Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is one of the few in the video game canon that was able to pierce the American culture at large independently of its stake as an important game. Like Final Fantasy VII or Ocarina of Time in its contemporary age, it attracted those that would not normally be attracted to the gaming world. Largely, this was due to its incredibly easy to pick up nature, its difficulty in fully mastering, and in its appeal to a burgeoning subject in the American consciousness. Skateboarding and extreme sports were spiking in popularity, and with it several other cultural hangers-on like punk and metal music, the punk or metal aesthetic in clothing, attitude, and cultural disposition, and in the familial relationship found in the skate park. THPS was able to capitalize on most of these, if not in game than in the culture around those who had played it. And just about everyone had played it. suddenly bands such as Dead Kennedys and Primus were becoming more mainstream, and punk bands such as Goldfinger owe a large part of their following to their inclusion in the game. As a cultural touchstone, rarely does any medium produce something so omnipresent as THPS, and what is more amazing is in how good this game actually is at its core.
The controls are incredibly tight, allowing for growth without too steep a difficulty curve. Goals give you incentive to learn different aspects of the game in place of things like tutorials or hand holding. Your goals vary depending on what you are planning for a given level. Each level is usually loaded with five VHS tapes to collect, each tied to a certain goal to attain in the 2 minutes allotted to you through Career mode. Multiplayer and Free Play are each variations of what is found in Career, so discussing Career mode is paramount to talking about those other modes. Each of these five tapes are the same across each of the tape levels: get the lower high score in order to table for the given level, get the absolute high score for the level, collect the letters in SKATE across the level, find (usually) 5 of a given object in a level, and find the secret tape, usually hidden in a difficult to get location that requires some know-how in playing THPS, such as grinding gauntlets. Collecting tapes unlocks further levels. There is another type of level as well: the competition. In competition levels, you want to rack up the highest score of all those competing in order to win one of 3 medals (gold, silver, or bronze). Winning medals will also unlock certain levels.
Playing THPS feels like a combination of racing games and fighters, where speed, finesse, and quick action are paramount to success. You are perpetually moving forward on your skateboard and must chain together tricks in order to get the best score possible. To better allow you creativity, THPS has states to vary the kinds of tricks you can do. When in air normally, you have a state for kick flips and grabs, but when coming off of the lip of a half pipe, you get a variant state for different flips and grabs. Likewise, there is a grind state that can increase your speed if done properly and allow you to gain access difficult to get places, and each of these states can be chained together to create huge scores. To encourage your creativity rolling, repeating tricks will yield lower and lower score, requiring variance to rack up points.
When in a perfect flow state, THPS feels like composing, an irreverent jazz-punk of tricks and overwhelmingly 90s aesthetic. The Tony Hawk series of games only lasted for a little less than a decade before it wore itself out, but its early entries still hold an incredible amount of fun. As a snapshot of a time and place, few encapsulate the late 90s the way Tony Hawk Pro Skater does.
9.5
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