After unseating the Tony Hawk series last year as the #1 skateboarding game, Skate is making its move to the Nintendo Wii and DS. The game will bring back the ever-popular 'Flick It' controls from the previous Skate games, but the most surprising twist – the game will also work with the Wii Balance Board, the scale-like device that will hit stores on May 19 with Nintendo's Wii Fit.

"We just got our hands on [the balance board] a few weeks ago," says producer Scott Blackwood, "We saw it and said, 'That seems like something we should support because we can get our feet on it."

So far, the Balance Board will allow players to steer the skateboard by leaning in difference directions. Lean back to pull off a manual or forward to pull off a reverse manual. The dev crew promises that you will be able to do more with the Balance Board in the game, but for now it's TBD.

In the meantime, the Wii remote does most of the heavy lifting in Skate It! Press the 'A' button on the Wii remote to push forward and use the 'B' button to grab the board with your hand. Twist the remote left and right to steer the board. The "revolutionary" flick-it controls have been translated to the Wii Remote. Flick the remote up to jump, flick up and around to pull off a 360 move, and a series of other simple gestures will help fill out your skating repertoire. In the DS version of the game, you use the stylus on the touch screen to pull off tricks. On both versions of the game, the controls feel tight and intuitive and after a short learning curve you'll be skating like a regular Tony Hawk, er... pro.

The game will have a new storyline that starts with the fictional town of San Vanelona suffering from "freak disasters" followed by forced evacuation. That means the entire town's at your disposal to pull of sweet tricks while, perhaps, avoiding aliens? Zombies? What we do know is that you'll be able to leave San Van and head out to other skate destinations around the world.

The game, powered by the Wii, obviously doesn't have the same visual flair as the previous Skate game on 360 and PS3, and the tricks have, from what we've seen, been pared down to accommodate the Wii and DS. The creators say Skate It is still a work in progress, so we'll see how that changes when the game rolls into stores later this year.