What not to do when converting a console game over to a handheld.
At the time, the Game Boy Color was having moderate success, at least until Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance the following year. And since Activision wanted to get the game out on as many platforms as possible, the original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater came to the 8-bit handheld. Developed by Natsume Co. (yes, the same dudes who do a series you probably heard of called Harvest Moon), Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the GBC is not as good as its console iteration. In fact, it's a boring mess that not even avid skateboarders should pick up, even if it came out years ago.
Now, Pro Skater never was really known for its plot (unless you count the later titles like Tony Hawk's Underground or the most recent Project 8), and this GBC port is no exception. It boils down to three game modes: "Half Pipe Mode", "Tournament Mode" and "1 on 1 vs. CPU Mode".
The first one, "Half Pipe Mode", is what it says it is. You do stunts on a half pipe for about 1 minute. You choose one of ten real skaters, including Tony Hawk himself (natch), and use the directional pad and A/B buttons to do stunts in the game. The problem is button presses become somewhat unresponsive, in particular the B button. I've hammered every single combo I could think of that could work, and it only works only 20% of the time. This problem not only happens with a Game Boy Color, but the Game Boy Advance and even the Game Boy Player attachment on the Gamecube have the same results. It appears you have to do it the moment you leave the pipe and you can't do it in mid-air, despite I can do Ollies in mid-air no problem with the A button. And if you do a stunt before you land, you'll see a incredibly strange mangling of graphics to resemble a "crash", then get back on the starting point and repeat this until time runs out. It's dull, and there's no point to playing this mode unless you wanna see if you can do stunts like Impossible and Ollies higher than 360.
Each skater in particular has a distinct strength and weakness. They each have stats in Speed (how fast they move), Acceleration (how fast they move from a standing start), Braking (how fast they stop) and Jumping (how much air they get). Only the first two are important in Half Pipe Mode. All four are used in the other two game modes.
The next mode, Tournament mode, works like this: you choose one of five places to race (Street, Park, Downtown, Harbor and Skate Park), and, depending on which one you choose to start; you go through each place one by one, doing stunts, grinding on rails, and grabbing VHS tapes for points against three A.I. opponents. You can also use speed boosts by pressing up on the directional pad, which doesn't make sense from a design standpoint. Skateboards with nitro boosters? Am I playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or Tony Hawk's Super Mega Pro Skater Nitro 2019?
The problem is that it's either too easy or too difficult at times. The moment you get on a ramp, you can mash buttons and do a stunt with ease, where the game stops, shows the skater you're playing as doing said stunt with sounds that resemble "cheering", and then you're jumped back into the game. You can skip this, but it's very jarring and breaks the game's flow. If you mash buttons, you're guaranteed to do an Indy or Slick Fish for a quick three points, and maybe do another stunt once in a blue moon for five more. Grinding things isn't very hard either, as you can jump from rail to rail to rail and get points every time. And it works like a multiplier, so if you keep jumping rails, you can nail up to 4 points for grinding it. It seems easy, but your computer AI will somehow be able to do over 100 points per place. 1 on 1 vs. CPU Mode is about the same as above, except you choose one place to race in and race against a computer opponent for time. Pro Skater gives you a long 20-digit password after every Tournament race, except for the last one. Why Natsume did this is baffling. There's plenty of room in the cartridge to put in a battery backup, plus the tournament itself can be beaten in 10 minutes, so what's the point of a bloody password to begin with? It seems very unnecessary.
Plus there's one major flaw in both Tournament and 1 on 1 modes: If you crash, your board flies off the screen no matter what you hit, and you resume where you crashed. It will take you 5-10 seconds to get away from the crash area by jumping or moving sideways very slowly, which screws you over completely in 1 on 1 vs. CPU mode, as the AI itself cheats a bit and is flawless at times.
The game looks slightly bland in terms of locations. You see the same items and ramps in every race (which looks real tacky), plus the models for the skaters look as if they were done with only four colors. I've seen NES games look better than this. The sound however, isn't bad. While the cheering and whatnot sound weird, the music is somewhat decent with a few catchy tunes but nothing distinctly memorable. Although there's one strange bug: In the Harbor race, if you fall in the water, you hear a splash noise, the music stops, then resumes when you get out. This happens not only for you, but for the other three players as well. It's jarring.
Here's one big problem with this game: Pro Skater is singleplayer only. It surprises me how much this game doesn't support two players, both the 1 on 1 and Tournament modes would've benefited from it. And since the game has very little replay value, you'll go through each gameplay mode and level once, and then get bored of it real quick.
There are many, many rules of video gaming that should be known by many gamers. Like "handheld versions of a console-centric game usually suck". Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the Game Boy Color is a prime example of this rule. It's a game that was a console game, ported to a handheld, and isn't as fun or engaging as the console version. There's little depth to it, it doesn't look good and it's fun for about 30 minutes. I thankfully didn't pay for this game (it was given to me by a neighbor), and you shouldn't pay for this either.
Pros: Nice music, real skaters.
Cons: Little game variety, long and unnecessary passwords, stunts are either too easy or too hard to pull off.