So, then, which number is it for you? Which Tony Hawk's game should be here instead of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3? The question of which Tony Hawk game is best is one that could run and run, likely until Activision’s prolific licensing deal with Hawk runs out, but every one has merit thanks to the core of enthralling combo-based hi-score play that’s present in each. The earlier games in the series were the most basic, but still hypnotic; the latter Hawk titles were obscured somewhat by the ungainly introduction of storylines, and an intimidating abundance of new trick manoeuvres. THPS3, before anything else, is the best focal point for a reflection on the series to date.
It’s definitely the most striking example of the series’ mesmerising and cascading trick complexity, of how adding just a single new move to the player’s repertoire can expand possibilities in head-spinning fashion. It epitomises the play focus that kept it at the forefront of a genre it created – trick-rich urban sports with an emphasis on being larger-than-life rather than real. A typical THPS3 trick sequence is an act of quickfire precision, executed in the time interval of a beat ’em up combo: double-tap up to get maximum air up and out of a quarter pipe, hold a button to spin while pressing the grab/flip trick buttons in conjunction with two or three directions on the stick or D-pad, line up for a clean, straight landing, tap another button for a revert, then slide down-to-up on the D-pad to enter a manual. A dozen movements, all flowing and switchblade slick, repeated in ad hoc combinations across the entire gameworld until the dexterity is simply hardwired into the player’s hands. It’s easy to get satisfaction from watching the skills of a talented Super Monkey Baller in action as they tackle seemingly impossible Expert stages; there’s maybe some to be had just from watching the fingers of a pro-Hawk player in full flow, from their input as much as their output. If videogames were powered by button presses, THPS3 would glow as brightly as Frequency or Devil May Cry.
Good lines – imaginary paths across each stage that take in combinations of objects that allow for a prolonged and continuous chain of tricks – in early Tony Hawk games were precious and memorable, and exploiting them was key. Latter titles, such as THUG (Tony Hawk’s Underground) 1 and 2, and THAW (Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland), placed so many stunts at the player’s disposal that good lines could easily be buffered by off-board backflips, clumsy wall-runs and mid-grind stalls. Reaction and muscle memory were still tested, but intricate knowledge of the game world was much less of a requirement.
The move from THPS2 to THPS3 is the perfect illustration of how a gameworld can take on a new dimension of complexity from the addition of just one pivotal mechanism. And it’s literally a pivotal one – THPS3 added the revert, a 180º twist of the board executed while coming down and out of a quarter-pipe, allowing the player to segue instantly into a manual, a two-wheel balance they could ride to their grind rail or half-pipe. This alone pushed adept single-combo score totals from the hundreds of thousands into the millions, with the player now able to join up the trick strings learned from the first two games, weaving them into a tapestry of possibilities that carpeted the whole level. Many more skills were added in subsequent Tony Hawk titles, and in higher numbers, each expanding the player’s reach in terms of how they interact with each stage, but few come close to feeling as essential and potent as the revert, a fundamental component rather than an option. THPS4, for example, introduced the spine transfer, a mid-air move that would allow players to transfer from one half-pipe into a neighbouring one; it also levelled them out with the ground below, a get-out-of-jail card for those who jumped out of a half-pipe at a disastrous angle. It’s a welcome piece of unreality that fits in nicely, but arguably destroys any smooth grace. As does the option, introduced in THUG, to get off your skateboard and roam on foot, an aspect that has evolved into an imprecise and glitchy set of acrobatics in subsequent titles. The trick repertoire of the series has never been refined or edited, just expanded. More and more functionality has been wrung out of the dual-stick joypad setup to provide an enormous vocabulary of tricks that must seem deafening to the uninitiated; conversations between seasoned Hawk’s players are certainly impenetrable and jargon-infested enough to require a glossary.
Crafting intricate strings of scores is hardly news to established players, but the innovation of the Hawk’s games was that pressure to perform didn’t come from a scrolling screen of choreographed bullet hell, or attacking swarms of gun and blade fodder. It came from the player’s own exploitation of the environment, a creative act based on the truly open-ended nature of the game’s trick combo system. In terms of skill cultivation, it’s up there with Super Monkey Ball – that feeling of initial bewilderment at the demands thrown down, only for it to become a sense of true accomplishment as the player looks back after several hours of investment, able to tangibly gauge the improvement in their abilities.
Seven iterations spread over two generations of home consoles – Neversoft’s series has become as leading and recognisable a brand as the skate figurehead it carries. It’s a property that seems to have been built as much on its videogame value as licensed merchandising and lifestyle motif attractions. To emphasise that point, the original THPS was regarded as the gaudier and more exaggerated of the PSone skateboarding games of its time, a cartoon of double-jumping superheroes next to, say, Thrasher: Skate & Destroy. It endured, obviously, and few other western franchises can claim to have hit such pace and survived, even if it feels in less rude health at the present.
But forget the head or heart of the series – take a look at its skin. Tony Hawk games have, almost traditionally, had a poor, threadbare quality about their visuals. Blocky buildings, minimal textures and primitive character models are its stock-in-trade – an unimpressive canvas that improves somewhat with each subsequent iteration, but feels increasingly raw as well-programmed heavyweights squeeze more and more graphical flourish out of the current consoles. It’s not so noticeable in the earliest iterations of the series, a time when 3D was only just beginning to unfold, but hung heavier as the games progressed (although the Mall stage from THPS, with its huge, super-deformed props and bus-wide escalators, now looks absurd). But no matter: it never lost track of scale and speed, two fundamental conduits for its flowing, freeform play. It’s not the most glamorous of bait, but big-screen bang and visual swagger were never what the series has chased.