Back in the good old days of the early 2000s, skateboarding was a big deal. It was hard to not hear a bunch of kids going around the city blasting Green día as they were doing ollie over school stairs, which was the style at the time. Nowadays, skateboarding is kind of a dead medium and skateparks have become as ancient as the pyramids of Egypt. I was always amazed por the style of skateboarding ever since I played Tony Hawk. And today’s game… has absolutely nothing to do with any of the Tony Hawk games. No, instead we’re heading to the far off lands to the east. That’s right, a Japanese skateboarding game for the PS2 known as Yanya Caballista: City Skater…. That’s a fucking horrible name. But hey, I like skateboarding and the cover art has a really unique style to it, so maybe we’ll find something fun about this game- No.... This game sucks.



So Yanya Caballista was published por Koei Studios before they merged to form Koei Tecmo and was developed por Cave. The story is your usual skater story. The city gets invaded por a race of aliens called Gawoo but the aliens are able to be defeated when they get excited from tricks por the Caballista, a group of pro skaters…. Obviously. The story is not what tu are coming for. Tony Hawk’s Underground this game is not. Also, I don’t like that we gotta defeat these aliens por exciting them. No thanks to that. Anyway, my problems with the game start from the controls itself. Caballista was designed as a gimmick game for the PS2… so tu know, bad start. To play the game, tu have to hold the PS2 sideways. Here is a foto of what I mean, taken por yours truly.



Yes, this does make me feel like an asshole. tu get three different tricks in the game. A grab, a spin, and a flip. No Christ Airs o McTwists here. tu can chain the moves together, but not much else. To mover forward, tu gotta mover both sticks forward, o to the right. To spin, tu gotta mover both control sticks in opposite directions, like you’re turning the controller at a clockwise angle. It is so damn hard to ever pull off a spin with this control scheme. I just end up going into the air. To do a flip o grab, just click the stick. This game was not designed for people with big hands like me. Thankfully, there is an option to use the controller like a normal person, and instead of flicking the sticks, tu use R1 and L1 to spin. Still janky to use, but at least I’m not destroying my hand with these awkward controls. You’re supposed to use a packaged in skateboard for your PS2 to play the game, but I bought my copy of hte game used, so no controller board. But it looks gaudy as hell and I doubt it would make my want to play the game in the intended way. This is all from the tutorial, por the way. Having to pull off these awkward tricks when I do the button combination and told to do it again really started to get on my nerves. Never have I gotten so frustrated at a game from the tutorial. But now that we’re done prancing on and off our board, let’s actually skate.
Moving onto the main game, tu have a character select screen, with three characters unlocked from the bat. Jet, the main character with the most power, most likely how he takes care of aliens. Max, who’s got all the base stats. And Mei Fa, the girl. She’s also the quickest of the group, which may be useful in some scenarios. Once we actually start the game, it starts to mostrar some promise. palabra clave is some. The goal is to do tricks in front of the aliens where they can see you. As long as tu land a trick while they are looking, that will count. tu have to impress them long enough until they explode. Defeat all the aliens in the area before time runs out. Once they are defeated, más areas of the level will unlock. Continue to do this until tu fight the boss. Beat the boss and mover on to the siguiente level. That’s pretty much all of Yanya Caballista, aside from a few challenge modes where tu can unlock más characters, but I’ll be damned if I do that. Any promise that this game may have is ruined por shitty controls. My problem with the game is that it is too floaty. There’s no weight to any of your skaters. When tu pull off a trick, they just hover in the air for a bit. I get that Jet Set Radio did that too, but tu at least had control while tu were falling. That wasn’t exactly realistic, like Caballista, but tu had control. In Yanya Caballista, once tu jump, trying to land on something like a ramp o a railing is so difficult because only then is there some weight, but only when tu move. Falling is still weightless, but trying to mover is nigh impossible in midair. Good luck trying to land a rail in some levels to get up to an alien. It’s like trying to get thread in a needle. Oh, and pulling off tricks on the ramp can sometimes work, but sometimes, you’ll just witness your character slowly fall to the ground before eating asphalt. Sometimes tu land a trick perfectly despite doing it while hitting the ground, and other times, tu wipe out. This game wants to have its cake and fuck it too, it seems. It wants to be wacky and any but be real too. Either be Tony Hawk o be Jet Set Radio. Don’t try to be both.
Now the aliens in this game aren’t that much of a threat. If tu eat shit on a trick, they’ll just laugh. No, your enemy is the goddamn time limit. It’s normal for extreme sports game to give tu a limited amount of time to pull off tricks, but Yanya Caballista is harsh with it. First two levels, nothing too bad. But Level 3 stops fucking around and pulls the rug out from under you. tu will have very little time to pull off tricks and in a game where tu need to be precise with your moves, this just adds más stress onto you. It doesn’t help that levels are riddled with bombs and pitfalls. If tu hit a bomb o fall off the map, the game takes time away from you, and tu need that time. And of course, while you’re picking yourself back up, the clock is still ticking down. Couldn’t me being knocked down be punishment enough? Do tu really gotta take off ten to thirty segundos off the clock. tu can pick up coins to get more, but tu can spend so much time on a single high level alien that takes so much combos to defeat that tu could have three hundred segundos and be left with fifty. And once the bosses come in, just fuck it. The third level boss was the biggest pain in the culo of them all. I collected as many coins as I could and memorized the entire map before I got to the fight and had three hundred segundos to beat the boss. Not too bad. But the boss would just run back and forth around the level, dropping bombs at random. He would stop for a segundo so I could do a kickflip and lower his health, but nine times out of ten, it was a trap. He would just set up bombs and blow me up. Before I knew it, my three hundred segundos were fucking gone. And I was doing tricks perfectly and yet still wiping out in front of him, doing no damage and wasting más time. Oh, and if tu fail a trick while he’s dropping bombs, have mercy. You’re losing time from repeated bombs dropping. I was stun locked in this and ended up losing sixty segundos because I couldn’t move. Before I knew it, I failed and had to start the entire level all over again. Needless to say, I was ready to throw the game in the fucking trash.
The game isn’t all bad, of course. For instance, the style of this game is amazing. All of these characters have this 2000s anime style to them. Characters look so bizarre but charming in so many ways. Sure, they look better in art than in real game visuals some times, but they are all still very unique designs. The world map is also interesting, having all sorts of bizarre levels in the city that give it an urban vibe. Some people find city settings in fantasía worlds lame, but I always amor crazy events happening in urban settings that are not unlike the ones we go in every day. My favorito! detail is in the instructions booklet where each character has their own skateboard designs, and they all look really cool. If I saw this art on a skateboard, I’d be impressed. I’d really like to see these characters and this world come back in a comic book, o a manga, o something. My only problem is that I hate everything about this game from a gameplay perspective. I’d like to see más of these characters and yet I never want to play this game ever again. I wish I knew who the artist for this game was, and I do hope he o she was well compensated for his o her work and hope they are still doing some work today.
Wow, what a great start to this little series. Will this one thrive o will I get bored of it and kill it off in a few months? I dunno. But Yanya Caballista. What a frustrating game that deserved to be forgotten. So let’s give this game it’s reward. I give this game the Style Over Substance reward. It’s got a cool look to it and the attention to detail to each skaters board is great, but the game only has style going for it. Everything else is a frustrating mess and not a fun time for anyone. If tu want a good skateboarding game, go and play Tony Hawk. And if tu want an extreme sports game with style, play Jet Set Radio. And if tu want a stylish skating game, then give Ollie King a try (In japón only, sadly). Please stay tuned when I talk about something much better…. I promise.