The Tony Hawk franchise holds a special place in my teenage memories. The infinitely replayable games served as my introduction to skateboarding, one of the few conventionally “cool” things I did as a teen, and largely shaped my taste in music while in middle and high school.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (PC, PS4 [reviewed], Xbox One)
Developer: Vicarious Visions
Publisher: Activision
Released: September 4, 2020
MSRP: $39.99
While the first two games, originally released in 1999 and 2000, are still pretty good mechanically, the blocky early PSone graphics haven’t exactly aged like a fine wine. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 Remastered fix more than just outdated looks, though. They add all of the later games' trappings in the series to make playing those classic levels feel better than ever. The additional tricks and quality of life changes end of making the games feel more mechanically like THPS3, arguably the best in the series.
For starters, you no longer need to approach a grind from the perfect angle like in the original game; there’s also the revert ability, which makes transitioning a lot easier and a huge assortment of manual flatland tricks that make stringing combos together way easier than they were twenty years ago.
The high score objectives have been adjusted, so the late game ones still present a fun level of challenge. These across the board changes end up making THPS1 and THPS2 feel more like one cohesive game. From the hub menu, you can track individual progress on each of the career modes. The collectibles and high score challenges still provide a steady tick of satisfying unlocks, but players experienced with the series won’t take a ton of time to check off all of those goals. I had cleared the bulk of both careers in under two days of play.
Luckily, there are many extra objectives to level up your overall profile for THPS veterans looking for more of a challenge. Local and online multiplayer brings back classic game modes like H-O-R-S-E and Graffiti. Local works just as fluidly and easily as you hoped, and while it took some menu hoping to figure out how to group up online, there was plenty of fun to be had having mine and a friend ass handed to us in Score Attack.
Create-a-park is also back, and 2020 seems like the place for it to thrive. You can now upload created parks online, and you can be sure I’ll be regularly checking subreddits for the best parks out there. You can also check out a way more robust create-a-skater. The overall character design options are pretty limited, but you can unlock a ton of clothing options and skate deck options using the in-game currency you get for every skate session.
Several new skaters have joined the roster like Tony Hawk’s own son, Riley, and plenty of new tracks have joined the already stellar soundtrack. I haven’t been able to hear Guerilla Radio without thinking about Tony Hawk since I was about twelve.
Visually things look fine. It isn’t a 4K masterpiece set to blow you away, but it runs well and is one hell of a visual improvement on the source material.
Verdict: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 & 2 is a god damn masterpiece at an incredibly reasonable price point. It’s easily one of my favorite games of the year and stands alongside last year’s RE2 Remake in the pantheon of perfect remasters. Newcomers and fans of the series can find a lot to love here. Now we just need to get a proper next-gen sequel and forget Pro Skater 5 ever happened.
Buy it
Author: Rich Meister