Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

Written by Alan Rumpf  on July 27, 2000

Review: As the ad promises, "Now you can be Tony"

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As far as the gameplay goes there is no other better skating game than Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, with perhaps the exception of the sequel due out soon for Playstation. The engine the game runs on is amazing and the control method of your skater is great. There are four basic things to do, and these actions are used with the four C-buttons. While it may take some previous players of the PSX version to get use to the tiny C-buttons, after a couple hours of total play it'll feel natural. You can ollie, do a flip trick, a grab trick, or grind. Flip, grab, and grind tricks can all be manipulated by holding a certain direction on the d-pad at the same time. (Ex. If you hold UP and the grind button (Top-C) you will execute a nose grind, where if you hold UP and LEFT with the grind button you will perform a crooked grind, and just holding Top-C alone will make you perform a 50-50 grind.) This same system works for the flip and grab tricks. By holding the tricks out longer you can spin around and add more points, or use the two shoulder buttons (or Z if you move with the control stick) to spin right or left and multiply your score. Also when you're in a grind you will start to lose balance and you can tap right or left on the d-pad to try and balance yourself to hold a grind out longer. However, after a short while you will come to a point where control becomes impossible and if you don't jump off the rail you will bail. All around this is the best skating control system out there and while it may take a couple of hours to get the real hang of it, you'll have fun from the very beginning.

The game's features include the utilization of the 4MB expansion pak for those pretty graphics that we all love, and to save the great full replays of your awesome run on your control pak to show your friends that you actually did pull off that 300,000 point combo. Also the control pak is required to save career mode, which is the solo-player mode where you go through the different courses collecting different tapes by completing certain objectives in the course, or getting gold medals in skate competitions. You'll get to make your skater stronger and unlock new better boards the further you get into the game, and you'll want to save all this on the control pak too. The game supports the rumble pak, however switching between the control pak and the rumble pak is rather annoying so I don't even bother. There is a two-player split-screen mode in the game, and while the four-player mode is an exclusive for the Dreamcast version because of obvious hardware limitations, the two-player is still fun. While you notice more fog on some course and some features are also missing, they are still playable. There are three modes of multiplayer. Trick attack, which is who can get the most points in a 2:00 time limit. Graffiti, which makes ramps or rails glow either red or blue for first and second player depending on who got the best score on that particular ramp and whoever has the most parts of the area glowing their color will win the round. Multiplayer is fun, however I find Solo play just as fun and rewarding because every run is different. There is a good amount of skaters included each with either a vert or street style of skating and there own special signatures moves which you can perform when your special meter is filled up. Famous names include Bob Burnquist, Bucky Lasek, Andrew Reynolds, and have course the man himself, Tony Hawk. Each with their own set of boards that can be customized with different colors of wheels and loose, medium, or tight trucks.

There is a higher replay value in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater than some would think. As I've stated before, and will state again you never know what to expect on your next run, you could land the trick of the century or bail out trying to a do a simple grind if you get too cocky. I've sat for several hours at a time while going through two-minute single sessions or choosing the free-skate option, which has no time limit and will let you practice in a certain course for however long you'd like, without the point values ever going down. Besides the fact that skating solo is so fun, it adds to the replay value. There is the multiplayer mode, which will also keep you and your friends occupied for quite awhile for all the same reasons you'll want to keep playing on your own. This game has some of the best replay value in any game out today.