A fresh skate on a classic
THE world was a very different – and much simpler – place in 1999. Stanley Kubrick had us all hot under the collar with his raunchy final flick Eyes Wide Shut, Ross Kemp (aka Grant Mitchell) shocked the world when he quit EastEnders and Tracey Emin was turning heads with little more than her bed. And in the world of video games any one worth their pixels was rocking out to Bad Religion, while trying to pull off a triple kickflip to unlock Officer Dick. If these words mean nothing to you then you missed out on one of the industry’s hallowed icons – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
Mixed in with a diet of cheap Carlsberg and MTV’s Jackass, the skating sim from
Neversoft was the perfect zeitgeist game, catching air to the sounds of punk rock was the reason to stay in. But to talk about the cultural relevance of Pro Skater is to ignore the sheer quality of the game design. This was boarding in pixel form, sure, but it also captured the very essence of the sport, with its bold ambition and epics fails – and is just as awesome the second time around.
That’s because the work of Vicarious Visions leans hard into
nailing the authenticity of the original titles – while adding a 2020 paint job. We get a beefed-up frame rate to a full 60fps (across all machines), upscaled image quality and a glossy HDR sheen. This is a remaster where everything is technically on point. As a result, the levels feel fresh, polishing that ragged look and feel, but keeping the expressive and playful wall-to-wall skate lines from the originals.
If you’ve never played the Tony Hawk games they’re a throwback to simpler times. Choose a famous skater and select one of a series of maps – from skate parks to high schools – and sweep around the makeshift obstacle course and complete arcadelike challenges within two minutes, ranging from setting high scores by performing sick tricks to collecting glittery objects. The game’s main achievement is in its momentum. The skaters never stop, the tricks – including everything from ollies to grabs to flips and grinds – are easy to master and there’s nothing quite like nailing a 10k high score in
one fluid, jaw-dropping combo. The new additions are few but exactly what was required. When you bail (and you will) a glitch-style animation resets your character and gets you back on the board in a nanosecond. There’s so little friction now that the whole experience can be picked up and played in a matter of seconds, with the excellent punk-rock and ska soundtrack playing continuously and loading times quicker than you can say ‘Jack Black cameo!’.
One further embellishment is the addition of reverts (a 180-board rotation for all you narcs out there) from Tony Hawk 3 – allowing you to chain tricks easier. Some purists may well cry ‘gnarly’ but in a genius stroke, move sets can be restricted to the traditional list, furthering those intimate nods to knee-crooked skaters of the 90s.
Free play and multiplayer mode features add more depth with couch-play now joined by online competition for the returning Graffiti (players spray paint sections of maps via the best tricks), and Horse (you get a skate line and a few seconds to pull off a mega trick) modes.
Remakes so rarely capture the soul of the original and while some hangovers of the era remain, it’s an unbelievable achievement to be transported back to 1999.