We, as a society, are not doing enough to create new things that are irrevocably cool. Things that brim with a moreish and effortless style. Things that feel like a genuine movement, or contribute so heavily to culture that whole lives are changed. Or perhaps Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater remains so cool, that nothing else will ever feel as cool again.
Playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, a newly-released, remastered collection of the classic skating games, I was immediately reminded of just how much influence this franchise had on gaming in the early 2000s, and how its legacy has permeated through the years.
My own experiences date back to playing the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater on PlayStation, alongside my brother and sister. Spending time collecting hidden VHS tapes, grabbing SKATE, and trying desperately to land the glass-smashing jump in the Warehouse stage. (I was quite young when this game released, to be fair.) In this era, every kid with a PlayStation had a copy of THPS. Most of those kids had also begged their parents for skateboards after playing, only to find they weren’t nearly as simple to ride as the game suggested.
It was a hard-learned lesson to play THPS, and realise you couldn’t just push off and kickflip without a care, in real life. Hard-earned by bruises, scrapes, and head knocks. You always remember the feeling of gravel digging into your palm, and having your knees skinned.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater set the bar for ‘cool’ in the early 2000s
Not only did Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater serve as a personality-changing game, it also elevated the pro skating scene, as a whole. It defined what was cool in its era, driving culture towards punk rock music and jorts. Adjacent to wrestling, the games helped to define the pop culture of the early 2000s, with an attitude and defiant spark that inspired countless young players.
With time and distance, the excellence of these games and their impact on the cultural zeitgeist is much better understood. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was a revelation in that regard, functioning as a nostalgic collection of skateboarding tracks and tricks that brought many back to their childhood. It helped players recapture a sense of freedom and experimentation that adulthood degrades, by nature.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 does the same again, now with new tracks and new ways to play. While Pro Skater 4 is lightly underserved here, with a revamped career mode that has an adjustable time limiter, overall, this collection is fantastic. It captures the ideas of cool that defined the early 2000s very well, in style and design, and lets you bask in carefree vibes as you roam each new track.
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You will still need to be precise in your movement, but with a generous tutorial and free roam modes that allow you to experiment, you get the breadth to practice. As an aside, this is part of why the game is such a good experience on Steam Deck. Beyond having smooth performance and gorgeous-looking terrains, THSP 3 + 4 also lends itself very well to drop-in, drop-out gameplay. With segmented levels, you can simply pick your path (in free play, all levels are unlocked, and you’ll need to manually unlock each level in career mode) and get skating.
In my time with the game, it’s proved to be a surprisingly meditative experience, enough that I’d go so far as to call THPS 3 + 4 almost a cosy game. In each stage, you get the chance to skate your way through various obstacles, stringing together moves (if you can), while being rewarded with points. Few games match the raucous high of THPS when it comes to pulling off a new trick, and nailing that landing. It’s hard-earned. Perhaps not with gravel in the palm or skinned knees, but certainly with a degree of stubbornness and light frustration.
Roaming through the Waterpark stage (which is new to the series), you can pull off tricks by all manner of methods – grinding along rails and ledges, ollie-ing down slopes, or attempting risky triple kickflips. The beauty is in how these tricks are strung together, and figuring out the best ways to keep yourself in motion.
So, it becomes meditative, as each step unfolds in your mind, and you feel the pull of glory calling your name. In other tracks, you can spot linked installations that could form your next grind combo, or slopes that lend themselves well to picking up speed and flying through the air, possibly giving yourself enough height to pull off mid-air tricks on the way down.
The entire process is just plain cool. Paired with a refreshed soundtrack (some original licensed tracks, some new ones), you can really enter a flow state, in a virtual early 2000s world where responsibilities don’t matter and you’re a cool, edgy young kid again. As a transportive capsule, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 captures its original time period well, with modern enhancements serving to highlight just how much these games were ahead of their time.
We could all do with an escape lately, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 invites that with gusto, reintroducing a bright and breezy game world where all your concerns are reduced to a simple thing: how many kickflips you can get in before your skater stacks it.
A PC copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 was provided by the publisher and played on a Steam Deck for the purposes of this review.
