Parkour, the art of movement, is less a sport and more a way of life. Its participants, known as Free Runners or Traceurs, view the environment and its obstacles, urban or natural, as a series of challenges to be overcome. To the Traceurs, parkour has a philosophical appeal: they feel transformed by the experience, free from the grind of city life. Since its inception in Paris during the mid-1980s, it has spread across the globe and now has an international army of exponents and enthusiasts.

In Free Running, the concrete jungle becomes your urban playground as you run, vault, jump or climb over obstacles in the most fluid and flowing manner possible. Test the boundaries of human ability as you perform death-defying leaps and jaw-dropping trips across inner-city rooftops. To be crowned King of Parkour, you must master over 50 moves, tricks and stunts including 'Kong Vaults', 'Pharaoh Climbs', 'Rail Split Vaults' and 'Vertical Wall Runs' in a variety of game modes while racing against human or computer-controlled competitors.

Free Running has been developed in association with Sebastien Foucan, one of the French founders of the movement, and the UK's foremost Parkour collection, Urban Freeflow. To aid your progress, Sébastien appears in the game as your mentor, teaching you new moves and tricks. Members of Urban Freeflow also make an appearance as unlockable playable characters.

Matt Sansom, executive producer at Core Design says: "After seeing these guys perform their amazing moves, we just knew we had to make it into a game. Working with Sébastien, Urban Freeflow and the other traceurs has been an amazing experience and hopefully people will feel the same buzz when playing the game. Free Running offers authentic, intense excitement which is true to the spirit and art of parkour."

Peter Rezon, Reef Entertainment Managing Director said, “Following the success of Free Running across Europe, we’ve wanted to expand the game’s formats, and at the same time, play to each formats strengths. So with the Wii version for example, similar to our recent release Rogue Trooper: Quartz Zone Massacre, we’ve utilised the Wii controllers to great effect, making the Free Running experience unique to Wii. We now have physical interface which works brilliantly with the extreme sport which is Free Running!”

In addition, both the Nintendo DSTM and PC version have been given an overhaul in terms of gameplay, graphical look and feel.

Peter concludes, “We’ve refreshed the overall brand messaging with these versions. We wanted to get to closer to the players who are doing the sport for real, so we’re also talking to existing Free Running teams and organisations to help with our current and long-term strategies for the franchise. We’ve focused very closely on maintaining the exciting pace, graphical looks, atmosphere and attitude that made the original games so popular and we’re very much looking forward to building on our Wii, PC and Nintendo DS portfolio with another innovative and original title.”