I’ve spent a lot of time with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 demo despite being confined to short, two-minute runs in a single level. It’s an incredible achievement that feels almost exactly like the iconic franchise’s earliest installments. My favorite part, however, is a new addition that sees your skater of choice hoot and holler every time they do something neat.
If you haven’t played the remaster’s demo yet, this high score run has a lot of great examples of what I’m talking about.
In previous games, Tony Hawk and his motley crew of skating superstars enjoyed very little in the way of vocalizations. They’d grunt and groan when you wiped out, but there were never reactions for positive stuff like finally landing a trick off a huge ramp or nailing a hidden gap. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 changes that with new recordings of Hawk—and, presumably, the rest of the cast—cheering for their own special tricks and long combos.
As a kid trying my best to keep up with more adept friends, I often lost sight of the fact that skateboarding is supposed to be about having fun. If I had spent less time hung up on what I couldn’t do, I probably would have gotten better just by mastering what I could do. That’s what I love about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater: It gives everyone an opportunity to live out their wildest skateboarding fantasies. And now, the skater on-screen mimics what I would probably do in the real world were I to actually land a Kickflip Superman.
Woo-hoo!