Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

"Worthy of a store display. But a purchase? Nope"

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Many praised it as a breath of air into the world of skateboard video games on both the PSX and the Dreamcast — neither of which I have readily available. Nintendo 64 owners may find this game a privilege if they don’t have either of the mentioned systems (or, if they do, miss out on that glorious load time).

N64 ’boarding fans, your dreams to live out your skateboarding fantasies without paying high hospital bills, wearing safety gear, and, of course, planning your final arrangements. Join Tony Hawk and his posse as they crank out 360°s, 720°s, kicks, grabs, and more. And, with a little luck, you, too, can jump great distances.

But can Tony Hawk jump over one Ben Stein? Believe it!

Emphasis of the game is a whole lot of stunts. A stunt-filled career. Of “hide & seek”? Oh, yeah. “Hide & seek” against... video cassettes? Oh, boy. Exactly what the heck is so mortally important about them? It’s like a busy recycling plant: Five five something-or-others; Spell skate; Find a “hidden” tape; Score lots of points. Recycle for each level after that. And you only have two minutes to do as much as humanly possible. Screw this!

I can see how picking up blank cassettes being used to record your skateboarding life, but there is no other thing I can see about it. A “skateboarding career” is not a justifiable term. The only thing that actually comes close to qualifying as a career event is one of those stunt-offs you see on TV. They’re pretty bland.

Wholly, one’s career is better described as more “bitchin` and moanin`” than just “bitchin`”. Retiring from your championship “hide & seek” reign is the only option you have when you’ve unlocked all the arenas, if you have the stamina.

But, with a rather ho-hum career, it does open up new arenas. Environment is much more prevalent here than there ever is when watching the X-Games and their artificial arenas. Your first glimpse of an arena hides the potential. Jumps aren’t even half of it. Scoring well is really more on your knowledge of the arenas and where the best point opportunities are. How many? I’m not telling you!

Controlling Hawk & Co. isn’t too hard to do, but you pay for the ease with comfort. Analog and digital control are available, but analog wins because stunt-to-stunt transitions are smoother and there is no bumpy gap to cross over with the arrow pad.

Having only the quartet of C buttons in use, comfort is lost. Too bad — the A, B, R, and L/Z would have been splendid (moreso comfy). If you can tolerate the brutal C-button lineup, you can turn from amateur to semi-pro in an infinitesimal fraction of the time it takes to REALLY become a Pro Skater. Grinding, spinning, kicking, and bleeding from massive head injuries are acquired in virtually no time at all. Don’t forget the Band-Aids for your thumbs.

With the right amount of skill and random button pressing — I’m betting 5-3 odds in favor of the latter — awesome stunt combinations unfold right in front of your eyes. And there are poser stunts — those amazing stunts you see on highlight reels. You don’t get to see a snapshot of your high-scoring anti-G moves. Bummer.

Physics are very good. Balance is expected to be lost when grinding rails. Landing horizontally is fine... unless you land on a vertical ramp — painful! Handplants don’t last forever. I’ll admit that Pro Skater comes startlingly close to realism (unlike a certain other N64 ’boarding game [ahem — 1080°]). But there is some inconsistency in judgment (like that same title).

Boarders expect music. Want it? You got it. The menu music has three chords’ of guitar music. Cheap? Yep. Five seconds of authentic music.

Aside from that mind-numbing menu, we got us some CD-quality music here! Edge of Reality had to scrounge for space, as it the tunage often loops within a minute — seams included. Seams break up the quality, but it’s easy to tune out. But it’s a cartridge — you can’t fit a whole CD on it!

Primus makes their third “appearance” in a Nintendo 64 game — the group’s fans already know they’ve “gone on down to South Park and they had themselves a time”... twice. The only other group I have heard of to playing this game was Dead Kennedys — one thing us Americans find on 50¢ pieces all the time.

“Superman”, performed by 007’s former nemesis Goldfinger, sums me up perfectly — “I get older all the time, I feel younger in my mind”. It was easily my fave vocal tune of the lot. The instrumental grunge kicks ass, without using detrimental lyrics. The bulk of the artists are really new to me. (When thinking of The Ernies, one of the featured groups, if they found a group named The Berts, they could form the “Sesame Street Goes Grunge” tour. Scary....)

As CD music takes up a good portion of space, SFX are sparse. What few choice available FX do so damnably well. Atmospheric SFX are minimal, if any (boring!). The boards’ wheels go round and round, which ain’t much, until you switch surfaces. Gravel, tile, wood, grinding a pipe — cool. I have no question on accuracy, but seeing the details of the sounds — I mean seeing — is next to impossible. Hearing it is the key, and the transitions are awesome.

No praise the graphics. Rather, no overblown praise. Pop-up is only in the backgrounds, and never distracts. Possibly because all my attention was on the ’boarder(s). Speaking of, I see no resemblance to any of their real-life counterparts. Blame me. I’m no skateboard nut, so I can’t recognize how Tony Hawk & company actually look. (Then again, close-ups don’t happen at all.) I will say that they move and animate smoothly. They even have shadows — cool! And the shadows even behave like shadows — awesome!

You fall, does masochism mean anything? Brutal! Controllers aside, wipeouts do look potentially fatal, if our band of ’boarders were real flesh and blod and not just polygons and wire frames. Wipeouts feel almost as painful as they look. Hawk & Co. perform as wildly as they do for only one reason: They know all the risks involved. Especially considering protection, or lack thereof. “Protection? We don’t got no protection. We don’t NEED no stinkin’ protection!”

(Be warned if you ever try to attempt these stunts on your own: These guys have taken a huge chunk of their lives and mastered the art of skateboarding. Amateurs who dare attempt these stunts and blow the landings are easily apt to having their young careers end up six feet under. That is definitely not how anyone’s career, let alone anyone’s life, should end.)

Performing wicked stunts can be very exciting... for a while. I’m sure hardened skateboarding nuts will go bonkers in delight when playing, but even they might be bored before too long.

Frankly, I was eager to call Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater the skateboarding equivalent to Nintendo’s lame 1080° Snowboarding. Calling it 1080° Skateboarding would have been blatantly slanderous on my part. As Pro Skater is a considerably better game (albeit in a minimally different genre), I don’t have the heart.

Pro Skater proves itself incomplete. I’m all for the stunt mode, but having more depth than an emptied-out swimming pool could have made this game professional quality. Being able to create loads of high-scoring trick combos is great fun for a while, but when boredom sets in, or you develop career-threatening thumb blisters, you can stick a fork in it — it’s done. I mean the game, not your blister(s) (or you risk sloppy ooze on your controller).

And it all began as a mere store display. Where the experience started, and where it could easily have ended. Pro Skater is a better in-store display title, if not a rental, than a title worth purchase, despite the hours of practice I have pumped into the game. I came VERY close to giving the game a 7.0 (my minimum to recommend purchase), but I could not get over the somewhat unnecessary repetition therein.

Skateboarding specialists should definitely check this one out if they decide not to practice these stunts physically. Hey, if they’d rather risk broken thumbs over broken ribs, that’s their problem. It sure ain’t mine.

MY SCORE: 6.5

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/04/01, Updated 10/26/01