Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

"The game sparked the million spin-offs"

The very first Tony Hawk, great, sparked a million rip off games and countless sequels. While it did have its many errors, there's no denying all that has been learned and used in a whole lot of other games. What else is there to say when you talk about the original? It's great that Neversoft was able to put this together, let's get to it!

Collect the secret tape!

When you first start the game, you can choose from limited options. Although don't go expecting any features from the newer games such as create-a-skater or a park. You can take it to the streets and do a free skate which lets you practice and figure out all the tricks and controls with no time limit, a single session where two minutes are put on the clock and you try to get your high score. But you can only use levels you have unlocked. If you can get the hang of it then you're set, grab a seat and continue!

If you've never played a game like this before, picture this. The plops you down onto the starting location for whatever level you chose. You now got two minutes to do whatever you want. By holding down one button you can crouch to go faster and release to jump. Then you can press another to do a grab trick or another that does flip tricks. These tricks build up your special so you can unload your special trick. BUT if you happen to crash it will deplete. There's also the ability to grind but you aren't give a bar that helps you balance you gotta learn how you lean on your own. There's also a few gaps in the game that'll help multiply you current combo and add to your total overall score. And if you can manage to get all the gaps you'll be in for a real treat! Plus any goals you do in career mode (more next paragraph) will be saved so you can continue to retry until you get them all.

You'll eventually run into career mode where you can take any skater and have them go through every level and eventually get 100% with that character to unlock things such as videos and cheats. To start your career off, you start on the “Warehouse” level where you have to find the hidden tape and complete other goals such as knocking over boxes and scoring a certain score. Plus they want you to collect S-K-A-T-E, which you'll have to get used to from now on. Completing a goal nets you a videocassette! Woohoo! These tapes allow you purchase new boards, and eventually unlock levels for you.

Unfortunately the game is quite short, you sometimes complete all the missions in the level in one or a few tries. When you finally get enough tapes to move on to the next level, you are led over to the School. This level is one of my favorites and the way you start out crazy; on top of an overhand the goes around and down the stairs! That's simply to cool for a game.

This game doesn't have the manual move so linking tricks is impossible. Scores over 10000 are tricky to obtain unless you can get some massive air time and are even hard then. That's when you can use the infamous slow motion cheat that will allow you to complete the objectives, but it's considered cheating so it's not always recommend. What's nice though is that it only goes in slow motion when you jump into the air so you're not taking forever just to skate around. I consider it to be one of the greatest codes of all-time.

Now the Tony Hawk series is known for its great soundtrack and the original doesn't disappoint. I wish I could find it in stores because this is something you'd listen to everywhere. Just about all the songs can be liked by anyone, meaning there's enough of them to like no matter what music you like. Some artist that appear in the game are Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, and The Vandals to name a few. If you don't like these guys now, you will love them after you hear their songs. If you're worrying about the replay value, don't.

This game takes some time to beat 100% and then you can still go back and play for some fun. The best place to look for it now used games stores (EB, Gamestop, Gamecrazy or on Ebay). Prices will range from $2 used up to $10 new. I'm telling you that you will not be disappointed by this game, if you enjoy skating and great games then pick this up. But if you are deeply into the current-gen graphics, then you may find it hard to play this game at all. Although I believe it's still worth checking out at least once.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/25/06