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Lace-up for PSP's Free Running

Core Design's long-lost parlour extreme sport game finds a publisher

Lace-up for PSP's Free Running
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PSP
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It's not often you'd compare the games industry to a greying OAP who forgets where they've put the keys, but when it comes to Core Design's Free Running, that's exactly the analogy we're using.

Proudly announced by Eidos as one of the first wave of PSP games in the summer of 2005, just as the BBC had bought the sport of using the urban environment as a huge extreme sports playground – at least for extremely fit men wearing bright red articles of clothing – Free Running promptly disappeared into the smog.

Of course, the fact Eidos sold the game developer, Core Design, probably didn't help in terms of getting the title out on time. But now with a new owner onboard, Free Running has finally found a new UK publisher in the shape of Reef Entertainment.

The game itself is being marketed as a Tony Hawk's for the sport of free running or parkour, as it's known in the French circles in which it originated.

And helping the gamemakers make all the right moves have been noted free runners such as Sebastian Faucon, who appears in the latest Bond film and who takes the role as your in-game advisor. He'll be teaching you how to master over 50 moves, including kong vaults, pharaoh climbs, rail split vaults and vertical wall runs. Members of Urban Freeflow, the UK's largest parkour group, have also provided advice and will appear as playable characters.

Frankly we're out of breath and giddy with vertigo just thinking about it.

Making its way across the roofs, Free Running is due to touchdown and rollout in February or March 2007.

Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.