Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Series Review (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo & PC)

Goldfinger’s “Superman” is a like a fine, fine wine, in that it only gets better with age, as does it with the complimentary taste of asphalt and VHS tapes, two-minute vert combos and childhood nostalgia. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, although a small part of a niche world within the realm of extreme sports, finds a good balance between being a fine wine and a tankard of dopamine—a cocktail of highs and lows, epic lines and laughable mechanics with nonsensical concrete rhythms. But I’m not mad about its weirdness or lack of authentic skateboarding synergies; on the contrary, I’m overjoyed that they even exist. The world needs a good chuckle, and frankly, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is one of the select few that know how to tickle your funny bone, for better or worse.

While there’s no ignoring the satisfaction that you would often feel after miraculously weaving an impossible combo out of thin air and into a multi-million point elevation buster, the fact is, at no point would you have ever thought of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater as a testament to the art of skateboarding. It’s a parody, if anything—a caricature that resides deep within a vessel that wants to be true to the sport, but also bends over backwards to be bashful and nonsensical, silly and questionably wrong. But then, that’s sort of the USP here: the fact that it allows you to do things that you wouldn’t normally do. Skate, of course, opted for an alternate route, which in turn allowed fans of the sport to truly understand the physics and the culture, the timing and the complexity. But for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, it was always about mindless fun and blistering trick shots. I guess, when all’s said and done, that’s sort of why we loved it.

Popularizing Skateboarding

For as long as I live I will gladly continue to celebrate the Bird Man and the fine, fine skating excursions that the series has put out since its inception. Granted, I would never refer to Pro Skater as the best skating series of all time — because it isn’t, as it lacks the ability to mirror the sport, both mechanically and visually. But that’s not what Pro Skater is all about; it’s about two-minute bouts of chaos-driven skating. It’s about taking to the board and mashing buttons with all of your might whilst you desperately search for tasks to scratch off of a chalkboard. A missing tape with a hidden feature; a bully with a dying desire to be pummeled with a snowball; a high score that yearns to be conquered; a chain of letters that urge you to locate them and scream the word before the final grains of sand grace the bottom of the hourglass.

To illustrate my argument, Pro Skater is one of few skateboarding games in which you can mirror a professional, but also be annoyingly good at without needing the technical prowess of Hawk or Mullen. Alas, you do not need to be a vert skater to be the Belle of the park; you just need to have a willingness to spam buttons and act surprized when they translate into mesmerizing combos. That’s about the brunt of a typical Pro Skater experience, anyway. Scratch that — that’s every Tony Hawk game, ever. It’s better not to question the process, though. Perhaps it’s more fun that way.

The Art of Button Mashing

Suffice it to say, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a prime example of how to recycle a familiar formula and still appeal to the masses. Although the latter chapters in the series did attempt to be bigger, bolder, and mechanically superior than their predecessors, the signature format remained mostly the same. And to be fair, at no point did it ever need to stir the pot; it was timeless, evergreen, and above all, perfectly balanced with just enough arcade appeal and all of the right progression hooks to keep you jolting back onto the board time and time again. Sure, it kept to a lot of the same eye-rolling objectives—find the hidden tape; collect S-K-A-T-E; beat the high score; smash a few billboards and what have you. That said, for each time the series slipped back into old habits, it also took the initiative to explore other avenues of exploration, most of which came with a stellar soundtrack of some sort to enhance the appeal. Lest we forget that most of us unraveled a newfound love of ska punk thanks to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Thanks, Goldfinger.

All in all there’s a stupidly satisfying arcade series to enjoy here, with all of the peek-a-book cameos, absurd tricks and evergreen locations of a timeless classic. Again, it isn’t an authentic skate sim, but it also doesn’t need to be, either. As history has shown time and time again across multiple chapters and remakes, there is a lot more fun to be had in the arms of kookiness. And that’s what I’m willing to take away from all of this — that it’s a perfectly enjoyable series that suits the skin it wears. It isn’t perfect, but boy is it entertaining.

Verdict

There aren’t all that many skateboarding series that can make you feel both slick and comically inept as well as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s in its blood — that overcharged spirit that you both love to laugh at but also can’t ever seem to get enough of, no matter how hard you try to abandon the deck and opt for an alternate course. Because frankly, no other skateboarding saga will ever be able to replicate that signature style. It’s a timeless formula that just works, even when it probably shouldn’t.

While I certainly wouldn’t pass up the chance to sink heels into another Underground or Wasteland chapter, I can still allocate credit where it’s due and acknowledge the acclaim that orbits the classic Pro Skater series. Without Pro Skater, we probably wouldn’t have had millions of fans shift their alliances from soccer to skateboarding back in the late nineties. That, and a global obsession with Goldfinger’s Superman. But that’s another story for another time.