Modder turns Sekiro into Tony Hawk-style skateboarding sim 'Jet Set Sekiro'

Now this is what I'm talking about: Modder Ionian-MikiriyAKATotallyNotShinobi (god damn that's a mouthful) has come out with a banger on the Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice Nexus: Jet Set Sekiro, a custom skateboarding level where you shred around the Fountainhead Palace like the spirit of 2002 never died.

The channel Mod Server on YouTube has a great video of the thing in action: It retrofits Sekiro's normal animations for skateboarding gameplay, with a new movement system that functions exactly how you'd expect.

The new level, which appears heavily based on (if not just reusing the layout of) the base game's Fountainhead Palace, sees you rolling around and collecting spray paint canisters to graffiti tag select spots on the map.

It's a delightful little mod, and feels very much in line with the history of skateboarding games writ large. I'm thinking of how Darth Maul was an unlockable character in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, or Spyro the Dragon's various skateboarding levels in Spyro 3: Year of the Dragon. At a cosmic level, I feel like there's a kinship between Japanese action and skateboarding games, similar to the one between hip-hop and kung fu movies.

This isn't the first crossover between skateboarding and FromSoft specifically: I fondly recall the Firelink Shrine modded map for Tony Hawk's Underground 2 by sockpuppetkingdom. It paired beautifully with the Solaire player model by Syeo. The difference this time around is that Ionian-Mikiriy brought the skateboarding to FromSoft, and not the other way around.

In other videogame skateboarding news, one of our favorite games of last year, Skate Story, is on sale for $16 on GOG. Please do not pirate it, no matter what its creator Sam Eng says.