The Remaster We Never Knew We Needed

There’s several things I associate with the 90’s, and you’ll probably be surprised to know that not all of them revolve around video games. When I take a sniff of my 90’s scented candle, the subtle but unmistakle scents of flannel, angsty rock music from Seattle, and gasoline under $1 a gallon come flooding back to me. Whoppers were .99 cents each for what felt like forever, and you paid by the hour for internet on your dial-up modem. Also social media hadn’t seeped it’s way into our lives yet, a hideous tumor that pretends to be a force for good but has quite successfully divided everybody even passively using it and has given the biggest morons on the planet a way to voice their stupid and often uninformed opinions, and take videos of themselves doing whatever they can for attention.

But you know what else I associate with the 90’s? Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. That first feeling of playing the game and wiping out constantly while deciding if you wanted to collect the items in each level or try and go for a high score instead. Play it often enough and as you’re walking through your school or hanging out with your friends at your local mall that hadn’t yet become a desolate hellscape of carts selling fidget spinners made with slave labor, hand lotion made with slave-labor, and cell phone stores selling cell phones made with slave labor, and you’d stare at guardrails and steps and decide how to kickflip off of them to manual up to that bench 50 yards away to grind while unintentionally making the old guy sitting on it crap his pants. (He can’t prove you made him do it, though. It could’ve been festering for the last hour his wife was shopping in Dillard’s and nobody does adult diaper forensics. At least not accurately.)

So what’s so special about the remaster of Tony Hawk 1 and 2? It’s probably the best remaster I’ve played in recent memory. Like so much of it has been redone from the ground up that they might as well call it a remake. There’s so much packed into this that’s new yet familiar all at the same time, and for once, they didn’t try to do some modern spin and ruin the experience. I’m trying to remember who screwed that up recently (show battletoads pic with crickets). OHHHHHHHH that’s right. That was disappointing.

So let’s get started with the graphics. This game is gorgeous. Whether you’re playing with one of the pro skaters or you created your own, there’s tons of detail to each character and you’ll take them through all the classic levels, and those have seen an overhaul as well. There’s proper shadows, lighting, and the physics as you skate through and knock around trash cans or cones, and everything is where you remember it. As far as the skaters, the gang’s all back and you’ll be happy to see favorites like Tony himself, Bob Burnquist, Eric Koston, and lots more. There’s also plenty of hidden skaters to unlock, just like in the originals.

The music is also a mix of old and new as you’ll recognize classic bands like Sublime or A Tribe Called Quest or Rage Against The Machine, and they’ve added some new ones as well. If you’re like me and think all new music is overproduced computer generated trash, you can go back and edit the playlist and remove songs that you don’t want to hear, or just click the right analog and it’ll skip right past it. The sound effects are cleaned up and every grind, every clackity clack of the board impacting something, it’s all here and sounds great. Your skater will cheer when you start stringing along really long combos of tricks. Combined with hearing Tony talk through the tutorials, even he sounds excited to be back. And he should be, because I think one of his last appearances was on that awful nickelodeon show of that child and his insufferable parents with the popular youtube channel that I refuse to name. Everything in this package says it wants to have some good, clean fun.

This is such a good remaster that they updated and added some new things for a modern audience without screwing with what made the originals so much fun.

The gameplay felt immediately familiar but there’s enough new here to keep you coming back for more. You start at the hub screen where you can customize your skater and check all your stats. You’ve got an overall experience level now and you get awarded xp for various things, and you can also gain money and xp by completing challenges. There’s general challenges like doing certain trick combos, to skater specific ones like landing each skater’s signature tricks. You can then unlock new outfits for them that you don’t just buy in the skate shop.

You’ve got your choice of going through each career in Tony Hawk 1 and 2 separately or free skate any level, and the career is largely the same as you remember it. You have 2 minutes to work through each of the tasks like getting high scores, or collecting the letters in the word SKATE, things like that. There’s also those wonderful stat points you should definitely search for to let you up your skater’s stats for better tricks and easier handling.

The game also has a multiplayer mode that comes with its own set of challenges, and you’ve got your choice of couch co-op or going online to compete.  It was huge fun to see how I compared with other players (which was badly, by the way).

You can also create a skate park and upload it for other people to play around in, or you can download parks that people have created. There’s tons of objects to lay down and you can buy more from the skate shop. In particular there’s certain special objects you can put in your park that let you bend and stretch out into almost any shape you can think of.

Usually by this point I have some sort of complaint, and other than maybe not having online multiplayer, I don’t have any for this game. This is such a good remaster that they updated and added some new things for a modern audience without screwing with what made the originals so much fun. The updated graphics, the tight gameplay and all of the fun levels you remember playing over 20 years ago – they’re all here and you’re going to smile once that opening video starts up and Guerrilla Radio plays.

If you’re a fan of the old Tony Hawk titles and are on the fence, do yourself a favor and pick this one up, you won’t regret it.