Ep - 116 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 25th Anniversary!

Introduction

Welcome to RetroLogic! I’m Sam Wagers here with John Cummins and Shannon Eno joined by our brothers in groove Liam Davenport to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater!

How are you?

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Housekeeping

Sam: Mega Monday has returned

John: Substack Pokemon OTR done. Unicorn Overlord incoming, Minish Cap

FilmLogic: More cartoons getting the ‘97 treatment

RetroGroove: Build a band: 3 MCs + 1 DJ

Star Wars Dads made the jump to light speed May 4!

What We’ve Been Playing

Liam -

Sam - Ys book II, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys

John - Shining Force and Dave the Diver

Shannon - Unicorn Overlord, KotOR, Paper Mario TYD

The Price Is Retro 

If this is your first time playing Price Is Retro, here’s how we play. I’m going to list off 4 or 5 games and everyone has to guess how much the lot is worth in total. Whoever is closest to the actual value wins that round! Everyone has a list and everyone guesses on each other's list. At the end, the player that won the most rounds wins the episode! But watch out for for our trio of automated competitors: The Ghost (Polterguest), the Robot (Deus Guess Machina), and the Dinosaur (???Retrosaurus???)  They each make their own guess as well!

Liam’s List

Sam’s list

John’s list

Shannon’s list

Trivia Card

Show Topics  1:01:22

Discuss:
-our experience with the game and the series

-skateboarding was like, really big in the ‘90’s (first X games held in ‘95)

-The soundtrack: a tastemaker for many

-When did the series fizzle out?

-

INFO:

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater:

Developer: Neversoft

Publisher: Activision

September 29, 1999 on Playstation

March 15, 2000 on N64

March 21, 2000 on GBC (developed by Natsume)

May 24, 2000 on Dreamcast

Oct 13, 2003 N-Gage (developed by Ideaworks 3D

May 5, 2005 Mobile

Game modes:

Single Player:

Career Mode (videotape collection, allegedly inspired by super mario 64’s stars)(objectives like collect SKATE, destroy objects, reach a certain score)

Single Session

Free Skate

Multiplayer:

Graffiti

Trick Attack

HORSE

Playable characters:(10 + 2 ogs)
Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist, Kareem Campbell, Rune Glifberg, Bucky Lasek, Chad Muska, Andrew Reynolds, Geoff Rowley, Elissa Steamer, Jamie Thomas, Officer Dick +, Private Carerra+

-later games added a character creator and a wide variety of off the wall guest characters like Spider Man, Doomguy, James Hetfield, and Darth Maul

-Actually released to capitalize on growing success of Top Skater (1997, Arcade, Sega) and Street Sk8er (1998, EA, Playstation). 

-Neversoft released only 3 games prior: Skeleton Warriors, MDK, and Apocalypse

Sequels: 

Pro Skater  1999

Pro Skater 2 2000

Pro Skater 3 2001

Pro Skater 2x 2001

Pro Skater 4 2002

Underground 2003

Underground 2 2004

American Wasteland 2005

Downhill Jam 2006

Project 8 2006

Proving Ground 2007

Motion 2008

Vert 2009

Ride 2009

Shred 2010

Pro Skater HD 2012

Shred Session 2014

Pro Skater 5 2015

Skate Jam 2018

Pro Skater 1 + 2 2020

Tony Hawk turned down a one-time offer for permanent use of his name in likeness in favor of royalties.  He made the right call, earning ten times the initial offer within two years.

Tony Hawk also did a lot of playtesting himself, and personally selected the skaters to be playable characters himself as well.

-motion capture was attempted, but not quite there yet.  Instead, animations were made based on X-games footage as reference

Promotions: Toys R us mini skateboard for pre-orders of GBC version

Playable demo on summer ‘99 compilation CD by Playstation Underground

Second demo on a promo disc distributed by Pizza Hut

-Ngage version bundled with N-Gage QD

Community Couch  

Schoner Tod

I remember when Tony Hawk Pro skater first released. (edited)

as a kid playing game was for nights and winter when it was raining but every time i had my friends over it was always a compitition to see who could get the best line or the highest score. I remember several weekends we would even carry our tvs to each others houses and have multiple games going at once. pizza tons of soda and nothing but laughs.

bozo — Yesterday at 10:14 AM

I was very late to the party with THPS - I only got into the series around 2016 as I was building up my OG Xbox library and had 2x/3/4 on hand to see what all the fuss was about. Going in, I was expecting it to be the kind of game that hasn't aged well; one whose reputation was heavily embellished by nostalgia for the era it represented.

Needless to say, I was very, very wrong. THPS totally holds up. And the gameplay mechanics on offer are not only ridiculously deep, but fluid and cohesive in a way few other games can match even today. Chaining tricks into manuals into ramps into reverts is an absolutely sublime gameplay loop that never gets old.

I'm always bothered whenever THPS gets lumped into the generic "Sports" categorization, when in reality it has way more in common with combo-oriented action games like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta than say, Madden. I think that's why it quickly became one of my all-time favorite series despite completely missing out on them when they were in the zeitgeist.

Oh yeah, and the soundtrack? It shreds. As a huge pop-punk fan I couldn't ask for more.

I'll never forgive Activision-Blizzard for shutting down Vicarious Visions and cancelling the THPS 3+4 remaster. 1+2 is arguably the best remaster ever made, and is easily the apex of the entire franchise, despite the moribund state the franchise was in for the previous 15 years.

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