Rise and grind — It’s crazy to think the Tony Hawk games are celebrating 25 years of existence

Tony Hawk is a household name. He’s not necessarily a household face (as the many stories I’ve heard from the legendary skater and his encounters have had me tearing up with laughter), but if you’ve been around gaming for a while, you undoubtedly have played a Tony Hawk skating video game. I remember playing as Spider-Man in the early pro skater games at a friends house, but my first real encounter was on an Xbox playing American Wasteland. This September, the franchise is celebrating 25 years of existence, an insane number for any video game series. We all have our stories, but our lives are better because of these games. Let’s take a look down memory lane at the trailers from the past, along with a few reviews from GamingTrend surrounding the franchise.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater – 1999

Neversoft, the company that developed Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, made a game with actor Bruce Willis name Apocalypse. When production for the skateboarding game begun, the first character to ride a skateboard wasn’t Tony Hawk, but actually a computer model of Bruce Willis from Apocalypse.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 – 2000

This is the first of three games in the Tony Hawk series where a Marvel character is featured as an unlockable, as Spider-Man appears in this game, whereas Wolverine appears in THPS3, and Iron Man appears in Tony Hawk’s Underground.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 – 2001

Certain brands, including Vans and Flip, were in early development builds of the game but were removed before release. The Vans removal was due to Sony having an exclusive partnership with the footwear company, which forced Neversoft to remove all branding and blur all assets related to it (including any appearance in videos).

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 – 2002

There is an unused Fry Cook Bam character model found on the PlayStation 1 port of THPS4. It features 2 skins (red and blue pants) as well as a whole set of deck graphics. It is unknown why it was cut from the final release despite being featured in Game Boy Advance version. However, in-game, there also exists a special called “Food Poisoning,” which may be related to Fry Cook Bam, due to the name.

Tony Hawk’s Underground – 2003

If you go to Create-A-Skater mode and go through the pre-set skaters, you can find “Sheena” and she is a punk rocker. Obviously, it’s a reference to the Ramones’ song “Sheena is a Punk Rocker”.

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 – 2004

On the Boston level, there are two apartments you can bust into through their windows. In one a man is dancing to seduce a goat. In the other, a fat nerd is watching TV and you can press a button to “feel the power”. He then acts out the lightsaber fight of Darth Maul and makes lightsaber noises with his mouth. This is based on the popular “Star Wars Kid” video circulating on the internet of a similar looking kid who taped himself doing the same thing just as badly only to have people find the tape and spread it all over the web.

Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland – 2005

One task is to jump over a shark named ‘Fonzie’. This is a reference to a scene in the sitcom Happy Days in which The Fonz jumps over a shark. This scene is regarded as unrealistic and tacky, and is seen in hindsight as the moment when the show ceased to be good. “Jumping the Shark” has become a general term for similar situations.

Tony Hawk’s Project 8 – 2006

The player can earn “stokens” by doing tricks to impress pedestrians and other skaters however if the player is knocked down by these people the player loses his stokens.

Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground – 2007

The Xbox 360 version features a 5 song demo of Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock in addition Judy Nails appears in the game as a playable character.

Tony Hawk: Ride – 2009

In Tony Hawk: Ride, players use the all new skateboard-based peripheral to simulate the riding of an actual skateboard in the gameplay. Players cannot play the game with a hand controller. This is considered the most dramatic change in the Tony Hawk video game series due to the fact that in the gameplay of past games, a lot of “button mashing” was used.

Tony Hawk: Shred – 2010

Shred introduces a snowboarding mode to the series as well as “Avatar” and “Miis” supports on the Xbox 360 and Wii versions respectively. A “surfing” mode was worked on for the game, but was soon scrapped due to funds and short amount of time to work on it.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD – 2012

Our own Travis Northup said about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD, “Despite the changes, the game remains largely the same, which is its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. The core gameplay remains the same, but with better physics, which makes the game as entertaining and challenging as the original, but in many ways the game is too old to endure as a modern title. The simplistic level design, outdated controls, and only slightly updated graphics may not appeal to people new to the series, and fans may be surprised at how old the game feels. If fans of the original are looking for a slightly updated version of the classic game they knew and loved, THPS HD might be just the fix they’re looking for.”

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5 – 2015

THPS5 uses the same engine as THPSHD, Unreal Engine 3, and as such inherits a number of controversial features from THPSHD – namely, the physics, animations and bail fadeouts. The gameplay itself became faster. Unlike THPSHD, the game includes power-ups and shooting projectiles.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 – 2020

David Flynn was very high on the remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, with the main thought, “Pro Skater 1 + 2 not only perfectly recreates the pure joy of the originals, it improves on them greatly. The visuals have obviously been improved, but so have the responsive controls. If you have liked a Tony Hawk game in the past, you’ll feel right at home here.”

As a parting gift, here’s a fun video from a recent filming of Tony Hawk at the Mythical Kitchen. The real talk about the game franchise begins at the 22:42 mark.

Thanks for all the memories Tony! I hope to play more skating games from you and the crew in the future.

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