout each level and if you press X as you approach them, you’ll suffer cartoon violence. They can knock your head off, set you off fire, blow you up, squash you and so on. They’re fun to experience early on, but new levels don’t introduce new states.

As you have time after each state to perform a combo, and these can be extended by grinds or manuals, it’s actually surprisingly easy to find infinite loops of these hazards in each level. Many of these even knock you directly into the next one, and you can just mash X instead of trying to time it so you don’t miss one. It makes the game quite trivial, and the whacky nature wears off all too soon.

Fun

Go! Go! Hypergrind defines the phrase “too much style, not enough substance.” While I want to applaud them for doing something different with the extreme sports genre none of their ideas were executed properly. More attention needed to be paid to the skating mechanics and less to the gimmicks so that there’d at least be a solid base for the wacky gameplay instead of quicksand.
Mary Jane Irwin, IGN

Remake or remaster?

It’s a nice idea, but needed better execution.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Go! Go! Hypergrind!