Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater! To kids of the 90s, that name brings back memories. Memories of playing the same level over and over and over just to find that perfect combo, to find the letter E hidden in a level or just to beat your asshole friend’s score. Yeah! This is why Tony Hawk became a household name, not because of his skating but because he and Neversoft were able to build a game around him and his sport.

The Tony Hawk games were never simulations, they were never trying to be difficult or complex to play, they were out to be the sports answer to fast and furious shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament. They didn’t only succeed in doing so but at the same time got people hooked to their gameplay. If you’re curious about why people were hooked to the gameplay I only want to ask: HAVE YOU NOT SEEN THE VIDEO ABOVE? (it has no audio because YouTube has permitted idiots to claim whatever they like and block videos so I would like to tell Warner Music Group to grow up) That’s Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3, It’s 20 years old and is still great fun to play.

Sound:

The soundtrack in the original Tony Hawk games was always a class above the competition. It didn’t do boring stuff like EDM, it just went for lite menu music to unbelievably good rock in-game tracks. No track in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater stood out against the others because they were all amazing. The soundtracks in other games would run away in shame against the Tony Hawk soundtrack because of how flat out badass they were. The tracks from the original 2 games are insanely good, if you want to know the tracks go to the links below:

While the original tracks are present to keep the mood it’s the modern tracks that don’t do the series justice. They are too modern, too soft and way too relaxed to keep the out of control feeling of the original’s going.

Special effects are done to a decent extent; the grinds, flips and grabs all sound about right. I would have liked them to be louder but they somehow feel right irrespective. I would like to give a special shout out to the sound effect for the grinds which reminds me of nails against chalk and while that might be painful to hear it is what you would expect of wood against metal.

Graphics:

The graphics upgrades are a sight for sore eyes. From someone who has played the original games multiple times over; these upgrades are welcome and amazing. Everything has been brought into the modern-day. The levels are amazing to look at, the elements look like they were stolen from Crysis while at the same time not looking out of place. Some creative differences have been used such as recolouring elements like the plane in the hangar so that the world doesn’t look as drab as it used to. This is amazing to see as a fan of the original series since it lets you identify level elements much more easily.

The special effects too are much better. The sparks coming off grinds are much more noticeable; every collectable is lit up like the Empire State building on New Year’s Eve and the balance meter is a welcome addition. The message boxes that display the score are seriously improved too. All these elements make the Tony Hawk remaster great to look at while you go for your next combo.

Gameplay:

The core of a Tony Hawk game is pulling off high scoring combos consisting of grinds, flips, grabs, manuals and special tricks as smoothly as you can. It is a testament to Neversoft’s creativity and gameplay design at how easy they made these to learn during the early days and a testament to Vicarious Visions for bringing this ease of use into the modern-day. The remaster follows so closely to the original controls that my muscle memory was able to take over after just a few minutes of playing. Controlling your skater is a piece of cake, commands take effect instantaneously and always do exactly what you tell them to do. The only thing that you need to learn is the key combo for each trick. Once you know how to do the tricks there is nothing left to learn.

The remaster somehow, beyond my comprehension, improves on the original by improving the input delay, adding new moves while at the same time being true to the core. It subtly adds new moves like the wall tap so that you can continue your combo in the opposite direction from which it started. It adds balance meters where there were none before and even adds stuff from later Tony Hawk games like the competition levels to keep things fresh. All these changes are more than welcome and help to reduce the frustration from the original games.

The tricks would be worthless on flat surfaces, they need pipes, rails and ramps to take them from being fun to historic. There is always a ramp to take off, there is always a rail to grind and there is always a wall to ride on. The Warehouse (from THPS1) and The Hangar (from THPS2) are perfect examples of this. These two levels are ingrained in everyone who was a fan of the original games since they were in the demo version of these games. They are also remembered because they were the most thought out levels in their respective games, they were fun to play, you didn’t need to investigate new areas for your tricks and you didn’t need to go hunting for areas for combos. These levels were the greatness of the Tony Hawk games.

On the other hand, most levels don’t have obvious connections for grinds and some don’t even have pipes for you to enjoy grab combos so you are stuck feeling stupider than you are. Some levels don’t even have walls preventing you from going out of bounds so your leap to continue your combo just says “Fuck off you dweeb” while killing your combo. I get that this is to increase difficulty but it also increases frustration two-fold thanks to the timer. These levels had the same problems in the original games and that is why they are making a return but it would have made more sense to tweak them for a better flow which has been skipped. The level design of the later levels alone is knocking a point off the overall score.

As for objectives: Each level has you nailing 3 increasingly difficult scores, collecting the letters S, K, A, T and E to make up Skate or collecting level-specific pickups while landing level-specific tricks. The collectables are fine since they are brightly lit up but the tricks have no markings on them so you end up doing stunts on everything in a desperate attempt to find the objective during the annoying as hell 2-minute timer. An additional problem with the stunt-based objectives is that you don’t always know the keys to press to pull off a stunt, this only adds to the confusion around these tasks. To ease the pain are the competition levels which have been added into the remaster. They weren’t there in the originals. These levels make you nail the best score you can without crashing to be the best of the best. These levels are well designed and great fun to play.

I love the initial and competition levels; they are great fun to play while making you find the perfect run. They are fast, furious and everything you would want in a game like this. The later levels on the other hand bring the fun factor down significantly. Don’t be surprised to find yourself quitting the game out of frustration because these levels are poorly designed while contemplating homicide against the level designers.

Conclusion:

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater needed an upgrade and it got it. This remaster does everything that the games needed. From graphical upgrades to improvements in control there is nothing I can complain about except for the poor level design and boring additions to the soundtrack which brings what could have been an astounding work of art down to borderline above average.

Pros	Cons
The classic soundtrack is back	It brought its ugly modern friends
The levels look great	The later levels still have the problems of old
Competition Levels have been added	There are levels with an end
Control elements from later games	NA
Tricks from later games	NA
Significantly improved gameplay	Multiplayer is worthless