Posted in: Events, Pop Culture | Tagged: california, Kasso, Kasso Fest, Kasso Gaiden: Escape from the Skaterverse, long beach

We Attended Kasso Fest In Long Beach and Tried Their New Game

We had a chance to attend the Kasso Fest held in Long Beach this spring, their first U.S. event, and tried out their new mobile game

A short time ago, we were invited to come check out an event in Long Beach, California, as Kasso Fest was taking place for the first time in the United States. If you're not familiar with Kasso, this is a Japanese skateboarding competition series in which they have taken your average events and pushed them to new limits by making them into crazy obstacle courses. They have been designed to push the best skateboarders on the planet to their limits by providing all kinds of challenges across long rails, thin ramps, high jumps, and timed courses, which make this feel like The X-Games and Takeshi's Castle had a kid. The events have primarily been happening in Japan, but Kasso Fest brought the fun to America for the first time back in March.

The event took over an empty construction lot that has been sitting abandoned in the city for years. When we looked up the location on Google Maps, we couldn't believe this massive block-wide lot has been sitting here with no work being done on it for as long as it has in Long Beach, of all places. But the multi-layered dirt pile makes it an ideal location for organizers to set up several courses and challenges for skaters to compete in across two days. The event was set up so that two sets of skaters from around the globe (but mostly based in the U.S.) had a chance to compete across multiple challenges, with the top contenders moving on to the finals with one hard speed run at the end. Featuring music breaks in between courses from Andy Mineo, LaRussell, The Mainliners, and Earthgang

I've attended skateboarding competitions in the past, both local to my area and national tours passing through. This is one I would rank up there with some of the best, because it didn't feel like your average day of watching a bunch of people try to do tricks off a ramp, or see who could successfully grind a rail the longest. They had events that included the Long Beach Downhill, which saw them racing down a thin green obstacle course; the Rail-coaster, which was a long grind pipe suspended over a pool of water; and finally, The Grasshopper, which was a series of eight downhill platforms that were also suspended over a pool of water.

The top skaters competed in the Million Jump LB, which was essentially a mad dash to the bottom as you had to clear a number of difficult challenges against the clock, as the gate at the end had a slowly-closing crash wall you had to clear in order to make it. Everyone involved made a valiant effort, but in the end, only one person was able to truly beat the course, as Jiro Platt took home the top honors, along with a cool $10K. The livestreams of this have been taken down, but you can watch Red Bull's coverage of Day Two right here, and a shout-out to Red Bull, who also hosted the event and provided some pictures.

As we mentioned earlier, we were also able to sit down and play their all-new mobile game, Kasso Gaiden: Escape from the Skaterverse. This title is an endless runner skateboarder developed by Now Production Co. and published by TBS Television (the Japanese company, not the Atlanta one), in which you become a skater making your way through obstacle courses throughout various cityscapes, all of them with a bit of that Kasso theme to them. The catch to this is that the game is also a bit of a rhythm challenge, so as long as you know how to groove and move to the beat, you're good to go. The game feels like a mash-up of Crypt of the NecroDancer and Subway Surfers, but with it's own identity.

When I say we couldn't stop playing it, I mean it. The game is slightly addictive, if for nothing else, to see if the player can clear all the levels with perfect ratings and snag all the hidden items. It pulls no punches: it starts you off easy so you get a feel for the level, then ramps up the difficulty so you're playing the same level, but different. And it doesn't punish you as other games do; it basically has a laid-back vibe where it's okay, you did your best, now get back on the board and try again. We spent about two hours at the gaming booth playing this on Android and absolutely love it, but it also feels like a game where you gotta take a break for a moment, or you'll be spending way too much time and make it feel less fun as you go. It's meant to be a challenge, but also casual.

Overall, I thought the event was awesome. Kasso absolutely needs to start making a bigger run in the U.S. and Canada. We clearly have the talent across both countries to support it if they decided to make this an annual thing with multiple events. This was far more entertaining than a lot of "extreme sports" events we've been to in the past, just based on the creativity and challenges alone. Hopefully they return, and if not, fingers crossed they're kind enough to bring us out to Japan to see another.

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