Returning to this for about the millionth time, but rather than firing up my well-worn Dreamcast version, I went for the original PlayStation release which I haven't played since being at a friend's house in '99. I must say, the game obviously belongs on PS1. Among other intangibles, the 'worse' visuals feel more correct, they fit the vibe better.

And what a vibe. Talk about the right game at the right time. The sequel would blow things wide open with a bunch of crucial gameplay tweaks and QOL refinements - and for any kind of longtime player, they ARE sorely missed here - but this is already so cool. Addictive, authentic, intuitive, detailed, and obviously made with a lot of love. Neversoft made a good game, but I think we have to credit Hawk's personal involvement with taking it to the next level. He talked a lot about wanting to bring the excitement of skateboarding to a broader audience than their little niche, and as someone who had absolutely zero knowledge or interest (and if anything, a mildly negative view) of skateboarding pre-THPS, I can certainly say that he accomplished that with at least one kid.

It may have started as a publisher-mandated cash-in on a fad, but a solid design house and a visionary celebrity-endorser-turned-legit-development-partner made it a minor classic and the start of something huge. (And still fun today!)

Played this on the Dreamcast and I swear THPS1 changed the course of history. On its own it's a really fun game, with air-tight mechanics that finally brought the momentum and flexibility of skateboarding to video games, after many failed attempts. But also THPS1 more than any other video game liberated many young minds and taught them to skate and be defiant to authority. The fun of the game embraces the outlaw nature of skateboarding, involving everything from tresspassing to prohibited spots like malls to actually busting cop cars, all to a tastefully picked soundtrack(the theme song is "Police Truck" by Dead Kennedys for god sakes). This can all feel like very milquetoast messaging coming from a multi-million publisher who today is notorious for their exploitative business practices and tax dodging, but this message lives on. It isn't so much a video game as is a poignant view into an entire philosophy. It's the real shit.

It would be outdone by future and better games for its inclusion of tricks but THPS1 has all the basics you could possibly need. If you grew up on PC versions of the THPS games as I did, then you'll feel right at home with the Dreamcast port which avoids both the short draw-distance of the PSX version, and the low fidelity of the N64.

Fired this up to distract me from the misery of my beloved football team getting an absolute piping and ended up playing through the entire thing - all objectives and gold medals - in a couple of hours. It's a bit like the original Sonic game in that there's mechanics that get added in later games that are now standards of the series but when stripped back to the basics, there's no surprise that a core of this quality was able to provide the base for countless sequels.

Also: best soundtrack in the whole series, no question. I understand the love for 2 and 3 but there's too much of what was the current popular punk and metal of the time in them and some of that is pretty garbage. When you hear that first delay-drenched chord of Police Truck by The Dead Kennedys you know you're playing a real one.

The game is good, but there are better games than this game. This game is still worth playing, but only as a jumping off point to the better games. There is also a better version of this game (PS1) that’s available on more modern systems that also includes one of the better games.

Lastly…


ska

While this game gets a lot right from the start, there's a lot lacking in Tony Hawk's first outing. The game lacks ways of chaining combos together, and the levels aren't really designed for chaining combos together either. This really limits how good you can get at it. There's also the 2 minute timer which, honestly, I've never been a big fan of, plus the version I played back in the day (N64) didn't perform very well and didn't have very much music due to space limitations. Still, despite all this skating around feels pretty good and it's for sure a lot better than anything that had come before it.

grew up w this series :-)) but only the later games so wanted to come back and play the early titles. skating and skate culture was literally such a big piece of my life for so long like basically the entirety of my teenage years. was cute to play this and see how the series started and how it always was just so fucking good. not much in this world has a feeling as freeing as skating and consistently so impressed w how well this series manages that tone and vibe.

hard to explain if you haven’t seen any but skate videos of the mid - late 90s just have this v specific look and vibe and it’s genuinely rlly beautiful. very hard to describe but very beautiful. original thps isn’t like as fun or freeing as later entries but it feels the most like being in a skate video if that makes sense. like it definitely has to do somewhat w how locked that camera is which unintentionally (??) recreates lots of similar shots and angles from vids of the era. idk for a couple weeks in ‘21 I was recording lots of footage from american wasteland/underground 2 and the end goal there was to edit together a music video of it set to haunted - laura les lmaoo

anyhow neversoft were cooking even in the first entry. lots of rlly sexy level design here, mall level stands the fuck out w how empty and sparse it is, very eerie in the same way rando urbex videos on youtube are. the Minneapolis level def the best in terms of how the level is constructed to best get tricks that u would see in skate videos.

cool stuff in less interesting levels too like the skate bowl w the neversoft eye inside of it or how the light blinds the camera at the very beginning of the downhill jam level when ur going up on the damn. played the remaster from the early 2010s on steam around when it originally released and didn’t like it at the time but after playing how it’s actually supposed to play and feel like I like it a lot less lmaoo. I hate being negative but damn that thing sucked sm and playing these levels was like a weird distortion of a memory. the music videos that play in select levels look so good too, big into when live action footage seeps into games actually when it’s as compressed as this. also I just spent a good while looking at some of the real life skate footage of each skater on the main menu

good soundtrack :-)) unsane is here but also jerry was a race car driver

The only Tony Hawk that manages to take most of the good parts of skating. The only thing that keeps it away from the 5 stars are the competitions. Why should skaters compete against each other in such artificial spaces? I guess that's the "Pro" part of the title. The game is at its best when it reinterprets the mundane through the eyes of exaggerated skate. It feels liberating taking spaces such as a school or a shopping mall and making them places of self expression.

Most of the interesting qualities of the game were lost already in THPS2. While in the first game objectives were scarce and your reward were VHS tapes, the second game introduces money, both inside the levels as floating dollar bills and by completing objectives. Worse than that, that money is what makes your skater grow, while in the first game the stats just went up naturally as you played. From now on the spaces were not common mundane locations, now the skaters are touring around the world. The worst level in Tony Hawk 2 is the one on the beach where one of your objectives is doing ollies over a bum multiple times (to get money, I remind you). What happened with the game that asked you to destroy police cars instead?

Tony Hawk 3 fixes the fuck up of the money (you still gain abstract points that are money, but at least they are not literal), but keeps the tourist approach and still messes the objectives. Some of the objectives were about impressing other skaters or impressing some girls on bikini inside of a yatch. What happened to self expression? Now we skate to look cool in front of others?

Quando um jogo sobre skate consegue atingir e criar tantos fãs que mal sabem se manter em cima de uma prancha ou sequer nomear um atleta do esporte, é porque alguma coisa a mais ele ta fazendo. Raramente encontramos jogos de esporte tão criativos em seu design ou arte, a maioria se prende à experiência real do esporte em questão, tentando se manter pé no chão e fugindo de uma jogabilidade muito arcade, existem algumas exceções à regra como Punch-Out!!, FIFA Street e SSX. Mas a franquia que na minha opinião dominou essa família de arcade sport games foi Tony Hawk. O skatista mais influente da história conseguiu levar a cultura do esporte pra dentro de casa, e por acidente atingir aqueles que estavam alheios ao boom dos skates. Um PlayStation era o suficiente pra se tornar o próprio Tony Hawk.

Me espanta o quão certeiro o primeiro Pro Skater conseguiu ser, se tratando de um jogo baseado em um esporte real e com atletas reais, é esperado que os objetivos do jogo sigam a linha de torneios e campeonatos populares. Mas quando falamos de um esporte cuja popularidade nasceu nas ruas, é conveniente que o jogo também retrate isso e explore as possibilidades fora do manual de regras. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater adiciona a típica rebeldia presente na cultura do skate, tirando o jogador das rampas e o colocando dentro de um shopping, destruindo carros da polícia e placas de "proibido andar de skate". Tudo isso no maior formato de "fase do Super Mario 64" possível, na verdade, às vezes THPS se assemelha mais com um jogo de plataforma 3D do que com um jogo de esporte, sempre dando prioridade pra diversão ao realismo. Realizar manobras lhe concede pontos e esse é um dos objetivos em todas as fases, mas em algumas você vai passar mais tempo procurando coletáveis, enquanto usa e abusa da jogabilidade arcade do jogo para alcançá-los.

Se tratando do primeiro Pro Skater, o gameplay é sem dúvidas o pior da franquia, os controles não são tão fluídos e diversas mecânicas importantes que tornam os combos mais altos possíveis estão ausentes aqui. A quantidade de objetivos nas fases e o leque de manobras também é pequeno se comparado aos sucessores, diversas outras opções como a criação de personagem, de manobras e de pistas também ainda não estavam presentes. Nada disso torna o jogo ruim, na verdade, como dito no início do último parágrafo, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater foi certeiro demais como estreante, estabelecendo o que se tornaria uma das melhores franquias de todos os tempos.

Pretendo analisar todo jogo relevante da série com o tempo, e alguns itens eu quero analisar individualmente, como todas as áreas e a trilha sonora de cada jogo. Atribuindo um rank de E (péssimo) até S (perfeito) pra esses aspectos.

A trilha sonora de Tony Hawk's Pro Skater é composta por apenas 10 músicas, sendo todas elas rock/punk/metal, provavelmente é a única soundtrack onde todas as músicas me agradam, digna do rank S, mas como a variedade e a quantidade de músicas é baixa, acho mais justo colocá-la no rank A. As minhas 5 músicas favoritas são:

1. "Superman" by Goldfinger
2. "New Girl" by The Suicide Machines
3. "Police Truck" by Dead Kennedys
4. "Here and Now" by The Ernies
5. "Euro-Barge" by The Vandals
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Soundtrack - A

As fases desse jogo em sua maioria são ótimas e icônicas, não à toa o remake conseguiu aproveitá-las sem fazer praticamente quaisquer alterações. Pra atribuir um rank eu levei em conta o level design, o tema ou ambiente e todos os objetivos e coletáveis da fase.

A - Warehouse: Um bom mapa introdutório, nada mais. Infelizmente é muito pequeno, mas cumpre seu papel e conseguiu se tornar um clássico.

C - School: Eu me amarro na escada comprida logo no começo da fase, a área das piscinas também é bem legal de fazer manobras. Mas o resto simplesmente não me conquista, ao contrário do último, esse mapa aqui parece ser maior do que deveria.

S - Mall: Clássico. Não acho que fases lineares brilham tanto na franquia, mas a simples ideia de andar de skate em um shopping já era motivo dela ser uma das minhas favoritas da franquia. Infelizmente no modo carreira a fase simplesmente acaba quando você chega no final do shopping independente de quanto tempo você tem sobrando, um defeito que só consertaram nos futuros jogos.

S - Skate Park (Competition level): Aqui as coisas ficavam sérias, excelente mapa pra manobras, bem extenso e com bastante espaço pra pensar nos seus próximos movimentos.

S - Downtown: Se o shopping era uma das minhas favoritas, essa aqui era A MINHA FAVORITA. É a primeira fase que te coloca pra andar de skate na rua e a atmosfera é perfeita. Lembro do esforço que eu fazia pra tentar pular entre os prédios, e era muito bom ser recompensado com um espaço pra fazer manobras após realizar essa proeza.

B - Downhill Jam: Outra fase linear no estilo downhill, odeio fazer manobras nessa aqui e nunca gosto quando chego nela, mas sinceramente, eu sempre acabo me divertindo. E olhando pro design dela, eu diria que é um mapa muito bom.

B - Burnside (Competition level): Gosto da vibe desse aqui, não é um dos meus favoritos, mas o ambiente me agrada.

A - Streets of San Francisco: Outro mapa excelente nas ruas, tem uma área central muito divertida de fazer grinds, não brilha tanto quanto Downtown, mas ainda é memorável.

A - Roswell (Competition level): O layout dessa fase consegue ser tão bom quanto o tema "Área 51" que adotaram, porém, nunca esteve entre minhas preferências na hora de jogar...

8/10