Tony Hawk Skater Pro !NEW!

During development, the Neversoft team would spend its lunch breaks at a bowling alley near the studio, where they would play and subsequently study from Sega's Top Skater (directed by Crazy Taxi creator Kenji Kanno) in the arcade. The game's design served as a strong basic influence, along with observances of real skaters performing in that X Games, which were taking place during the game's development. Although the team decided early on that Top Skater's linearity lacked the sense of fun they aimed for, the "racetrack" element was retained in two of the game's final levels. Contrary to subsequent titles in the series, Neversoft did not primarily focus on using pre-existing locations as reference for the game's level design, but simply envisioned potential skating areas such as a school or a city and incorporated elements such as ramps and rails to benefit the gameplay. The team consciously prioritized fun over realism in the approach to the game's level design and physics.[14]

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Hawk would spend the development time periodically playing through the game's builds and providing feedback. He would also personally select a group of other professional skaters to include as playable characters based on their skills, personalities and diversity; each skater received a cut of the royalties and got to select their own attire and special trick for the game.[18] While animating the skaters, the design team largely depended on using available video footage as reference. The incorporation of motion capture was attempted to aid in the realism of the animation, but due to the technology's infancy, the result was ultimately determined to have not translated as well as what had already been animated.[14][18] The 900 featured in the game was itself drawn from footage of Hawk's famed performance of the feat in the X Games that summer, and was a relatively late addition as a result.[18]

Elissa Steamer's inclusion in the game, along with the game's final release date of September 29, was presented on August 26, 1999.[20] A playable demo with only two available skaters was integrated into the Jampack Summer '99 compilation CD released by PlayStation Underground.[21] The game was made available for pre-order two weeks prior to the game's release; those who pre-ordered the game at Electronics Boutique or FuncoLand respectively received a miniature replica of Tony Hawk's Birdhouse skateboard, a sticker sheet featuring the game's ten professional skaters and a game tip on the back of each sticker.[22] A second playable demo was included on a promotional compilation disc released by Pizza Hut on November 14.[23]

The Game Boy Color version was developed by Natsume and released on March 30, 2000. The Game Boy Color version is an adaptation rather than a true port of the PlayStation version due to the limited capacity of the platform. The game offers two different gameplay styles: an overhead view with vertical scrolling, and a side-scrolling view in which there is a ramp on each side. There are four gameplay modes in which the player can only perform a few tricks. In "Half Pipe Mode", the player must attempt to achieve the highest score possible. "Tournament Mode" is a five-level vertically scrolling game in which the player must race against three computer-controlled skaters and achieve the highest rank. Jumps are made automatically when the player maneuvers onto ramps, and tricks are displayed as a brief static image. "Versus Mode" and "Rival Mode" are identical to "Tournament Mode", except the player plays in a single level against a single opponent; the opponent in "Rival Mode" is computer-controlled, while the opponent in "Versus Mode" is human, which necessitates the use of a Game Link Cable.[40][41][42]

A remaster of both the first game and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, titled Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, was developed by Vicarious Visions and released on September 4, 2020, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One systems. The remaster includes all of the original levels and skaters from the original games, but also includes improved skater creation and park creation modes, online multiplayer, and other new features, and featuring most of the original soundtracks, with a few exceptions due to licensing issues.[46]

Blake Fischer reviewed the PlayStation version of the game for Next Generation, rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "whether you're a hardcore skater or just a wannabe, this will satisfy. A must-have for anyone with a PlayStation".[63]

After Activision moved the series from Neversoft to Robomodo, the developer significantly changed the general outlet and gameplay of the franchise. Tony Hawk: Ride and its successor, Tony Hawk: Shred introduced a peripheral skateboard which replaced the controller. Aiming to provide a realistic skateboarding experience, turning, leaning, hopping, and other actions on the peripheral device were directly translated into the movements of the in-game character via infrared sensors. However, this resulted in the abandonment of open levels, which were replaced by linear levels that had the character skate on pre-set paths. A similar attempt was made with the Nintendo DS game Tony Hawk's Motion, which used a peripheral device that recognized the leaning of the DS system and had the skater move accordingly.

In early 1998, Activision approached by developer Neversoft to develop a skateboarding racing game, in order to capitalize on the growing popularity of the sport. The idea of a racing game was abandoned in development after Neversoft showed the adaptability of the control engine to various maneuvers.[28] Members of the team were fans of Sega's Top Skater, which they played at a local arcade, and that served as a basic influence on the game's original concept. However, Top Skater had a racing element, which the team moved away from as they began studying real-life skaters.[33] To make the gameplay seem as real as possible, company founder Joel Jewett had a halfpipe built in his backyard and started skateboarding with his coworkers.[34] Also, motion capture was used to make the skateboarding moves seem as realistic as possible.[2] To distance the franchise from other games, the developers opted for licensing modern rock songs, in contrast to the classic music usual for video games at that time.[34] The first game was developed within a year by a 12-person team,[34] and Tony Hawk was added as the face of the franchise late in development.[29] A month before the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for PlayStation in 1999, Hawk successfully performed a 900 at that year's X Games, which resulted in huge press coverage of the sport and helped boost sales.[34] Also, the inclusion of the game on the Jampack demo for the PlayStation generated further hype, as players were overwhelmed by the unique gameplay.[28] The huge success of the game prompted Neversoft to vastly expand its production staff in order to be able to release Tony Hawk's games on a yearly basis.[34] Neversoft held true to that ambition and released Pro Skater 2 and Pro Skater 3 in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Both games retained mostly the same gameplay as their predecessor, along with some improvements. The two games were the most critically acclaimed games for their respective consoles and still rank among the highest rated games of all time.[3][4][5] Furthermore, Pro Skater 3 was the first PlayStation 2 game to feature online gameplay. Also, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x, a compilation of the first two games, was released as a launch title for the Xbox in 2001. 2002 saw the release of Pro Skater 4, and by this time, the franchise was among the best-selling video game franchises in the world.[35] This was reflected in the manpower Activision and Neversoft invested in the franchise, as the employees working on the game had grown from 12 for the first entry to 150[34] and there were significantly more skaters featured, all of which received considerable royalties.[36]

With the 2003 release of the fifth entry in the series, Underground, the developers used storytelling and exploration to distance their product from the plotless, task-based format of the previous Tony Hawk's games, which led Neversoft president Joel Jewett to describe Underground as an adventure game.[37] It follows the player character and their treacherous friend, Eric Sparrow, on their quest to become professional skateboarders. The game was created with a theme of individuality: it stars an amateur skater in a true story mode, whereas each previous Tony Hawk's game had starred professional skaters and had lacked a plot.[37] One reason for only allowing the player to use a custom character was that certain criminal acts completed in the plot would not reflect well on real-world skaters.[38] Previous games in the series had included character-creation features as well, but Neversoft heavily expanded customization in Underground by implementing face-scanning for the PlayStation 2 version.[37][39] Regarding the customization options, especially the park editor, producer Stacey Drellishak stated that Neversoft was "trying to create the most customizable game ever".[38] Levels in the console versions of Underground were significantly larger than those of earlier Tony Hawk's games. Neversoft expanded each level until it ceased to run correctly, then shrunk it slightly.[39] Most of the levels were modeled closely after real-world locations; the designers traveled to locales representative of each city in the game and took photographs and videos as reference.[40] Neversoft wanted the player to become familiar with the basic game mechanics quickly and to notice Underground's differences from previous Tony Hawk's games, who all stuck to roughly the same pattern, immediately. To accomplish this, they introduced the player to foot travel and the ability to climb along ledges in the first few missions of the game.[41] While Neversoft wanted to keep Underground realistic and relatable for the most part, they added driving missions as an enjoyable diversion and to push the boundaries of freedom in skateboarding games.[40] However, these missions were intended not to take away from the main experience of skateboarding.[41] Because Pro Skater 4 had received criticism for its difficulty, Neversoft added four difficulty settings to Underground's story mode.[42] 041b061a72