Surfing is a sport that has never really been given its due in the realm of home video games – to say nothing of its lack of appearances on Nintendo consoles, since recent titles like TransWorld Surf were relegated to the PS2 and Xbox only.

All of that, fortunately, has been pretty much rectified with the release of Activision/Treyarch's Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, which combines the trick-style game play of a Tony Hawk title with the sport of surfing. It pretty much comes away as a winner if you're either a surfing devotee or a fan of this type of game.

Slater, a six-time world champ, spent a great deal of time involved in the development of the game, and it shows: Pro Surfer is packed with real beaches, a surprisingly robust mix of levels, tons of tricks, selectable surfers, and more compressed videos to unlock than your average Special Edition DVD title.

First things first, however: the game play is tough at times but, overall, incredibly addictive. Slater uses a Tony Hawk-like control scheme (no surprise there as developer Treyarch made its name on porting that best-selling franchise to DreamCast) in which you pull off a bevy of tricks unique to each part of the wave you happen to be riding.

As you might expect, the art of surfing is easy to learn (initially) but difficult to master, requiring a lot of practice before each and every facet of the game's surfing engine is understood.

A Tutorial mode is included to get you started, and I would highly recommend anyone new to the game to immediately complete this three-tiered instruction set before starting the main game. Slater provides voice-over intros on nearly every instruction, and it's the best way to begin executing the different moves and combos you'll need to pull off. (If there's a gripe I have with the Tutorial, however, it's that there's a relatively big jump between the instruction on basic moves and the more advanced tricks. Just remain patient and keep the manual handy!).

Once that's completed, you're off to the beach (California and Florida surf spots start the game), and Pro Surfer begins in earnest.

This isn't Animal Crossing -- it's just surfing -- so there's not a whole lot to say about the main point of the game: this is all about catching a ride, having some fun, and pulling off a few sweet moves along the way. Fortunately, Pro Surfer gives you a mix of tricks and goals to accomplish, so there's some variety spread across the game's different levels.

Once you see a decent rolling wave approaching (and it definitely won't take long), you press the Y button to stand and start moving. After that, you're off and surfin', baby! A handful of tricks can be performed right off the bat on the face of the wave (floaters, carve/snaps), as can a limited number of aerials (pulled off by holding down the A button and surfing off the wave's crest).

Each wave has its own design, but all are distinguished by a barrel that comes crashing down on the right side, contrasted by a relatively benign swell off to the left. In general, you'll want to pull your tricks off somewhere in between these two sections, constantly adjusting your position so that you don't get sucked into the barrel. On a few occasions, though, you may want to go for broke, as Pro Surfer rewards you for flirting with danger -- if you make a maneuver close to the barrel of the wave, you'll get higher points.

It's all about timing, and coming up with your own comfortable formula for pulling off tricks. No matter what mode you play in, the ability to make long rides with big moves is the principal goal at hand, and learning the various tricks is essential to being successful at the game.

If you want to score really big, you'll need to pull off a combo, which requires a bit of practice but will be a cinch once you've gotten the hang of it.

A "Special Meter" is on-screen at all times, and once you pull off enough maneuvers on the wave's face, the meter shifts from green to yellow, indicating bonus points and opening the door to pulling off some truly advanced tricks. Just make sure you end your run before wiping out, because you don't receive any partial points when indulging in this mode.

Slater's moves require a mix of button mashing and control stick precision. Pro Surfer is one of those games where you need to be precise in which direction you tilt the control stick, because that can often be the difference between landing a 5000 point bonus and wiping out.

Such precision can be off-putting to some gamers, but with enough practice, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer is the kind of title that's ultimately highly rewarding. Once you settle on your own formula and learn enough tricks to score big points, you'll have no problem wanting to experiment with some higher scores and pull off even more difficult tricks later on.

Fifteen different, real-life beaches are incorporated into Pro Surfer (though only a few are unlocked right off the bat), and each beach has its own distinct wave. Some have harsher breaks (meaning they don't extend out too far and make carving more difficult), others are smaller: easier to ride, perhaps, but harder to execute some of the more difficult tricks on.

Another key element of the game is tube riding -- actually surfing into the "eye" of the barrel. This is clearly the most difficult aspect of surfing to pull off, requiring you to maintain your balance meter while simultaneously trying to pull off a trick at the same time. You also get points for the amount of time you spend in the tube, so as long as you pull out of the barrel before wiping out, you're guaranteed to score some points.

For game modes, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer offers a deep, satisfying Career Mode that's the core of the single player experience. You can choose from Slater or any one of eight real-life surfing champs, and begin your around-the-world quest for surfing dominance. You start by completing a mix of timed objectives at each beach -- which often include pulling off linked tricks, scoring a maximum set of points, and taking a photo shoot -- and move on to slightly more difficult goals, like breaking apart icebergs (on the Antarctica level -- I kid you not!), and engaging in competitions.

Along the way, you'll unlock new surf boards, new beaches, videos, and more, plus set your own high scores which you can break apart in the other single player modes (Free Surf, Icon Challenge, and High Score).

Multiplayer is somewhat limited in Pro Surfer (you have the pre-requisite Time Attack and Head-to-Head options), but the game does include a fun mode called Push. You and a friend start on a split screen and try to "push" the other off the screen by accomplishing more and more tricks. If you do this better than your buddy, you'll find your section of the screen growing bigger and bigger as your opponents' shrinks in size! It's definitely one of the wackier, but also entertaining, multiplayer modes I've seen in a while.

There are a lot of videos packed into Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer, which include actual location footage of each individual beach, each individual surfer, and even an entire 30-minute "Pipeline Sessions" TV show! It's highly educational and a fantastic bonus to have, though as you might expect, the GameCube doesn't handle all of this flawlessly, as the video is quite compressed and blurry. (Too bad Treyarch didn't have access to Factor 5's new DivX tool, which undoubtedly would have helped the quality of the FMV here.)

Graphically, Slater is solid. The waves and their assorted textures look really good, the different surf spots are nicely rendered, and there's a good sense of speed built up once you start crankin'. There is some slow-down and frame-rate dipping when the waves crash down (and especially when you wipeout), but in general, I found the title quite pleasing aesthetically.

On the audio side, Slater is surprisingly robust. Unlike the hideous, blaring rock soundtracks EA threw at us in their Madden and NHL franchises this season, the varied play list Pro Surfer serves up is quite satisfying. You'll hear grooves from the likes of Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Jeremy Kay, Pearl Jam and others, and you have the ability to fine tune the soundtrack, eliminating certain tracks altogether if you find them to be too annoying. The wave crashes and other nautical sounds are perfectly in tune with the tone of the title.

Overall, Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer is a highly addictive, fun, and polished game that finally delivers the goods to those players out there who have been craving a quality surfing title on a Nintendo platform. Surf's up, dude!