Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

"Great Port Of A Great Game"

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is a revolution in video games today. With every
feature of the game perfectly combined with the others, it is quite
possibly one of the greatest games of all time. It has made more fans
of skateboarding games, then all of the other ones combined. A
masterpiece that will not be forgotten for many, many years. For those
of you who have never played it, then you are missing out on
perfection.

When you first turn on the game and start to play it, you will noticed
how much time was put into creating the graphics for Tony Hawk's Pro
Skater. The course design has been beautifully created, with glitches
appearing so rarely you should feel honored to see them. The characters
have been created with such precision that it seems as though you are
watching them on ESPN2. First picking up the game, you will be
impressed, even after hours of gameplay you will still be impressed.
Overall, one of the best games of all time.

Has there ever been a video game with a better soundtrack? Many will
answer a strong ''No!'' I would be one of those people. With songs
ranging from Hip Hop to the classic Punk Rock, which in my opinion is
the only kind of music for a skateboarding game, it will have just
about everybody yelling ''I am the ambassador, of Kickyourassitor!''.
Unlike some ''Extreme'' games, the sound effects are not incredibly
annoying, and are actually kind of catchy in there own sort of way.
Once again, extremely well put together in a beautiful arrangement.

Playing Tony Hawk for the first time, the controls seem kind of iffy,
but once you learn them, they will manifest themselves into your mind
and control them, and any other extreme sports game's controls will
instantly suck in comparison to those dawned upon you by the master of
skateboarding himself, Tony Hawk. You will never appreciate how great
the controls are until you go back and dust off Cool Boarders 2
(remember how great that game was?) and try to play it again. There is
no way that any other game will be able to match the simplicity of Tony
Hawk's Pro Skater, yet not be overly easy.

I have a feeling that THPS and all of its sequels will last for a long
time and span itself over many systems, as long as Activision does not
pull a Midway and oversaturate the market with a game at least once
every year. The only reason for a game to have the extremely huge
amount of success and copy cat games to basically steal everything from
it, is the intense entertainment of the game. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
has raised the bar dramatically for entertainment in a sports game.
Hopefully, games will continue to raise this bar and still keep the
games simple. After you beat the game with every character, you will be
compelled to play the game over and over just trying to get a higher
score. This drive will waste many hours of your life, and will create
an almost sick addiction that eats at your soul, much like crack.

Although there are not many options for a two player mode game, what
has been inserted into Tony Hawk has been great and well done. You will
find yourself in a head to head battle with one of your friends, then
at the last second he pulls off a huge combo to beat you. While
performing his celebration dance, you will stand up and punch him in
the face. I have seen it happen a million times, it is kind of sad
really.

Finding all of the level goals are not too challenging, but you will
find yourself trying to get those goals, and realize that they are
harder than you thought. On top of that, when you are trying to break
your high score with that huge line, you will find out that you must
have perfect reflexes, or else you will fall and destroy your whole
attempt, believe me, I have taped pillows to the ground next to where I
play so that I can throw the controller down so I don't break it in
frustration. I would recommend you do the same, I've seen too many
controllers die this horrible death and it does not need to happen any
more.

If there is a more original sports game out there, then I would love to
see it. Tony Hawk is like no other skating game that came out before
it. You have the ability to choose your own tricks, and set up combos
that can last 30 seconds, which is impossible in all of the other
skateboarding games before this. Just an extremely original game, and a
revolutionary one at that.

Contemplating buying or renting a game is usually a hard decision, but
with such a great game, buying it is the only option that you should
have.

GRAPHICS: 10/10
SOUND: 10/10
CONTROLS: 10/10
GAMEPLAY: 10/10
ENTERTAINMENT: 10/10
REPLAY VALUE: 10/10
MULTIPLAYER: 10/10
CHALLENGE: 10/10
ORIGINALITY: 10/10
BUY RENT?: Yes/No

OVERALL: 10/10

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