E3 2008: Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party Updated Hands-On

Ubisoft has been hosting quite the shindig at E3, and we took the opportunity to visit with Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party. While the game is best known at this point for its much-touted claim that it's "the first game in the world you can play with your rear end," the new minigame we got to check out wasn't tied to the prowess of our posterior's performance.

The game that we got to play doesn't yet have a finalized title but is currently referred to as "Fly." In this game, your rabbid careens through space on a specialized hoverboard, zipping through energy rings to gather points. As you might guess, this game uses the Wii balance board to control your performance; you can lean left and right to glide in those directions, lean forward to tip downward, and lean backward to tip upward. We're told that many of the minigames in TV Party have varying levels of difficulty as well, so depending on the ability of the group you're with, you can adjust things accordingly.

We also got to see the sabotage system in action. While you're busy trying to slalom your wildebeest down a snowy mountain or surfing through space, another player can pitch in and try to throw you off. When these sections are active, the word "Sabotage!" flashes on the screen, and then the other player can wave the Wii Remote and Nunchuk to toss snowballs and such at you. These items can quickly cover your whole screen, making it impossible to see what you're doing or where the heck you're going. Dastardly, indeed.

Since the premise of TV Party is that of a rabbid television network, we were told that the minigames will be organized according to channels. So there will be an Extreme Sports channel, a Trash TV channel for talk shows and the like, an MTV sort of channel for the dancing and music minigames, a girl-oriented channel that features cooking shows, and others for racing, wrestling, and more. In between games, "commercial" breaks can flash up at any point, which give the player that completes them boost bonuses and allows them to rack up more points.

The rabbids are looking in fine form, and you won't have too much longer to wait to join in on the fun. Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party is currently scheduled for release later this year.