Developer Vicarious Visions has succeeded in recreating the flow of mastering combos and playing in the skateparks. The series went mostly dark after that, with only a free-to-play mobile game released in 2018 to show for the last five years.įixing THPS, it turns out, meant going back to what made the original games so much fun. The past 10 years have seen disappointments like 2009’s Tony Hawk: Ride, which used a plastic skateboard as a controller, and 2015’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, which has one of the lowest aggregated reviews scores of any game in the current console generation, according to Metacritic. Its initial success continued through the mid-2000’s, but when longtime developer Neversoft passed the baton to developer Robomodo, review scores fell fast. It transports you back to those Halcyon days of 1999 when the only thing you had to worry about was making sure your friends passed you the controller when your turn came up and there was a never-ending supply of Dorito’s and Mountain Dew. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 has crisp, updated visuals (that look great in HDR), adds in a variety of moves that showed up in later games and includes other features common in modern video games, like online multiplayer and a mode to build your own skatepark.īut the game feels just like you remember it, just like you want it to feel. The muscle memory snapped back and I began landing combo after combo like no time had passed at all.
And though they couldn’t foresee what 2020 would become, the game is a bright spot in a dark year.Īs I pushed off into the fan-favorite Warehouse level, the first park from the series’ original game, I instantly remembered countless hours playing with friends, trying to set new high scores. As the 20th anniversary of the first game’s release approached, Hawk and Activision thought it was the right time to remake what had become a video game classic. And if you’re not sucked in by the sheer fun, the score chasing and incredible soundtracks will probably get you. If you’ve never played a THPS game, they fit neatly into that “easy to learn, lifetime to master” category. “That is a consistent request on social media, ‘Why don’t you remaster these games?’” “You don’t understand how many people ask me about ,” Hawk told TIME.
Tony Hawk himself couldn’t be more excited about the release. And while it sticks very closely to its source, the new game feels like it belongs in 2020, with a greater focus on representation and a firm grounding in that angsty skate culture aesthetic.
Twenty-one years after the release of the first game, publisher Activision and developer Vicarious Visions will release Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, a ground-up remaster of the first two games, on Sept.