"Remember how Terminator 2 got editted when it was on TV?It works the same way for the soundtrack here."

I've never been that big on normal sports games. Serious football sims always bore me to no end, (Thank you for putting that crawling code in NFL QBC '98, Acclaim...) basketball sims are better, but still not thrilling. Baseball sims can be okay. But I've just never been into realism in sports games. However, this is a rather realistic game. It ain't a Mario Kart level of seriousness, but it's really good. The game is very well put together, enough to make someone like me who totally despises most sports games to enjoy this.

So with that out of the way, let's get down to the review now. The point of the game is to become the best skater. There are many characters you can lead to victory, Tony Hawk, Bob, Ellisa, Kareem, and quite a few others. Including some hidden favs from the previous game. And see that part on the beginning about how that any likeness to a Marvel character is copyrighted to Marvel, etc? Take a guess. Now, here's something I loved about the game. You don't just have these characters, but you can create your own. When I rented this, I played through the game as my created character. Which I like far more than using some character already made. And it's fun unlocking everyone else's boards, and then using the ''Gundam '95'' board (Yes, Gundam. As in Gundam Wing. I believe it was Wing Zero, but I'm not sure.) on my own created guy that looks far cooler than who had the board first of all, seeing as how a created character can use anyone's board, as long as that person has bought it. So, I played through with Viper (My created skater) and beat the game with him. So then what? What do I do after I've beaten it with one guy?

Well, that's part of the beauty of this game. It's not just ''Beat it with one guy and watch the credits'' like most games, but you can get various rewards for beating it fully with certain ones. But that ain't all, folks. Then there is the gap thing. Remember how I said there are hidden characters? That ties in with the gap checklist on the option menu. There are tens of gaps in each level. You have to work to find them all. It's really pretty hard. I got a decent portion. Somewhere from the 60-80% mark. Then the rest are pretty hard to find. It's not easy to find them all. So, then what after you've beaten it with every character and got all the gaps? That's another nice part of the game. This isn't one of those games that once you beat, you don't want to go back to. This game is very fun, and not in that way like Mario 64 for instance. It's fun. But, it's not very high on replay. It's always the same. But this is like always fun to see how big a combo of tricks you can get and still land it. Especially using a code for huge jumps, it's darn fun to have some huge 1000+ turn easy. Or have about 10 kickflips, or something like that. It's just fun to see how much better you can get at it. Overall this is an extremely good game for someone who doesn't get to get games often, because this is something you can keep returning to and having fun with again and again.

Sadly, one thing that makes it one heckuva lot less fun is the music. The Dreamcast version, PSX version, and PC (I don't have a clue about the GBA) had around fifteen tracks. Now, the N64 one? Six tracks.. Nintendo butchered the soundtrack. That's the main point I wish to get through in this paragraph. The thing is butchered in terms of how many there are, and what's worse: The few remaining survivors have been stripped of the personality they might have had at one time. Guerrilla Radio by Rage Against the Machine has been edited to the lines ''All haaaaa can't stop us now'' and ''Lights out! Guerrilla Radio! Turn that...'' Okay, so the three sentences and one sentence fragment have had been edited as well. I doubt that ''haaaaa'' can stop anyone, but I believe that ''Hell'' stops few. Turn that? What the heck is that? They edited the whole latter part of the sentence. Turn what? ''Turn that **** up!'' The song is edited awfully, leaving all the personality of the song sitting on a park bench in front of Nintendo Headquarters. I can see what they were saying when they did this. ''Hey! Let's annoy people by editing the songs to no real consistency and take out any meaning behind the songs! Then let's take out a few big name artist's songs as well! Those that remain get editted!'' Well, at least ''When Worlds Collide'' wasn't slaughtered such. It at least has more than a chorus and one line from a ending stanza. When Worlds Collide has the first full stanza and then the chorus. The second one taken out, probably because of a certain line which I can't recall time being. Bleah. The rest of the songs are pretty bland, IMO. If you have the option to get this on another system, do. This is awful having the 6 songs. The first one had more songs than this for cryin out loud. I mean, you could at least throw on one or two from the first one that went over well, right? Like Superman by Goldfinger? I would have preferred that over the other 4 songs that aren't even memorable. Apparently Rage Against The Machine isn't quite into fighting censorship as much as you might think, after hearing the N64 Guerrilla Radio...

The graphics good. The faces look a bit strange during normal gameplay, but they're good enough. The thing I like so much are the level textures. The wood on the quarterpipes looks good. It's not just a couple of shades of brown, it looks really pretty good. I'm looking forward to seeing THPS3 and how the graphics will go over on it. There's no real major graphic thing that I can nag about. Except the...editing. Again. No blood when they fall. Well, that's not as bad as the song thing, but it did add a sense of realism...of course, it's not quite real that they would get up after some of the falls I make... Dang that one off the halfpipe onto his head...Man, that didn't seem right he got right back up after that...Hmm.

Scores:
Graphics:8
Music:6 (If it hadn't been edited, it would have been a much better score.)
Fun: 9
Replay: 9
Overall: 9

This is a keeper. Buy this game, you won't regret it. Even better would be if you bought it on Dreamcast, as that has the best graphics and the unedited soundtrack. (Curse you for editing it, Nintendo) But if you can tolerate the edited to the point it amounts to jack-squat soundtrack, it's great. Rent if you like, but you'll just want to buy afterwards.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/25/01, Updated 10/25/01