Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

"A great game"

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater got ported to the Nintendo 64 after having been on the Playstation for several months. Although the N64 port lost things to be expected (music quality, the videos for getting all gold medals, all cursing except for in one song) it still turned out quite well.

Graphics 8/10
Except for the loss of videos I mentioned before, the graphics are pretty good. You can obviously tell what your skater is doing usually, although sometimes when grinding I have a hard time telling when I'm about to fall. They also took out the blood animation when your skater falls in the quest to get E-rated.

Sound 7/10
The music lost quite a bit on the Nintendo 64, (some songs have no words to them, no cursing is allowed, except for their accidentally leaving it in one song.)The sounds of the skateboard and other things throughout the levels are realistic, though. The skateboarder's voices when they fall are pretty bad.

Control 9/10
The controls for all of the tricks is relatively simple. It's easy to pull off any trick that I've tried, except for the Burntwist(never been able to do one). I have a hard time balancing my grinds, but then again maybe it is just me.

Gameplay 10/10
The point of all of the levels is to get tapes so you can advance to further levels, or earn a medal in a competition.
The tape earning levels (Warehouse, School, Mall, Downtown, Downhill Jam, San Francisco) have close to the same objectives:
High Score (Usually easy to get score)
5 objects(Grind, ollie onto, or skate into 5 things, i.e. Grind 5 tables in school)
Spell S-K-A-T-E (Find 5 letters in level, you have to ollie, grind, or catch air to get them)
Hidden tape(Always involves catching a lot of air, and some long grinds
Pro Score(2-3 times the High Score, can be difficult to get sometimes)

In the competitions, (which are Skate Park Chicago, Burnside, and Roswell, New Mexico), you just have to get a lot of points so the judges will rank your performance high enough to get a medal.
There's also several 2 player modes, but I haven't played any of them very much. They all involve getting more points than your opponent in some way.
The variety of the gameplay keeps the objectives from being boring. And even after you've gotten all the tapes, you can keep trying to get more points in the levels and experiment with different styles.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 07/11/01, Updated 07/11/01