Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland – THAWED mod

Play it on: PC

Goal: Pull off some sick combos

Because of the reveal of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 earlier this week, I’ve had Tony Hawk and skateboarding on my brain. So I decided to check out a fan-created PC mod, THAWED, that updates Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland to make it playable on modern PCs and adds a ton of new features as well as support for old levels and modded skaters. And folks, I’m happy to report that once I got it working, I had a great time. I’ve played a lot of THUGPro, a different fan mod that aims to update THUG 2 with custom content, and I was still impressed by THAWED and its level of customization. If you are a THPS nerd, you’ll love this thing. You can change which skating physics to use. Prefer how THPS 1+2 felt, but like THUG2’s on-foot gameplay? You can tweak THAWED to get that exact experience. It’s very nice! It makes me really wish Activision would just re-release all the old games as one big collection separate from the remakes. But that’s unlikely to happen, so instead I’ll just keep playing THAWED this weekend. — Zack Zwiezen