Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

"The best skateboarding game ever made."

Ever since I played the demo of Tony Hawk in the Summer Jampack '99, I was addicted to it. I played it non-stop. After that, I'd been looking forward to the release of it. Now that I own it, I think it's even better than the demo. I think it is the greatest skateboarding game ever made, and one of the funniest games to hit the PlayStation all year.

Graphics: (9/10)- Tony Hawk's graphics are amazing. Every skater looks realistic, and the tricks look great too. The motion capturing by Tony himself really paid off in this game. Even the crashing animation's look realistic and even painful. Only some mild clipping, and minor slowdown bother me, but it still doesn't detract from the game.

Sound: (8/10)- All of the sound effects are well done, and are also realistic. Primus is played for the musical tracks, and for some people this is a good thing. For me though, I really couldn't care less, so I turned down the music volume and played some Juvenile instead.

Control: (9/10)- Controlling your skater is amazingly simple, and tricks are easy to pull off as well. It's just so incredibly fun to pull off trick combos during free skate mode, and because of that, my control rating is high. But if only controlling your skater was as easy. Sure its easy to actually skate, but it gets hard to control them when they're going so fast. I only wish the turning ability was tighter.

Gameplay: (10/10)- This game is so incredibly fun and addictive, you'll lose track of time just skating around and trying to break score records. The trick system is so easy to use, that anyone can play it. Tony Hawk redefines what a skating game should be like and how it plays. If you even consider yourself a gamer, you should pick this title up immediately. It plays soooooooo good! :)

Replay: (10/10)- Like I said earlier, you'll lose track time playing this game. It's so unbelievably addictive, that you just can't help yourself. The career mode is also pretty deep, and it should take a while to collect the tapes (what you have to earn to move on to the other stages; you get them by meeting certain goals, i.e. getting 5,000 points under a certain time limit). The two-player mode is smooth and keeps the replay value up.

Buy/Rent- Don't delay, buy it today.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 01/13/01