Ok, so the Tony Hawk series didn't actually start with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, but such was its impact at the time, you might as well say the series at its best, as you know it, started right here. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was interesting and fun. THPS2 was genre defining and time-consuming and rage inducing and mind-blowing and all kinds of other descriptors.
I've owned and played a lot of the Tony Hawk games, starting with the original, and THPS2 is always referred to as the best of the bunch. It's also the one THPS title I never actually owned, until now...
I think I'll be having some fun with this one.
Fun Times
Starting with a bang, a skating montage introduces the cast to those of us who know absolutely nothing about skateboarding. I don't know who these people are, save for the fact that they appear in various Tony Hawk titles. I recognise their names as those belonging to a skateboarder, and I only know that because of the Tony Hawk series. Has this franchise done wonders for their careers? I've no idea.
Despite my admiration for the man, the myth, the legend that is Rodney Mullen, this isn't Rodney Mullen's Freestyle Skateboarding, so we'll be taking ol' Tony along for a spin and a kickflip through his own career mode.
Over the course of the game, you're able to upgrade your skaters' stats, as well as purchase new boards for them, either because you like the design or the stat boosts that come with it. Before all of that, though, you've got to make some money.
Each level has a checklist of tasks for you to complete for a one-time reward, and you'll have two minutes to check off as many as you can during a run. After two minutes, those that are complete are complete for good, those that aren't are reset and you can try again, as many time as you like, in order to get the reward.
The tasks are usually a case of meeting a specific point target, collecting five thingymajigs, and performing a specific trick in a certain part of the level. Often, they're laid out with runs in mind, with one collectable lining you up or otherwise making you well aware of the next, like the S-K-A-T-E letters. Sometimes you'll end up ticking off one part of a task in the process of collecting another, and lots of pop-up flashing text will remind you of your progress.
In order to go on these runs, you'll need to know how to skate, and the Tony Hawk games are some kind of black magic when it comes to the controls because they are still lodged in my brain from twenty years ago. They'll never leave.
Your ollie - your jump - is on the X button. Hold it longer to jump higher. Let go at the right point to maximise your airtime so you can pull off a bunch of tricks. If you want to grab your board, hold circle and a direction of your choice. The longer you hold, the longer you'll grab the board. To flip the board, press square and a direction. If you want to risk sloppy landings or bails, but get a few more points, you can spin with the shoulder buttons.
Pull off a number of tricks in a row, or trigger some environmental bonus (often found by jumping over something, from one thing to another, grinding a specific rail and so on), and your score will be multiplied by the number of tricks in your combo. Make sure to land it though...
Grinding acts exactly the same, with triangle and a direction next to a ledge or a rail pulling off all kinds of grinds. Line it up and you can stall instead, planting yourself on the rail rather than grinding along it. Each of these involves balancing, but you'll have to watch your skater directly for clues on which way to lean before falling.
That's in contrast to the new manual mechanics, which comes with a balance meter to show you how close you are to falling flat on your arse because Tony is a vert piper, not a flatlander.
Getting used to jabbing up-down or down-up as you land a trick means longer combos, and longer combos mean higher score multipliers, and allow you to keep scoring after the clock runs out, so keep an eye out for those last few opportunities for scoring - otherwise you might miss the Pro Score by 301 points because you're rusty on your manuals...
If you've done well enough, you'll be able to advance to the next level to complete more tasks, but you don't have to do so. You can skate in a level as many times as you want to try to unlock the level goals, earning more money to spend on upgrades, or you can do the bare minimum to unlock the levels for other game modes - notably Free Skate, so you can get rid of that annoying 2-minute timer.
Frustrations
For the sake of grabbing screenshots for this blog, I played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 via PlayStation emulation first and noticed quite a lot of texture warping and short draw distances. The stage would wobble like jelly as you skated, depending on where you looked, and chunks of quarter pipes or entire walls would disappear into blackness as they simply weren't drawn by the system.
I didn't think the THPS games were this bad in the graphics department, so I hooked up the PlayStation to try THPS2 for real, on original hardware, for the first time since I played a demo, long, long ago.
Turns out that, yes, the draw distance on these levels is ridiculous, and coupled with the close-up camera and tight turning controls, managing to line yourself up with a ramp is only possible with a hefty run-up - anything shorter is sheer luck you getting into a useful position.
Well, I say luck. The controls are next to perfect and allow you to make use of your environment at whatever angle you hit it at, and snappy grinding physics and sticky ramps help to reset your position to something more useful by the time to trick lands.
All in all, though, I was expecting Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 to be much better than I was finding it. It played like I'd never stopped playing it, the controls came naturally, but the visual presentation was lacking. Or I'm too hard on it. It was a PlayStation title, after all.
Hmm. I think it's time for me to explore a whole bunch of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 ports in an effort to find the best way to play.
Game Boy Color, 2000
The Game Boy Color saw a sidescrolling 2D release of THPS2, and as you might imagine, it is a right old nightmare to try and control. Grinding is pretty easy if you want to score points in single figures, but getting enough speed to even reach the lip of a quarter pipe to then ollie and pull of a trick is a skill that still eludes me. You can collect SKATE letters and aim for high score targets, just like the PlayStation title, but they're just as elusive as the tricks themselves are.
There are apparently some 2.5D levels, which might make my life easier, but I don't know where they're hiding. I hope I don't have to unlock them...
The Tony Hawk Spin-o-meter says: Sloppy 180 Ollie
Game Boy Advance, 2001
This little handheld continues to amaze me. I had one of the Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX games for it back in the day, which uses this same engine. The controls are a bit weird, having tricks on the shoulder buttons, and semi-transparent level elements do their best to keep you informed of where you are and what you're doing in this fixed-camera world. The Hangar level is damn near identical to the PlayStation level, just viewed from this one angle.
I will always prefer to play a 'proper' Tony Hawk title, but if I only had THPS2 for the GBA, I think I'd probably play it for a decent amount of time. To its completion? Maybe not. But well worth a go.
The Tony Hawk Spin-o-meter says: 360 Varial
Nintendo 64, 2001
Oh, I take that back. I would not prefer to play 'proper' Tony Hawk if the only 'proper' title on offer was the Nintendo 64 port. While it looks great, it plays awfully. Actually, no. I might take back that as well. It emulates awfully if you've mapped the C-buttons to an analogue stick, like I have, because the C-buttons on the N64 are the face buttons on the PlayStation. C-left for flip tricks, C-right for grabs and so on.
I suppose if I remapped everything and tried again, I'd find this port to be alright, but because I ended up closing the window in disgust, I may never know for sure.
The Tony Hawk Spin-o-meter says: Should have been a 540 Crossbone but you landed on your face
Sega Dreamcast, 2000
Wow. This is like a remake for more modern consoles. This is next to perfect. I don't know how much of it is down to the code and how much to the emulator interpreting it, but I think I'm going to have to apologise to the PlayStation and stick with this. Buttery smooth and very playable, this is the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 that exists in my mind's eye. This is as close to what we picture in our nostalgia for the series as you can get.
The Tony Hawk Spin-o-meter says: The 900
Further Fun Times
I carried on playing through the career mode on the Dreamcast port, and you can see the differences in draw distance as clear as the skybox that the PlayStation so willingly defaults to.
Despite my lack of skill, my inability to find my way onto the roof and that first bloody school bell that I can never wallride over, I was having a damn good time. The second level, the School, tasks you with the same sort of stuff, and it was all in the way of my one true goal for this game: Getting to the Marseille level that was featured in the demo.
After a couple of attempts, I'd done enough. It wasn't too difficult; Marseille is only the third level, but it's the first of a different kind of challenge for players.
These competition stages give you just one minute to wow the judges with your extensive trick list. The more you can do that are different, and the more that you do that are landed, rather than bailed, the better. Variety is the spice of life and the key thing that will win over the judges, so bust out your best flips, grabs and grinds over 3 heats in order to make progress.
There's room for improvement for me...
I did, eventually, pass this competition. There is a tendency in Tony Hawk games for players to spam the trick inputs in search of big combo multipliers, and then forget that they have to land them. Yes, launching into the air with a flip and grabbing your board for a 360 Something-or-other on the way down does look cool - when you pull it off. Bail in a competition and you might as well restart. Just take it slow and carefully and eventually, like the Birdman himself, you'll pull off the 900 yourself.
The eagle-eyed amongst you will note the lack of a timer because I was messing around in Free Skate at this point, which is the best way to play Tony Hawk games. Special moves like this are performed with short inputs, like Right-Down-Circle, only when your special gauge is full or glowing, which fills up as you successfully land more tricks, and disappears entirely when you bail.
Each skater has their own selection of tricks, most being in the air but a good few being types of grinds. It'll depend on the style of the skater as to which type of moves they'll have at their disposal. Each skater having their own stats should probably dictate your play style, too, but as the level tasks often send you all over the map for this and that, skaters tend to be good all-rounders anyway, and you can upgrade their stats if they're lacking in any particular attribute.
Final Word
I could quite happily spend a few hours playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. With multiplayer modes like Horse and Grafitti laying the framework for some rather competitive sessions, as well as a create a skate park mode that allows you to put down your own collection of street furniture to fight over, you'll have plenty to do when you've found all the bits and bobs and secret areas in the levels you unlock through the career mode.
Collectables in video games can often feel pointless, and while collecting 5 Air Wings badges is a thinly veiled attempt to have a thematic collectable for a level set in an aircraft hangar, opening a secret area because you ground over a helicopter blade, and that helicopter then destroyed half the level on its way out, forever changing the way you play it (until the timer runs out and everything resets) is something worth hunting down and finding out.
To be rewarded for that with an actual skate video, rather than a number on a checklist, is huge. Those videos are the sole reason for me even knowing who these skaters are. Those videos, arguably, got me more interested in skateboarding than the games themselves. I don't skate, but it can be fascinating to watch sometimes, and because of that, I've owned, played and thoroughly enjoyed many a skate game during the last two decades.
The controls are tight and memorable. The gameplay is fluid and responsive. The graphics are nothing too amazing but still not shabby or anything, but the music. The music.
Stop, and listen to the music. The OST to THPS2 is as defining a feature of the game as the game itself. Anthrax and Chuck D. Papa Roach. Rage Against the Machine. I may hum or 'sing' the songs found in the original Tony Hawk soundtrack more than anything in THPS2, but that's because I'm musically ignorant and inept. The tracklist here is top notch.
I even had the opportunity to hear the Dub Pistols perform Cyclone live. The only track of theirs I know, and I only know of it because of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. If memory serves, the event the previous year had a small half-pipe for local skaters to just do something while live music took everyone through to the early hours of the morning. If that was the case when the Dup Pistols were in town too, then I've literally missed out on real skaters really skating to a live rendition of Cyclone by the real Dub Pistols, because I didn't want to go outside and spend £20 to stand in the cold that day.
Kinda regret that. Oh well. Guess I'll stay indoors on my video games...
If you've not played any Tony Hawk game before, there are probably better ones to start with, but for the Tony Hawk's experience, as it was back then, you can do far worse than a quick session of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Crank up the volume and enjoy.
Fun Facts
Activision bought Neversoft during the development of THPS2, and the many ports were co-developed by different studios. The Dreamcast port, as well as the Xbox release Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x, were done by Treyarch, and during the development of the latter, Activision bought them too, eventually putting them to use on important projects like Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer and some parts of the Call of Duty series. Whatever that is.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, developed by Neversoft, first released in 2000.
Version played: Sony PlayStation, 2000
Sega Dreamcast, 2000
Game Boy Color, 2000
Nintendo 64, 2001
Game Boy Advance, 2001, all via emulation