Tony Hawk's Pro Skater

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater raised the bar for skateboarding games on the PlayStation, and now Activision is grinding on the Fun Machine with Hawk's N64 version. What you get is a Tony Hawk game that is almost exactly the PSX version, for better or for worse.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater raised the bar for skateboarding games on the PlayStation, and now Activision is grinding on the Fun Machine with Hawk's N64 version. What you get is a Tony Hawk game that is almost exactly the PSX version, for better or for worse.

Hawk's Eye View
Pro Skater was a breakthrough on the PSX, bringing a whole new world of control to the ailing skateboarding genre. Your job is to take one of the world's best skate punks, pull of massive tricks and collect hidden videotapes on the game's nine real-world locales, from the streets of San Francisco to a shopping mall in New York. If you're feeling lonely, you can take on a friend in Grafitti, Trick Attack, or Horse modes. This is not a skateboarding simulation; it's an all-out skate-jam that emphasizes mad grabs and tight twists over the stodgy laws of physics. That's the key to Tony Hawk: anything is possible, if you "gots da skillz."

Ollie Up North
This version is an almost perfect port of the PlayStation version, though its somewhat cleaner textures cover some of the PSX's limitations, while the classic fuzzy look of the N64 carries over. Amazingly, all the music in the PSX version is here, so you'll be singing with The Offspring or Primus in no time. As for controls, the N64 analog stick is a bit too flakey for fine controls, but the D-Pad works well enough. As in the PSX version, the option to stop and turn in place might have been helpful.

The N64 Tony Hawk is the best skater on the Fun Machine, bar none, but it's not perfect. Still, extreme gamers with N64s can do no better than Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

Comments [0]

post a comment

Post a Comment