The older Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games had some weird hidden stuff tucked away, which over the years have inspired countless urban myths and tall tales. Now Ralph D’Amato has tried to set the record straight on some of them.
D’Amato, who worked on the series from its inception, all the way through to 2007, visited oddheader yesterday to talk us all through many of these mysteries, most importantly the origins of secret character Private Carrera (below). It’s long been assumed she was based on porn star Asia Carrera, but D’Amato says it was in fact just a homage to a developer’s beloved Porsche Carrera!
And this bizarre portrait that appears after entering a cheat code on the N64? Long rumoured to be one of Tony Hawk’s girlfriends, it’s actually the partner of a “higher up” at Edge of Reality, the studio responsible for porting the game to Nintendo’s console.
There’s loads more from throughout the series in the video, of course, though a warning: not all of them are able to be conclusively answered by D’Amato, since he couldn’t know everything about every game across every platform.