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?
But RetroLogic isn’t just a podcast. It’s a community of retro gamers!
- We’ve got an active, friendly, and free discord.
- Giveaways
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- AND Dive into our family of Retro podcasts! Like RetroGroove, a music history podcast, Filmlogic, streaming and movie film podcast, and On Topic Retro, a podcast dedicated to 1 video game per episode hosted by our very own John Cummins.
- you can find everything at our website retrologic.games
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.
Thanks for listening to the RetroLogic Podcast! We are proudly part of the Nintendo Dads family of podcasts. If you like what you hear, You’re also welcome to jump into our friendly and 100% non-toxic Discord Community! https://discord.gg/xYEwRK934U
You can also find everything on our website Retrologic.games
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