Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

Developer: Neversoft (Original Version), Edge of Reality (N64 Port) Publisher: Activision

Released: March 15, 2000 Rated: E 8/10

The catalyst of the extreme sports gaming boom in the late-‘90s to mid-2000s, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater first debuted on the PlayStation in fall of 1999. Carrying a sense of authenticity that rarely survived the transfer process from the streets and skate parks of real life to the virtual realm, it was an immediate hit — a previously unseen representation of the physics, attitude, and aura of skateboarding that was also a brilliantly polished and impossibly addicting video game in and of itself.

Everybody grab them tapes (is that all you do?)

Arriving on the N64 several months after the PS1 original’s release, the typical shortcomings of the cartridge format are as apparent as ever when it comes to the Tony Hawk series. A game as iconic for its licensed soundtrack, enabled by the storage capacity of the CD format, as it is for its gameplay, there’s obviously going to be some sacrifices made that carry a bit more weight. While that doesn’t mean completely eliminating tracks by Goldfinger or Suicidal Tendencies, it does shorten them down to “Hit Clips” length, which is a real drag. And along with some weaker resolution on textures and, of course, removal of all the FMV sequences (kind of lame to collect all these tapes and not get to watch any of them), there’s always going to be a preface to the N64 versions of the series that you’re not getting the full formative experience of some of the other kids who asked for skateboards for Christmas in 1999.

That doesn’t mean that even operating at only about 85% attitude, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater isn’t a wonderful, addicting foray into what would become the blueprint of the genre. With iconic, well-designed locations like the school, mall, and, of course, the warehouse, and an intuitive control system that handles like butter no matter what console you choose to play on, Pro Skater makes the most of its gameplay whether you’re out to conquer the objectives in career mode or simply head into free skate and explore. The trappings of this and the next few titles differ greatly from those of the PS2 era, with a two-minute timer in play to keep your teeth gritted while shooting for that pro score or looking for the last letter in “S-K-A-T-E,” but the arcade-style feel that accompanies this setup makes it all the more novel to revisit, even with the open-ended level design afforded by later entries.

The excitement and just plain old warmth in your gut that comes with nailing a huge combo to medal a skate competition or grinding the fifth and final cop car in San Francisco to the sound of Dead Kennedys’ “Police Truck” is still a chef’s kiss quality moment in video games. Once you’ve experienced it, it becomes clear why all the culture that went along with it permeated an entire generation’s music taste and fashion sense, even if they couldn’t pull off a kickflip to save their lives no matter how hard they tried. So although the little blue cartridge is objectively outclassed in this arena, you don’t need CD-level sound quality to figure out why we can all still name a dozen or so professional skateboarders without much hesitation, but not the rosters of BMX riders, in-line skaters, surfers, or Supercross riders that followed in their wake.

Continuing Legacy

With copycats and engine re-skins featuring everything from snowboarding to wakeboarding and in-between, the immediate influence of the Pro Skater games was staggering, but the Tony Hawk series only improved until arguably peaking with the releases of the Underground games and American Wasteland. Though it lost ground to EA’s Skate franchise during a long period of unsuccessful reboots, its revival with the remake of the first two games only proves the lasting superiority of the Tony Hawk games, both for nostalgia and for purely enjoyable gameplay and aesthetic.