The Tony Hawk series has had an amazing and tragic arc. When you pop a main series Tony Hawk game into your system (of which there are ten of them), you could be in for one of the greatest gaming experiences of all time, or an abysmal train wreck that will cause you to question why you ever bothered playing games in the first place, or anything in the middle. Despite the variance in quality, I would hesitate to call it inconsistent, as the general trend for these games has been to keep getting worse over time. In other words, the early games were the highs, and the latter games have been the lows. How then does the very earliest of Tony Hawk games hold up after nearly two decades? Pretty damn well, actually.
Let me get this right out of the way: there is an adjustment period that you will go through when picking this game up again. Unless you have somehow managed to not play any of this game’s sequels (a rather astonishing feat), you’ll have to spend a little bit of time getting used to how things are run here. For starters, this game is a lot more realistic in terms of its physics. Combos, or the act of stringing tricks together, are not nearly the focus that they are in later games. Moves such as the manual, the revert, and the spine transfer are all totally nonexistent, and we were still quite a few years away from getting off the board. To someone who has experience with any of this game’s successors, all of this can feel downright clunky. It won’t take long however before you’re having a total blast, and perhaps you’ll even come to appreciate this first game’s bias towards the semi-realistic side of video game skateboarding.
But I’m getting ahead of myself; I haven’t even explained what this game’s really about. Then again, the concept is so simple, it’s strange to imagine a time before it ever existed. You choose a pro skateboarder, you pick a skating arena (locales include an abandoned warehouse and a school that’s out for the summer, among others), and then you’ve got two minutes to skate around and complete as many level-specific goals as you can. There are five per locale, though they are all basically harder versions of the previous level’s goals. Two of the five goals are scored-based, where you simply have to get a certain number of points before your two minutes is up. In fact, simply trying to rack up a ton of points is one of the most fun aspects of the game, thanks to the ingenious scoring system.
Points are acquired by completing tricks, skating over predetermined gaps, and stringing together combos. Tricks are accomplished by pressing various button combinations on the controller while in the air, allowing you to perform flip tricks, grab tricks, or grinds. Each trick has a certain point total associated with it, however this total decreases the more often you use it in one two-minute run, so variety is incentivized. On top of this, the more tricks you can accomplish in a string without touching the ground (called a ‘combo’), the higher your score multiplier is. If you successfully land the trick, you get all of the points for that combo. Be careful though, because the more tricks you do, the harder it is to stay on your board. If you fall off (or ‘bail’), you lose all of the points you would have received for that combo. This means that understanding your own limits is the key to success for the point-oriented goals. It also means that there isn’t really much of a skill ceiling for the game; there’s always room for adding another trick on your combo, or having more variety in your move set. As such, just skating around and acquiring points never really ever gets old, and it can become quite addictive.
As for the other three level goals, they generally involve exploring and finding items within the level. One goal is about finding five objects in a level and defiling them (the warehouse has crates that need destroying, and the school has lunch tables that need grinding); another goal is about finding five floating letters that spell the word ‘SKATE’; and the last goal is finding a secret VHS tape hidden in the world. These goals can be really interesting, especially finding the hidden tape. It can almost become a cerebral puzzle game, trying to figure out how to get certain collectibles when they’re so high up in the air. Figuring out how to get that elusive tape on Downhill Jam will make you feel like a genius. But all of these goals become easier the more times you replay the career mode, which you’ll want to do for all ten (eleven?) skaters because it’s so damn fun. Noticing your skill progression is really fascinating while playing Tony Hawk. The first time you play through the career mode, you’ll be lucky to complete one goal during a two-minute run. By the tenth (eleventh?) time going through the career mode, you’ll probably be getting all five goals in one run without breaking a sweat. It’s incredibly satisfying seeing how good you’re getting at the game without even really trying; it all starts to come to you instinctively as you continue to play.
The one downside to playing through the same career mode over and over again though is that, despite how much fun the core skating is, the same levels and goals will start to get old. I started to feel the monotony of doing the same five goals each level by the seventh or eighth skater, especially since the levels and the differences between skaters are not that large. One way the game tries to mitigate this is by including three competition levels in the career mode, where you just try to get as many points while bailing as few times as possible, and then you’re awarded a medal based on your performance. However, since these levels are smaller and more singularly focused than the others, I probably would have prefered a few more goal-oriented levels. There aren’t many things to do outside of the career mode either. There is a single-session skate mode, where you try to get a high score for any of the levels in the career mode within two minutes. And there is a free skate option which just allows you to skate around the levels at your leisure with no time limit. There is also some fun two-player action, but due to how skill-oriented the game is, you’d better make sure you’re both of equal capabilities, or else it may not be that fun. And even still, three game modes for only two-players feels a little light to me. In fact, that is probably my biggest problem with the whole game; there is a distinct lack of content variety. What’s there is outstanding, and the gameplay itself is so stellar that it’s hard to care too much, but at some point you’ll wish you had more goals and levels and modes to play around in.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was released on the Playstation, the Nintendo 64, and the Dreamcast. For the vast majority of my time, I played the Dreamcast version, which is considered by far the best of the three. Visually, while it shows some of its Playstation roots, the game looks pretty good on the Dreamcast. The animations are wonderful, polygon counts are high enough to not distract, the draw distance is nice and often far enough to see the whole level, the physics ride the line perfectly between realistic and unrealistic, and the framerate is rock-solid throughout. But I do have a couple of gripes, one of which being the lack of detail in the levels. They all feel a little empty besides the geometry meant to be skated on. Rather than feeling like real worlds, they give the distinct impression of being video game levels. Textures could also be more detailed. Also, the art direction hasn’t aged especially well, since they went with a more realistic art style, rather than one that was a bit more stylized. Regardless, few people will find too much issue with the graphics, and most people won’t care all that much. As far as the audio goes, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater does a good job of emulating the sounds of actual skateboarding. Sound effects are all appropriate, although nothing really stands out in this department. Where the audio stands out is the music, which is simply perfect. Well, it was perfect for me. All of the music seems to be of the same punk-like genre, so if you dig it, great. If not, well, that’s too bad. There are only ten songs in the game, but their effect on the atmosphere cannot be understated. It just brings out my inner rebel, if that makes sense.
So there isn’t a ton to talk about, which is the game’s biggest flaw. But the gameplay is so outstanding, especially once your expectations of what Tony Hawk is supposed to play like is uninstalled from your memory, that it is hard to care too much about the lack of variety. People who have never played one of these games will jump right in without a hitch, and begin having a blast, pretending they're a superman in no time. And the audiovisual presentation, while dated in some respects, is fine. If you’ve never played this game, you really should; it’s a very good game that deserves your attention.
Pros:
+Core skateboard gameplay is flawless
+Perfect punk soundtrack that captures the atmosphere of the game wonderfully
+Very easy to pick up, probably impossible to master, meaning you’ll keep getting better
+Well-designed levels that you'll want to play over and over
Cons:
-You’ll have to play these levels over and over
-Art direction could have aged better
-Very few modes of play besides the core career mode