Gaming Target - Dreamcast: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

Written by Thomas Harding on June 23, 2000

Review: I need some new pants!

A year ago or so, I picked up the Summer '99 PlayStation Underground Jampack. This is significant for me, because it began a six-month demo-playing obsession called Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. And the main reason I never picked up this game for PlayStation is the reason you're reading this today, I found out Crave and Treyarch were bring it to my sexy little Dreamcast.

These visuals really kick ass. I knew I'd love this version over the PSX one when I played the school level, and I saw that all the little ripples in the awning were clear and pretty much recognizable. Plus the game feels a lot more open than it did on PlayStation, and the texture mapping would give Square developers major chubbies. And that's no joke.

Let me kill the first part of audio off quick, the bams, crunches, moans, splats, cracks, and consequences of not getting the mall secret tape can all be heard clearly and are right on time every damned time. But, the best part of the audio on THPS is not the sound effects, rather the game's music. Here we get cuts from a skater's favorite genres: alternative rock, punk, ska, and hard rock. And this stuff actually adds to your experience.

Now ladies and gentleman, the gameplay maybe the very best part of the whole game. And what is it? Say it with me now: GAMEPLAY. One more time for the retards in the back, GAMEPLAY. The actually control layout that supports this isn't that original, if you've played any of the Coolboarders you'll recognize it. But where those games failed to create a damned good learning curve, this game does. I watched someone become a relatively expert player within twenty minutes...and it was my mom! I did kick his ass on Graffiti, but still, he was damned good. Other than that, you have to test your skating ability by picking up "tapes" for certain challenges throughout each level. Some of these are basic "Get the points" goals, but the others can be much harder (although 40K is a tall order). You have to find and pick up letters that spell SKATE, destroy or skate on certain objects during the level (fun!). And with these tapes you unlock new levels and competitions. Fun!

Tony Hawk features many real skaters from Tony Hawk, to Bob Burnquist, to Bucky Lasek. Then you have the multiplayer, which features a basic highest score mode, but then adds on with two highly inventive features. The first is HORSE, where one player sets a number of points, and the other has to make it or break it or he gets a letter. The second feature is by far my favorite, is the incredibly inventive and fun Grafitti mode. Now don't start any of that how superior Jet Grind Radio is. The basic lowdown is this: two players go to a level in the game and try to perform tricks off of objects as usual, but every time they make a trick successful, the object turns the color the player was assigned before the game started. The player with the most objects marked at the end of two minutes wins. Simple? Sort of. Fun? Yes. But here's the especially fun part, if you do a trick of an object that's already been marked, and you get a higher score than they did, you steal the object from them. The amounts of disputes are basically endless.

Do I really need to go over the large amount of replay in this game? Playing just the levels by themselves will last for virtually forever. And it takes a damned good while to finish the tape challenges completely. Plus there are some secret characters, and the mutliplayer is incredible. Do I really have to go on?