Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

"Tony Hawk . . . censored?"

OPENING STATEMENT
Nintendo has always had a desire to have their consoles be a safe haven for parents. They did not want parents to have to fret and worry about their children playing anything violent or profane or at all sexually provocative on their console. In many ways, with the release of games like Perfect Dark, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and the upcoming Eternal Darkness for the Game Cube, they have changed their goals immensely. But, in still other ways, they keep that tradition alive. And Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a victim of that. I’ll explain how later, of course.

GAMEPLAY--8
The game engine for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is by far and away the greatest ever for a skateboarding game. Use of that engine has spanned multiple consoles and sequels, without skipping a beat. In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater you are to go through various levels scattered across the United States of America, to collect all of the hidden skate tapes. Boy that description made the game come to life, didn’t it? Seriously, though, the engine is a blast to use, and the gameplay is better than you could possibly believe. The gameplay is especially too good to believe if you have played any other home console skateboarding games.

Besides the well-thought-out level design, perhaps the biggest draw of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is the easy to use and difficult to master trick system. Any player can easily just start out the game and complete a few tricks, but only the masters of the game can consistently pull off all of the special moves and such. The number of tricks is quite varied as well, and in games such as these, variety is truly the spice of life. You can even customize your move combinations some, even if you cannot nearly as much as you can in this masterful game’s sequel.

GRAPHICS--6
In making this statement I have completely discounted the fact that I played the Nintendo 64 version of this game after playing the Dreamcast version of this game. Activision and their developers really did not a do a good job of making Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater graphically viable on Nintendo’s console. Everything is extremely blurry, and visibility is really low. Moreover, the fog is disguised as various things other than fog in the levels, and that just makes matters worse. The characters look worse than even the PlayStation version of the game too, so it is just a matter of the cartridge medium, in my opinion.

As a result of all of these things, nothing looks very detailed or defined in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Everything is playable, and the potential is all there, but there is only so much the developers can do. This is clearly a game that pushes the cartridge medium to its breaking points. There is one good thing that comes out of the blurry textures and foggy environments, though. The frame rate is unbelievably smooth, and there is never any slowdown or choppiness. And, in my opinion, those two things are much more important than detail anyway.

MUSIC--3
SOUND--7
Here’s one of the horrible censored parts of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. Nintendo has taken all of the music that helped make this game highly successful and completely ruined them by having anything profane or remotely violent or sexual removed. The end result is some rock-like, punkish background noise that has lost all of its real flavor. I am not even sure of the point that Nintendo was trying to make when they forced Activision to do this, because they really damaged a core element of the game. The songs were not even all that bad anyway. I just think that this was a little powertrip by the boys from Redmond, Washington, and they wanted to get their say in. Instead, they almost got their just desserts by rabid Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater fans everywhere.

The sound effects luckily have not really been changed from the other versions of this masterpiece. The quality was just toned down sightly, and the effects not quite as clear, just because of another powertrip by Nintendo, in going with the cartridge medium. (I really believe that I have had more sentence long rants about that in this review than any other review of mine. Do not ask me why. It just kind of worked out that way. Oh well!) Anyway, the effects are nothing spectacular, but the board noises and such get the job done nicely. The sound effects that I was most impressed with were the noises that were heard when grinding your board along a rail. Now there was some realism. Of course, hearing the exact same noise when grinding on a picnic table kind of detracted from it, but what can you do?

CONTROL--4
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater just does not translate itself well to the Nintendo 64 controller. I would choose the PlayStation or Dreamcast controller over the three-pronged marvel any day. (Just for this game! Otherwise, I prefer the Nintendo 64 controller by a landslide.) The control configuration is very difficult to use, by in large because the ‘C-Buttons’ are far too close together for a skating game like this. You try to do one trick, but you end up doing a completely different one quite often. This becomes more of a problem, because then you have prepared your skater to land one type of trick, and having him do a 360º Japan Air instead of the Varial Kickflip that you told him to can really throw you off. Luckily your skaters respond right on schedule when you tell them to carry out various tasks, so the configuration is really the only problem at all. But the fact that the problem is so immense, and that the game just does not feel right on the Nintendo 64 controller make this quite a low score.

FUN--8
Even though I have played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater to death on various consoles before the Nintendo 64, I still had a lot of fun playing this version. I would have had a lot more fun, though, if there were some optimized features for the Nintendo 64. A logical, very necessary one would be four-player support. Why should a console that is already the best multiplayer console in history not get one of the greatest multiplayer games in history without full capabilities?

Still, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is great fun whether you play it with friends or alone. That is part of the reason why this game is so much better than other skateboarding games - too many of them were only fun to play with friends, and the single-player games were too shallow and useless for anyone to bother with them. In Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater you not only need to unlock a large portion of the multiplayer stages in the Career Mode; you will also want to. And that is truly a first for a skateboarding game.

CHALLENGE--MEDIUM TO HIGH
Starting off in Career Mode absolutely anybody will be able to progress without fail. But, after the first tournament, Chicago, the going gets tough. Those who are good enough to keep progressing will be richly rewarded with hours of multiplayer fun later. But, as the high scores continue to skyrocket, and the hidden tapes become more and more difficult to find, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater can easily become a struggle. Also, increasing to the difficulty of this version of the game is the use of the Nintendo 64 controller, because tricks become more difficult to carry out. Lastly, please note that this rating should be lowered substantially if you have played any other versions of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (excluding the primitive Game Boy Color version of course) extensively.

REPLAY VALUE--MEDIUM TO HIGH
The Nintendo 64 version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater will once again not have you playing as long or as often as other versions of the game might, because of the awkward control scheme. But, if this is the only version that you have, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater will offer you a wealth of replay value. I always try to unlock all of the skate tapes with each of the characters, so there is a rather large chunk of time right there. Add on top of that all of the multiplayer hours you will log, and you have yourself some substantial play time.

PROS
*Nintendo 64 owners do not get screwed out of another masterpiece.
*Gameplay engine is the deepest ever in an extreme sports game.
*You will be replaying again and again.

CONS
*The control scheme may make you want to cut off your hands.
*Graphically the more simplistic and less defined than the PlayStation and Dreamcast versions.
*Censored music? Ugh.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Sure, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a far better product on the other consoles than the Nintendo 64. Sure, it has been censored and lost a lot of its luster. But at least Activision had the heart to bring the game to a console whose owners have missed out on so many hits, ranging from Street Fighter to Dino Crisis, that companies were just too reluctant (and/or lazy) to port.

OVERALL--7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/09/01, Updated 10/09/01