Tony Hawk's Bro Skater Too‏

I’m pretty sure people still remember the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, as it was such a big hit back in the day. I had an N64, so due to the size limitations of the N64 cartridge, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 was gimped: songs were cut short,  it ran better with the ram expansion and required a memory card to save (neither of which I owned). Buying the two things isn’t expensive these days, but I found the PS1 version on eBay for $4 shipped. What a steal.

Going back to this game brings back mostly fond memories: It’s super arcadey skateboarding with crazy special tricks that even these pro skaters would have a tough time pulling off. I played Single Player to death, and what’s great is it’s easy to play a couple of minutes here and there, since each skateboarding run you do is 2 minutes. I love how I can fit in 10 minutes for this game, yet still make progress.

Graphics are still great in my opinion. The game doesn’t feel like it’s aged poorly because it still plays very smoothly, including the animations. It might be filled with jaggies, but it’s ignorable due to all other aspects of how the game runs.

You get a multitude of different levels, and all of them feel different. Out of all, my favorite is probably Venice Beach since it’s fairly big and has a good amount of everything, from ramps to roofs. School II is also great fun, but brought some annoyances, even to this day. For example, in School II you have a goal that requires you to Wall Ride over school bells. Seems simple, right? Nope, some of these bells are just annoyingly hard to Wall Ride.

Lastly, the tracklist is great. I think it’s one of my favourite and most memorable tracklists in a game. The N64 version however, only had 6 tracks, compared to the PS1’s 15. Seeing as I never played the PS1 version until now, this tracklist has only become better. I can’t believe I was in love with 6 tracks while PS1 owners had much more to love! Some of my favorite tracks are “Bring the Noise” , “Guerilla Radio” and a new favorite is “B-Boy Document” because it’s got Mos Def!

It was fun going back to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. If you’ve never played it, get ready for some simple, but great fun. There’s also an HD remake which features levels from the first and second games in the Tony Hawk series, but I heard it’s not that great. Stick to the OG Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.