Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is an amazing Skateboarding game for the PSX. As far as I know, this is the game that brought a large amount of attention to the skateboarding world for gamers, and really brought skateboarding into the limelight for the video game industry. Tony Hawk is a household name, and really the first legend to bring skateboarding widespread recognition. This game not only offers extremely fun game play, but somehow gives you fun objectives to complete while doing what it is you do. Anyways, on to the review!

Graphics 8 / 10 -- The graphics are overall pretty well done. The character's bodies are actually proportionate and not extremely block-like, which is pretty remarkable for the time. Though not crystal clear, you can see some detail on each of their faces as well. One of the best looking things in the game are the selection of decks you can buy (these are the artwork for the underside of the board). Even while twirling out the famous 900 Tony broke the record with at the time, the artwork on the board looks great. The environments look great down to the decals and graffiti on the walls. There are even some scenarios where you can break glass or create sparks while grinding, and they look great for it's day.

Sound 9 / 10 -- I love the audio this game features. All of the actual board's sound effects are perfect, be it grinding, landing, or falling flat on your face. A nice touch is when navigating through the menus, it makes these same sound effects for each movement instead of your stock menu effects. When the characters fall or hurt themselves, the way they cry out in pain is hilarious. At first, it's not unusual to make them wreck as hard as you can just to hear it a few times lol. The true gem of the audio here is the soundtrack. It has true to life music, vocals and all, from bands that many who like punk-rock will love. The song choices were phenomenal. My only gripe here is there's only 10 tracks to choose from, so they can become a bit repetitive after a while, regardless of how darn good they are. But even that is only a small complaint, as you have the option of turning the music off if you wish.

Addictiveness 8 /10 -- This game is very fun to play, and having a hard time putting it down is completely natural. Not only is the core game play extremely intuitive and fun, there's also 5 objectives to complete in each level. Aside from those, there are also 3 championship levels, where your only goal is to perform as best as you can against every other skater in the game (controlled by AI of course). The championships are judged in "Heats," where each heat is one go around the track for a limited amount of time. The more you score (each trick gives a set amount of points, chaining tricks together gives you a multiplier) the better you will do, but be careful not to fall or spam the same move, as it will lower your score (and also performing the same move more than twice awards less points each time). There are 3 heats everyone goes through, and your best 2 count toward your score, which is the average between them. You can also simply free skate if you so choose, but keep in mind you have to unlock each course in the campaign mode before it is available to you, excluding the first 2 levels.

Story -- Non-existent.

Depth 7 / 10 -- The game doesn't really offer anything outside of the core game play, but there's quite a bit to do. You have the 3 aforementioned championship levels, each of which has it's very unique and differing design. In each course, there are 5 objectives to complete, and completing these are what allow you to progress through the game. Each level has two score based objectives, collecting the letters to SKATE, a hidden tape, and a miscellaneous objective that requires you to do something unique for that level. The SKATE letters are each letter of skate strewn about the course, and sometimes require you to put in a great deal of effort to obtain them. The score based ones are self-explanatory, and the hidden tape is just that, a hidden tape somewhere on the course you have to find. That about covers everything the game has to offer, though it will take quite a few tries on each level to get everything, so it'll keep you busy a lot longer than it seems.

Difficulty 7 / 10 -- The game is pretty well balanced for difficulty. The earlier stages are pretty easy to unlock everything they have to offer, and then the objectives gradually increase in how hard they are to obtain. Some of the later ones actually have you flying 50 feet in the air over a 50 foot wide gap to collect (the gravity physics aren't exact, so don't worry lol). The championships will require near perfect runs to win, so that may be a challenge to new players, though once you get the hang of it, they are relatively simple to win. You don't have to complete every single objective to progress either, only up to a certain number to unlock each level, allowing even more leeway. Prepare for a challenge if you want to complete the game 100%, as the later objectives (they're called "Tapes" in-game, like a VHS) are actually pretty darn difficult.

Overall 8 / 10 -- I highly recommend this game to any fan of skateboarding, or simply to someone who hasn't tried the franchise yet. Even if skate boarding's not your thing (it never was for me anyway) this game can still be very entertaining. If you've never tried it before, it's more than worth checking out.

Hope you enjoyed the review

Mynamescox44 : Hmm....I've never liked this game to be honest. I used to watch my brother play it and got bored very quickly sadly. I'm not really into skateboard games such as this. But this is a good review as always. I like your review but I just don't like the game itself so you don't get confused by what I just said. I hope its clear and understandable.

My apologies for the late reply, but I loved this game to no end (still) do, unfortunately the sequels never quite lived up to this one. As for the music , it was awesome . I played the game on the N64, and I have no idea how they pulled it off on those cartridges, but they did. I always spam the same two songs though .

Nice work here, man. Keep it up.