Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

• Release Date: September 28, 1999
• Genre: Sports
• Style: Skateboarding
• Similar Games: 720° (Nintendo Entertainment System), Skate or Die (Nintendo Entertainment System), Street Sk8er (PlayStation), Skate or Die (Commodore 64/128), Thrasher: Skate & Destroy (PlayStation)

Game Description

In this 3D skateboarding game, you can play as the BirdMan himself, Tony Hawk, or as one of nine other top professionals: Bob Burnquist, Kareem Campbell, Rune Glifberg, Bucky Lasek, Chad Muska, Andrew Reynolds, Elissa Steamer, Geoff Rowley, and Jamie Thomas. Work your way up the ranks by landing tricks in competitions to become the best skater on the circuit.

Not only does the game give you the opportunity to step into the shoes of nine world-renowned skateboarders, but it also gives you the chance to skate some of the world's greatest and most famous skating venues. There are even spots that no longer exist, such as San Francisco's Embarcadero and the infamous Burnside in Portland, Oregon.

More than a mere spokesperson for the game, Tony Hawk actually worked closely with the development team to create a more authentic skateboarding experience. You will also skate to the tunes of popular old and new school punk bands, such as the Dead Kennedys, the Suicide Machines, Goldfinger, and Primus.

Compete for medals and skate your way to improved statistics and new levels in the single-player Career mode. Or, challenge an opponent to a contest in the game's two-player split-screen Graffiti mode to spray-paint your way to victory. No matter which mode you choose, you'll need to master the game's motion-captured pro-signature tricks while riding each professional's official board.

Roots & Influences

The earliest influential skateboarding game is 720°, which premiered in the arcade in 1983 and was later ported to other systems such as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and the Game Boy Color. The NES actually featured two versions of Skate or Die, both of which were successful.

Review: Overall

Not since 1983 has a videogame captured the essence of skateboarding the way 720° did in the arcade. While no technical wonder, 720° was able to translate the free roaming style of the sport with a three-quarter perspective and sprite-based graphics. After a dearth of 720° console ports and decent imitations such as Skate or Die, T&C Surf Designs, and Street Sk8ter, the sport of skateboarding finally gets true representation in the videogame world. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater uses a similar formula as 720° and makes a beautiful transition into 3D.

Snowboarders, known skateboard allies, have had their cup overflow with high quality snowboarding simulations since the 32-bit gaming revolution has allowed realistic 3D sports games. Skaters have had to resort to playing snowboarding games to get their digital boarding fix or visit the arcade to drop quarters into Sega's Top Skater.

Top Skater is an entertaining and quality title that is more akin to a racing game than real world skateboarding. Running on the more powerful Model 3 hardware, Top Skater features sharper graphics and smoother animation than the PlayStation powered Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, but can't compare to the latter's awesome play mechanics, level design or vast array of features.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater features ten world-class professional skaters including skateboarding superstar Tony Hawk. Each skater has strengths and weaknesses depending on real world attributes. For example, Tony Hawk -- often referred to as the Michael Jordan of skateboarding -- is a much better ramp skater then he is street skater and that is reflected in the game.

Andrew Reynolds, one of the world's greatest street skaters, excels at street style tricks within the game. The playable skaters in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater include Brazilian sensation Bob Burnquis; the super-extreme Jamie Thomas; Denmark native Rune Glifberg; Britain's Geoff Rowley; Chad Muska; Bucky Lasek; street skating legend Kareem Campbell; and Elissa Steamer, the first female to have a pro model street board.

The terrain in the nine skate areas in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is every bit as varied as the available players. Although the objective differs from area to area, the goal in the majority of the levels is to earn five VHS tapes (this will make more sense as you read on). Other levels are set up like a contest with you competing against other skaters for a bronze, silver or gold medal.

The game begins innocently enough with a simple skatepark featuring a nice mixture of street and ramp inspired obstacles, but quickly moves you into more advanced levels such as a New York shopping mall, a Miami school yard, downtown Minneapolis, and an intense downhill race in Phoenix. Many areas are modeled using real-world venues. The best examples of this are the infamous and now extinct Embarcadero in San Francisco and Burnside in Portland.

The Embarcadero, better known as EMB, is one of California's most legendary skate spots, and in its heyday, was the epicenter of skateboarding. Skateboarding was eventually banned at EMB and it has since been turned into a recreational sports area. If you never made the trip to EMB, playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is as close as it gets.

Burnside has a long tradition of being one of the most grueling skate spots in the world and is revered as one of the hardest to conquer. Burnside is a battered and beaten concrete park with very tight transitions, chopped up coping and loads of vertical transition. It was made by the skaters of Portland and hides underneath a highway overpass. It has also been recreated in striking detail in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

The single-player Career mode allows you to pick a player and earn and win your way through each level and contest. As you earn tapes and win contests, new levels open up and the skater's skills and equipment improves. Tapes are earned by reaching high score milestones, completing a task within the level, or finding the one hidden tape within each level. Once you earn all of a skater's tapes, real video footage of that skater can be viewed.

As medals are earned in the contest levels, additional contests are opened and your skater is invited to compete in them. All medals and tapes earned in Career mode are saved to the PlayStation memory card for use in the single-player Free Skate mode and in the various two player modes as well.

High scores are reached by performing tricks, jumping large gaps, catching air, and grinding rails, tables and ledges. The real key to getting the highest score possible is to master the game's complex combination system. For example, try doing a 360° kickflip into a 5-0 grind and end it with a frontside kickflip Indie out of the grind. If skater talk is Greek to you, don't worry: the game does an excellent job at explaining the intricacies of skate tricks and how to combine them together to improve your score.

Worth mentioning about the multiplayer aspects of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is the presence of a split screen mode. Skating in the various areas with a friend is an exciting experience. You'll be able to arrange a contest to compete against each other or just skate around the levels and have a freestyle session. Challenge a buddy to a match in Graffiti Mode, and the various obstacles are spray-painted the color of the skater who performed the best trick on that obstacle.

Graphically, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater nearly stretches the PlayStation to its technical limit. Skater animations are smooth and precise, and you never get the impression the skater's tricks or falls are preset animations, something we've grown accustomed to with most sports games. When a skater is in motion, everything appears to affect movement: the obstacles, the skater's speed, the strength of the skater, and the skater's statistics. Whether the skater is pulling a trick or bailing, it looks totally original. There always seems to be full spatial awareness with the skater, and the physics engine appears almost too advanced for the PlayStation's computational prowess.

Environments are richly detailed with varying texture maps. Each building features a unique look and feel with various brick styles and original architecture -- no two appear the same. In the Phoenix level, for example, most of the action takes place down the side of a hill in a ravine. The hill is very steep and the masterfully rendered rocky environment zooms by with little pop up and zero clipping.

Sound effects are dead-on as well. Riding on bricks sounds like a real skateboard on brick, and both grinds and rail slides have distinctly different sound effects. To hear the sounds emitting from the mouth and body of a slamming skater is to feel the pain as if experiencing it personally. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater's sound effects were meticulously engineered by Tommy Tallarico Studios, one of the best known sound studios in the game industry.

Neversoft's dedication to creating a highly playable yet authentic skateboarding experience is commendable. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is a fun, addictive and beautiful game and belongs in any extreme sports fanatic's library. Nothing has been sacrificed and the quality and expertise of the Neversoft designers, coders and artists shine through in grand fashion. They have created a game that will easily appeal to game players of all types.

Review: Enjoyment

If nothing else, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is extremely fun. The level objectives are challenging and rewarding, and once all objectives are completed, the game really opens up. It's close enough to being as fun as real skateboarding to be an adequate substitute on rainy days.

Review: Graphics

The draw-in is kept to a surprising minimum, given the amount of polygons the environments and the skater are built with. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater pushes the PlayStation to its polygon-pushing limits. The level of detail is high and so is the variety of textures.

Review: Sound

The sound effects are incredible and very realistic. Rather than creating an original score, Neversoft signed real bands to contribute music, a formula we've seen before. There could have been more variety, however. A few ska songs and some hip-hop would have rounded-out the tunes and made the music score more complete.

Review: Replay Value

There's no denying that this is the most complete skateboarding videogame created to date. The challenging level directives do little more than open up all of the hidden areas and reveal all the secrets this game holds. Once these levels are opened, the real fun begins. The most entertaining aspect of {*Tony Hawk's Pro Skater} is the ability to roam the streets in free-for-all fashion.

Review: Documentation

The instruction manual gives you enough information to get you started without spoiling the real fun of the game, which is learning the intricate combo system. If you are looking for a spoiler, I recommend a strategy guide to assist in finding the game's little secrets.

Production Credits

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