Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 Gameplay & Soundtrack

By Jason Grey

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was the first in the series of the legendary Tony Hawks games, the game revolutionised not only skateboarding but skateboarding as a video game. The games was developed by Neversoft and also published by Activision in 1999. The game was originally only released on the PlayStation but was released for the Dreamcast, N-Gage, Game Boy Color and Nintendo 64. The transitions between consoles met with critical acclaim from critics apart from the Game Boy Color due to the limitations of what the handheld computer is capable of. The game allowed you to go around and skate various spots such as Mall, New York City and School, Miami, spots that you are unable to skate in real life because of legal issues, this reason alone gave you the opportunity to give you the feeling of what it would be like to skate such spots. Gameplay The game allowed you to do combinations of aerials, flips and grinds. Tony Hawks Pro Skater is the only Tony Hawks game that does not let you Manual; this makes the game especially hard when it comes to getting high combo scores. Successful completion of combinations of tricks such as flip rotations or flip tricks to grinds, etc was the main aim of the game to get your point meter up and special meter; bails also referred to as falling of your skateboard wiped your current combo. A meter known as "special" was filled with the completion of a combination of ticks, filling this meter gave you the opportunity to perform special tricks that gave you more points, each player had different special tricks, and a combination of different buttons needed to be pressed for each player to perform such tricks. Aim of the Game A mode known as "Career Mode" allowed you to complete certain goals per level to gain a tape before being able to open new levels, goals such as collecting letters S, K, A, T, and E, collecting hidden tapes, and getting high combo scores were set goal which would award you a tape on completion. The game did not require you to be able to skate in real life; someone like your Mum who will have never picked a skateboard up in real life would be able to pick the basic gist of the game up within half an hour. Just like a game of bingo, you may never have played bingo but after a few goes using online bingo sites you are able to enjoy the game and pick up the game in no time.

The game also consisted of 3 multiplayer modes known as Graffiti, Trick Attack and Horse, all compatible with 2 controllers only. Tony Hawks Pro Skater Sound Track As the Tony Hawk franchise goes on the soundtrack keeps expanding but the first game only had 11 tracks: 1. "The Dead Kennedys - Police Truck" 2. "The Ernies - Here and Now" 3. "Even Rude - Vilified" 4. "Goldfinger - Superman" 5. "Primus - Jerry Was a Race Car Driver" 6. "Speedealer - Screamer" 7. "Speedealer - Nothing to Me" 8. "Suicidal Tendencies - Cyco Vision" 9. "The Suicide Machines - New Girl" 10. "Unsane - Committed" 11. "The Vandals - Euro-Barge"

 

The Top 10 Songs from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater


The soundtrack was limited but it was still a pleasure to play the game for hours constantly listening to the same 11 songs over and over again. The soundtrack was based around punk bands and is what music skaters were into when the game was released. As the series of Tony Hawks grew music genres such as hop-hop and metal were added but as a starting point punk music went hand in hand with playing the game.