The game series that quite literally defined my childhood, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is now available on Xbox Series X and PS5 and hoo boy, kick-flipping feels so much better in 4K.
As somebody who never had the coordination to actually ride a skateboard but who grew up in the era of Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series was like crack to me. I would be lying if I said I didn’t spend many an afternoon in front of the PlayStation dreaming about how Ryan Sheckler (my sexual awakening) and I would one day fall in love over our mutual love of skating or at least skating video games.
So, you can imagine how loud I screamed when I found out that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 were being remastered. Not to mention how I felt when I found out it was *again* being beefed up to 4K for the Xbox Series X and PS5.
Honestly, all I have ever wanted in life is to see the undereye wrinkles of Tony Hawk in crisp 4K while listening to the most iconic video game soundtrack of all time.
So naturally, I spent my Sunday afternoon painfully hungover on my couch doing kickflips and googling “is Ryan Sheckler still hot?”
The game is essentially the exact same thing that we were all playing in the early 2000s, with a few minor changes.
Obviously, the graphics, speed and quality has been beefed up substantially, but the OG gameplay is still pretty similar. The iconic soundtrack is still included in full, too, but they’ve also added some extra bangers from the likes of Alex Lahey and Baker Boy (just to name a few).
Unfortunately, some users who upgraded from the Xbox One version of the game experienced crashing when they beefed it up to the cross-gen upgrade, but thankfully I downloaded the game brand-new and managed to play with no issues.
If you’re encountering the crash issue, here’s a handy guide on how to work around it.
Personally, I didn’t play the remaster when it was first released, so this was my first time playing the game since the early-mid 2000s and good lord, I was AWFUL.
I’m by no means a pro-gamer, but I like to think I was pretty good at THPS back in the day, especially considering all of the hours I spent in front of the TV perfecting tricks. So it felt incredibly weird to play something that felt *so* familiar but somehow be *so* abysmal at it.
But, in the game’s defence, this felt weirdly authentic because I imagine this is what it would be like if you tried to pop an Ollie after not skating for years.
If I’m being honest, I thought this remaster would hit the nostalgia sweet spot, occupy my brain for a day-or-so, then end up never being touched again, *especially* because I wasn’t very good upon the first try. But hoo boy, I was wrong.
Like…. So wrong that I am currently resisting the urge to chuck a sickie and just play this goddamn game for the rest of the day.
Unlike other remastered games that I got bored of almost-instantly (sorry Crash Bandicoot), THPS has perfectly slid back into my popular rotation of games, and I intend on playing it until I perfect every damn level that 9-year-old me nailed back in the day.
Perhaps it’s because the last year of our lives has been such an absolute shit show that I’m desperate for anything that makes me feel like it’s the turn of the century again, or maybe it’s because doing skate tricks from the comfort (and safety) of my couch makes me feel like the cool skater girl that I never actually got to be IRL but this game SLAPS.
They’ve kept all of the best bits from the original game, boosted the quality out the wazoo and chucked in a bunch more iconic artists like Alex Lahey and Baker Boy to 2020-ify it.
I can’t quite call it perfection because obviously, I didn’t have the sucky experience of dealing with a crashing game when it first launched, but boy oh boy, it really does come close.
PEDESTRIAN.TV was gifted a copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Remastered for Xbox Series X.
