E3 2001 Hands-onTony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x is being ported to the Xbox by Treyarch, the company responsible for the excellent Dreamcast ports of the first two Tony Hawk games. But rather than simply updating the game's graphics for the Xbox version, Treyarch is making some slightly more drastic changes.

Character models and textures have been given an appropriate bump up in quality, though the models don't look or move as smoothly as they do in Tony Hawk 3. In fact, in the build of 2x being shown here at E3, the trick animations looked downright choppy at times. That should definitely be fixed by the time the game is released. 2x will contain every level from the first two Tony Hawk games, as well as at least one new level, a nightclub filled with rails and cool discotheque-style lighting effects. The version shown here at E3 contained three levels from Tony Hawk 2--the hanger, Venice Beach, and Marseilles--as well as the new club level. Some existing levels have been tweaked a bit, as well. For instance, in the hanger level, you'll now be able to get up into an air traffic control tower. In action, 2x plays just about as well as any other version of Tony Hawk 2, once you've gotten used to playing the game on an Xbox controller.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x is scheduled to be released this year. It will likely contain some sort of networking capabilities, though whether that will be online or simply LAN play remains to be seen.