"One of the biggest challenges is people haven't played this for a long time on PSone and people remember doing things that didn't actually happen. But if a player mentions something and we can put it in the game without changing the gameplay then let's do it. Little things like the character animation shifting body weight that wasn't possible 12 years ago; we added that realism that people thought was always in the game. If you're spinning in the air, the original was just like character rotation on a turntable. Now the skater rotates his upper body and then the rest of his body follows - it's these subtle nuances that make it."

While the pressure is on to please the fans, Tsui says his team is more relaxed about retail reception now that it doesn't have to worry about sales performance on the High Street.

"In a lot of ways it's liberating," he says of digital distribution. "There's a lot of pressure when it comes to retail products, there's a certain scale that has to be met. With XBLA there's a scope that allows us to be more creative and worry less about a gigantic game, so it's a quality versus quantity issue."

The team also believe there's an opportunity with digital downloads to reach a new audience that doesn't have fond memories of the original games when they were at their peak on the first PlayStation, PS2 and Xbox.

"That's one of the nice things about downloadable games: it becomes more accessible for people who want to try it out and becomes closer to an impulse buy," offers Tsui. "Although it's considered an old-school game, players really like the controls and understand how to play the game right off the bat. Back in the day when they used to colourise new movies to get them to a new audience - it's nothing like that," he jokes.

"Skateboarding has come around in popularity and dads are skating with their kids, and the kids can't believe their dad knows how to skate or used to skate," adds Hawk. "That works with games as well. There are kids playing with their parents and they'll hopefully pick up Pro Skater. And for a few hours dad will destroy the kid, but give it a few days..."

A lot of publishers are jumping on the HD bandwagon, including Konami (Metal Gear Solid), Capcom (Devil May Cry), Ubisoft (Beyond Good and Evil) and Sony (Ico), but Robomodo is insisting it's doing more than tarting up the graphics of the game.

"It's not easy," states Tsui. "There are a lot of games out there that are HD-ing it up, but all they're doing is enhancing the graphics. We didn't want to do that, it's an important game so we need to finely craft on top of it."

"It's a pretty big job, a lot of people don't realise. Think of it as the frame of a house. You've got the framework but you've got to put up the drywall, you've got to decorate it, you don't want some game that looks like it's 12 years old, you want something that looks modern. To begin with it gets us about 20 per cent there but because we're using a different engine there's a lot of work that we have to do on top of that."