This will forever be my favorite skateboarding game - I was always a fan of Bucky Lasek. This is the game that helped put skateboarding and skateboarding games on the map - it may be simple but we will forever remember the Warehouse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eot1QJK0r-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eot1QJK0r-Y
The one that started it all. With a great soundtrack and visual identity, this game was pretty cool back in the day. Playing it nowadays makes its jankiness more apparent. It also excludes many staple features from modern Tony Hawk games (like reverts and manuals). It still is a revolutionary game in it's own right
The concept of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is to simply make the player grow into becoming a professional at the game's complex inner-workings, making it for a truly remarkable sports title. The focused gameplay of skate tricks, combos, simple challenges, crushing but rewarding difficulty, and environment interaction make the game feel almost fully intact and can leave it being really addicting to feel the power of skating. The only drawback are that the controls can mostly be unresponsive and sometimes ruin the momentum of gameplay. The arena-designed levels of progression within the Career Campaign are excellent, taking everyday settings and making it epic skating sessions that are fully interactive, detailed, and memorable. The other modes of free skate, multiplayer, and single sessions are great for replay value. The wide selection of decks and avatars off professional skateboarders stand out with unique tricks and combos and really add variety. The sound design is great in emulating skateboards and feeling realistic, but the licensed music utilized in the game truly immerse the player and are iconic as all.
To tell the truth this isn't worth playing in current year because it's age is very obvious, but PLEASE at least just listen to the soundtrack of this game.
Makes you feel like a 10 year old kid with long brown, shaggy hair and baggy jeans with an oversized black Metallica tee sitting on your living room carpet crisscross applesauce in front of your 42 inch stark silver CRT television after a long sweaty day at the skatepark as your 5 year old black lab sits on the couch behind you and the sprinkler is on outside as your overtly attractive mom pours you a glass of ice cold lemonade and your bitch teenage sister wants to watch Friends but you're about to hit 40k on downhill jam as the sun sets outside and an orange hue permeates everything around you but all you can focus on is the satisfying sound of the skateboard grinding against a half pipe as your eyes are glued to the score counter and you pray that you can get enough points before time runs out.
You know what? Forget what I said earlier. Give it a shot at least.
Makes you feel like a 10 year old kid with long brown, shaggy hair and baggy jeans with an oversized black Metallica tee sitting on your living room carpet crisscross applesauce in front of your 42 inch stark silver CRT television after a long sweaty day at the skatepark as your 5 year old black lab sits on the couch behind you and the sprinkler is on outside as your overtly attractive mom pours you a glass of ice cold lemonade and your bitch teenage sister wants to watch Friends but you're about to hit 40k on downhill jam as the sun sets outside and an orange hue permeates everything around you but all you can focus on is the satisfying sound of the skateboard grinding against a half pipe as your eyes are glued to the score counter and you pray that you can get enough points before time runs out.
You know what? Forget what I said earlier. Give it a shot at least.
The influence of the first game in the Tony Hawk series can't be understated. It's solely responsible for popularizing extreme sports games. I still remember playing it when it first released and being blown away by it.
Revisiting it in 2024, it doesn't play as well as I remembered. Skating feels a bit janky compared to later games in the series, which are known for being tight and responsive. If you have the nostalgia for the first game, it can be worth booting up for a few runs. Otherwise, I'd highly recommend the excellent THPS 1+2 remake, which basically renders this version obsolete.
Revisiting it in 2024, it doesn't play as well as I remembered. Skating feels a bit janky compared to later games in the series, which are known for being tight and responsive. If you have the nostalgia for the first game, it can be worth booting up for a few runs. Otherwise, I'd highly recommend the excellent THPS 1+2 remake, which basically renders this version obsolete.
Video: https://youtu.be/8mVvK-sJ0FY
Such a fun arcade style game. I say this with a lot of games I play, but I did not expect this to be so good. I thought it would be a lot clunkier, but it has aged so well mechanics wise. I have a couple complaints, but mainly complaments.
Level design is top tier. It's just so well done and specifically made for you to have fun. Rails and ramps everywhere. The locations of each Level are all so unique as well, Skating in at a school, Skating down a Canyon, Skating in a Mall, Skating in a contest, Skating in cities, etc., all of this is so memorable and so damn fun to mess around in.
The Stuff you collect and do in the Levels only adds to the arcade fun. Collecting Letters to spell "SKATE", finding the Hidden Tape, and usually breaking or skating on a certain amount of things, as well as getting a certain amount of points. Getting anything over 25,000 points was way to hard for me, so I usually only got 4 out of the 5 Tapes. Still awesome though.
The Music just adds on to this games feel. This game really feels like a Time Capsule from the 90s. Music was some white boy punk stuff, but it amplified the Skating atmosphere so well, I really enjoyed the OST.
As I stated earlier, the Mechanics have aged great. Skating feels really great, and is just so smooth and rarely messes up, really impressive what they were able to do. Some would say it aged poorly graphically, which I guess is technically true, but I've always liked how these 3D 90s graphics look.
Some stuff didn't age as well. Sometimes it feels like you should have landed on something and you don't, sometimes going up the ramps can be a bit wonky, playing on the D-Pad isn't bad at all, but it shows it's age with the amount of moves that require you to press multiple different buttons on the D-Pad and the other Shape Buttons. None of this is all that bad, just a little frustrating at times.
Besides a couple minor complaints, this definitely lived up to the hype. Just great Arcade type fun, getting High Scores, with great music, and great collectibles. If you want a game that is actually fun unlike most of the shit they release today, give this a try, it's only like 2 hours long (if you're bad like me), so you don't have an excuse to not try it.
Score: 4.0/5
Letter Grade: A-
Level design is top tier. It's just so well done and specifically made for you to have fun. Rails and ramps everywhere. The locations of each Level are all so unique as well, Skating in at a school, Skating down a Canyon, Skating in a Mall, Skating in a contest, Skating in cities, etc., all of this is so memorable and so damn fun to mess around in.
The Stuff you collect and do in the Levels only adds to the arcade fun. Collecting Letters to spell "SKATE", finding the Hidden Tape, and usually breaking or skating on a certain amount of things, as well as getting a certain amount of points. Getting anything over 25,000 points was way to hard for me, so I usually only got 4 out of the 5 Tapes. Still awesome though.
The Music just adds on to this games feel. This game really feels like a Time Capsule from the 90s. Music was some white boy punk stuff, but it amplified the Skating atmosphere so well, I really enjoyed the OST.
As I stated earlier, the Mechanics have aged great. Skating feels really great, and is just so smooth and rarely messes up, really impressive what they were able to do. Some would say it aged poorly graphically, which I guess is technically true, but I've always liked how these 3D 90s graphics look.
Some stuff didn't age as well. Sometimes it feels like you should have landed on something and you don't, sometimes going up the ramps can be a bit wonky, playing on the D-Pad isn't bad at all, but it shows it's age with the amount of moves that require you to press multiple different buttons on the D-Pad and the other Shape Buttons. None of this is all that bad, just a little frustrating at times.
Besides a couple minor complaints, this definitely lived up to the hype. Just great Arcade type fun, getting High Scores, with great music, and great collectibles. If you want a game that is actually fun unlike most of the shit they release today, give this a try, it's only like 2 hours long (if you're bad like me), so you don't have an excuse to not try it.
Score: 4.0/5
Letter Grade: A-