Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: A Dreamcast Review

Oh yes, Ebay is great. I am expecting a delivery of Crazy Taxi sometime this week. That will be next weeks review. Now all I need is Shenmue, Sonic Adventure and Powerstone. But this week, we are taking a look at one of the cornerstones of late 90's games: Skateboarding sims.

There was a weird "XTREME" craze in the late 90's. Suddenly, extreme sports were reaaaaaally popular, catapulting sports like skateboarding motorcross to new heights of popularity. Oh sure they had fans before, but now they just were every where and were marketed to kids like crazy. And at the head of the campaign was sports master Tony Hawk. This guy oozed cool to us young kids growing up and seeking an identity. Not only did he seem like the only cool adult out there, but he also made a living skate boarding. As far as we were concerned, he WAS the dream life.

coooooooooool

And so a game was made, to emulate the experience of being a professional Skater.

GAMEPLAY:

Despite being essentially the first game of its kind, Pro Skater has a very well designed control scheme. You direct your skater with your analog stick, A jumps, X and B do tricks in the air and Y lets you grind on rails. It all is very speed based, with any tricks you do only counting if you don't crash and burn at the end. This forces you to grind for limited amounts of time and only attempt as many spins as you can finish, giving the tricks quite a bit more depth than Jet Grind Radio. All these tricks garner you points that can be increased through combo multipliers.

The levels are very well layed out for trick combos, with half-pipes and jumps scattered about and with a good helping of pipes mixed in. The levels all look different and play different. Some of the levels feel a bit too large, since you usually play with a time limit and traveling between area's burns that. Levels are unlocked by playing the single player campaign. The campaign is based around point and objective goals that earn you video tapes; a certain number of tapes unlocks the next area. The challenges are varied enough to keep the levels interesting and the amount of tapes is low enough that you usually move onto the next area before it gets dull. 

Multiplayer comes down to a split screen point competition mode. If you have a friend who fondly remembers these games or the Extreme craze, it can be nice nostalgia blast. 

PRESENTATION:

Tony Hawk may feature prominently, but there are other skaters to choose from. Most are completely unrecognizable any more, but they have different stats as well as customizable boards; always a welcome touch. The levels are fairly plain looking, but the trick point effects and crash blood are pretty nice for the system and give the game some life.

The weakest point of the game is definitely the music. Maybe I was spoiled by Jet Grind Radio, but I expect and extreme sport soundtrack to pump you up. This one just fades into the background. Utterly forgetable to the point of awfulness.

OVERALL:

Even though this franchise has collapsed of late, the idea is still fun. The game is wonderfully playable for a first entry in a series and can be a lot of fun. But if you can find either Pro Skater 2 or 3, I would recommend those over this one. The later entries simply had a meatier experience to play with. 

7/10