A Playstation Retrospective: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (1999)

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...But first, POP QUIZ: What does this Pizza Hut Commercial Have To Do With Tony Hawk's Pro Skater?

If I may continue to veer off-topic, this soundtrack sounds awful in 2013.

Don't get me wrong. My entire knowledge of music was just country and gospel when this game was released, and I downloaded all of these rock songs during my Napster days, with the exception of that lone rap song that barely anyone knows was actually in the game (and did age marginally better than the rest). In fact, this franchise has almost completely shaped my taste in music. Still, how could I possibly continue listening to Suicidal Machines' "New Girl?" That song is comically bad. I won't get into that one song from the soundtrack that everyone really loves and demanded would be in the remake, in fear of starting a world-class riot.

To most gamers, this was the start of a great trilogy (I say "most" because I think Underground was by far and away the best one) of fast-paced action and cursing at your controller for antagonizing you when you tried to get the hidden tape in "Downhill Jam." Since, this franchise has gotten so bad that it couldn't even make up a proper funeral because the coffin was buried the wrong way.

Let's take it back then to its glory days, shall we?

WOW SOME OF THESE DESIGN CHOICES WERE AWFUL. For example, the game automatically maintains speed for you, which sounds like a good idea until you realize you have to hold down the d-pad to stop and stay in place. It's very uncomfortable, especially when you are trying to rotate and end up naturally holding down two different directional buttons with two different fingers. I shouldn't press a button in order to stay still and do nothing. Also, the camera doesn't rotate with you until you let go of that d-pad.

Otherwise, the mechanics are a lot more fluid than I could have ever recalled. This was all thanks to its relative simplicity

The idea of a skate level with a start and end is more excruciating now than it ever was. The hidden tape in Downhill Jam is not too bad... oh who am I kidding, it's awful, and restarting the run after every failure made it worse. That said, I did have an much worse time trying to get the hidden tape in the mall because of the design of the ledges. Look closely and you'll see that the player will fall off a ledge maybe a foot or two before the ledge itself ends. Welcome to software programming in 1999. I would say I'm happy these level designs were abandoned after this game, but those specific ones just keep coming back in future games. The odd thing about Mall and Downhill Jam are that those are Tony Hawk's favorite levels and he is the reason they show up again in THUG2 AND THPSHD, granted the latter had quicker restarts and would bring you back up to the top when you finished.

My favorite levels of the first few games are the small skateparks like Chicago and SkateStreet (in THPS2) because the dense amount of objects in a small area led to a myriad of creative lines. Of course, this idea was mostly abandoned when Neversoft realized the PS2's CPU could handle bigger levels and compensated by adding in more tricks. The flow of the mechanics certainly improved (although I hate the revert to this day) but this flow of the gameplay just wasn't the same anymore. All that said, it is really nice to skate in places that left no space wasted like Roswell. While we're talking about levels, the cars in Minneapolis are just as scary as I remember. They do not care for your life. They run you over without slowing down at all, then honk at you for being such a tool.

In terms of visuals... I have no idea what kind of TV I was using back then to think that these characters had complete faces.

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This is something I've noticed a lot with Playstation games. The processor just couldn't handle rendering anything close to a real face. I'm surprised that someone's eyes not being 2 lines was too much to ask for. Also, look at the "E" in "player." Subtle visuals, Neversoft.

One more thing should be mentioned; the grinding. No, not the skateboard-appropriate grinding. I mean the fact that this game has a total of 30 goals to get and 3 competitions, but the developers stretched this game out by making you do the same career mode 11 times. That is a really lazy way out of making a long experience. In fact, the goals themselves aren't interesting. Every level has the same 5 things to do: SKATE, High Score, Pro Score, Hidden Tape, and some arbitrary thing you have to do 5 times ("knock down 5 boxes" or "grind 5 tables"). Each additional time you finish career mode adds little to the table.

It sounds like I'm being hard on this game, but I'm not trying to. It's tons of fun when you have nothing to do. Even after EA's Skate, these controls are no less fun to use (minus the aforementioned stopping issue) and if you asked me how well this game has lasted even after 14 years, I'd say the rust factor is almost none.