I’m still anxious to play Skate It on Wii, but this new trailer dashed my spirits a bit. Who spilt drab on San Vanelona? And why is every edge or rail orange and blue?

Very clever story, and an excellent way to preserve Skate’s awesome open-world game play on the underpowered Wii, all while deflecting the “realism” issue. Nice form, Electronic Arts. Other developers, please take note.

Electronic Arts has announced Skate It for Wii and DS, a spin-off game of Skate released for Xbox 360 and PS3 last fall. The game will ship later this year, feature a “migrated” graphics (480p wide), physics, and audio engine from the original game, and support the balance board! EA’s Scott Blackwood explains the decision of a spin-off:

We know a growing number of gamers have more than one next-gen system and we wanted to make sure that skate fans who have already played Skate got a new, quality skateboarding experience re-imagined for their other favorite game systems… much like what the team sought to accomplish on the other gaming systems. It gave us a whole new challenge to take on and the opportunity to turn up the good even further.