Pretending I’m A Superman
For today’s Retro Corner I’ve decided to look back at a PSOne classic, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Originally I was considering talking about the superior sequel but decided I wanted to focus more on where I got started with the series rather than where it peaked. You’ll find Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater on a number of different systems but I’m going to be focusing on the original PSOne version that I played back in 1999.
I still remember the very day that I first played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, it was at my neighbour’s home and I saw a group of kids playing PlayStation. At first I couldn’t really tell what they were playing but upon closer inspection I noticed it was a skateboarding game and I quickly dismissed it because it wasn’t Mario or Sonic. I was offered to have a go and the next hour consisted of me never leaving that half pipe because I was having so much fun, did I even mention this was just a demo that came in a PlayStation magazine?
At the time we had basically no idea what we were doing, it was all about going into the half pipe, mashing buttons whilst airborne and stop mashing before you came back down hoping for the best. I had no idea what we were doing but it was fun as hell, eventually I got a copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and an addiction soon ensued. Remember how the Guitar Hero/Rock Band were the big thing for a while?, well Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was basically that in the late 90′s.
Now at the age of 25 I’m smart enough to actually break down into detail how the game plays and why it worked so well. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater worked and still works to this day because it was one of those easy to pick up games, the controls only took under 30 seconds to explain meaning that it’s not something that would scare off new players. The basic controls are as follows.
- X - Jump
- Square - Flip Tricks
- Circle - Grab Tricks
- Triangle - Grind
All I have to do is tell you that those are the buttons and that it’s a skateboarding game, already in your mind you know how to play this game. At the most I’ll just tell you to hold a direction whilst performing a trick but that’s all you need to get going. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a game about experimenting, each level in the game isn’t a level but rather a virtual playground. Yeah it sounds like something that a publisher would say to sell you on the game but in the case of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater it really is the best way to describe it.
In most other games they are very goal orientated and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater features much of that but it’s not what I ended up doing during my time with the game. The goals in the game were the ones I set myself
- So X jumps huh?, I’m going to jump over that bench.
- What if I jump onto the bench and then grind off it.
- I’m going to try a 180 flip over the bench.
- Now let’s try a flip trick over the bench.
- I want to attempt a flip trick into a grind off the bench.
- Let’s do that again but this time add a 180 flip to it.
- Is a 360 over that bench possible?
That’s pretty much the world of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater summed up, sometimes it’s easy to get caught up just messing around and seeing what’s possible within the game. If it looks grind-able then there’s a very good chance that it is, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater isn’t much of a “no you can’t do that” type of game. I’ve spent more time messing around in the free skate mode in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater than I’ll ever care to reveal.
As mentioned Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater does indeed feature goals, in fact there’s an entire career mode which ideally by the end of it will help players learn the level layout. The game features the infamous two minute timer and within this time limit asks the player to complete a number of challenges from collecting five SKATE letters to finding a secret tape location in each level. There’s also high scores to beat using the game’s trick system though it may take a few attempts before you’re able to clear them, it’s the type of game designed to be very re-playable.
The core mechanics in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater are handled extremely well, tricks are easy to perform so it’s not exactly the Gran Turismo of skating and this is why the game resonated with so many players. In more recent years we’ve seen EA’s Skate series come and go, it went for a more simulation based approach to skating which was cool but at the end of the day it never achieved the level of success the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series did, go figure why.
Strangely enough one of the high points from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was the soundtrack, no this wasn’t some MIDI tracks thrown in but rather actual songs from real bands. The games industry had just moved on from the 16-bit era into one where CD-Roms were the next big thing, the extra space allowed developers to use MP3 files as opposed to having to recreate a band’s track using MIDI arrangements. There’s nothing wrong with MIDI but at the time the authentic music helped games seem more “cool” than the “nerdy” bleeps previously seen.
These days we just take licensed music for granted and whilst it may not have been the first, I’d like to think the Tony Hawk’s series played a big part in bringing licensed music to gaming. I think more than any there was one track in particular that stood out for many people, if it wasn’t for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater I don’t think this track would of been anywhere near as popular as it is.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater ended up being so popular that it didn’t just bring more exposure to the music featured in the game, it helped encourage a generation of kids to pick up a skateboard and learn how to skate. I myself am not a skater but even I can name you a bunch of different tricks thanks to the game, Mr Hawk himself wouldn’t be a household name without this game. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater wasn’t just a great game, it was actually somewhat of a landmark moment for licensed music in games, Tony Hawk and skateboarding in general.
Games in the present now all try to impress the player with it’s pretty graphics and overall high production values. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater represents a time in gaming when it wasn’t the developer or publisher with the deepest pockets that would claim all the attention, it was the team with the great idea that came out on top.
Did You Know?
Perhaps “Did you know?” is stretching it a bit but there’s actually several unused levels in the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Being that this was the first title in the series there was bound to be much trial and error alongside a bunch of stuff that never quiet worked as intended. One level that was scrapped during development was called Downhill and this was due to the developers thinking it looked too similar to a level in Sega’s Top Skater.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater
Top Skater
It wasn’t just levels that got scrapped along the way, in an early version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater your rider would “glow” whenever they built up their special meter.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater In 2013
After the success of the original game the team got to work on a sequel and gave us the legendary Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, some say 3 was an even better game but I’m sticking with 2 as the peak of the series. Following Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 the next games were called Underground and it was at that point that I gave up, yes every game did try to change things up but by then I was burnt out and by the end of it so were the guys at Neversoft.
The last game developed by Neversoft was released in 2007 and by then the series was truly milked to hell, Neversoft went on to take over for the Guitar Hero games starting with the third entry whilst Robomodo came in to inject new life into the Tony Hawk games. Sadly all they did was inject poison by releasing RIDE and Shred featuring a motion sensing plastic skateboard, it sucked.
Last year it seemed as if our dreams would come true with the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, the game was a HD remake of the classic Tony Hawk games and would feature select levels from the first two titles. Whilst not anywhere near as bad as Ride or Shred, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD was a poor remake with sloppy controls and questionable physics. I find it strange that a HD remake in 2012 is not on par with a game released in 1999 for the PSOne.
The best advice I can give anyone is to play the original version on the PSOne, N64, Dreamcast or even the PC version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 which contains all the levels from the first game. The PSOne or N64 versions are not available on either the PlayStation Store or Virtual Console so you’ll need to play them on the original systems.
In Europe the Dreamcast version is the way to go, the VGA support combined with the power of the Dreamcast means this is EASILY the best version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. If you live in North America then you lucky guys got Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2X for the original Xbox which is the first two Tony Hawk’s titles combined into one package that even manages to surpass the Dreamcast version. Sadly it’s not backwards compatible on the Xbox 360 so you’ll have to dig out that massive original Xbox in order to play it.
Long story short.
Europeans, play this
Americans, play this
