My Son Meets His Career Goal Of Being Tony Hawk

All three of my children spend many hours a week on their skateboards and watch every competition and show that comes on television. When my youngest was 5, he would reply that he wanted to be Tony Hawk when he grows up. Talk about a lofty career objective. We have been through 5 different game systems and still buy games for 2 of them. Out of all of the skateboarding games that we have bought or rented, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for Sega Dreamcast is, far and away, the very favorite. The main reason for this is that not only are most of the players real skaters, the tricks you make them do are ones seen in real life. Most skateboarding games have you doing outrageously unrealistic tricks but not this one - everything is true to life from the skaters to their boards to real life videos that you can watch after you earn them.


Skaters

Most of the skaters you can choose from are the ones that you see in real life such as, Tony Hawk, Bucky Lasek, Bob Burnquist and Elissa Steamer. There are a couple of fictional characters such as Officer Dick who is a large person and has very cool looking boards and Private Carrera who is a girl that is perfect in every skill area.


Equipment

Each skater has a selection of boards to choose from. These are the boards that they use in real life. You can mix and match different varieties of trucks for the different types of performance you want and there is a large assortment of wheels in different colors.


Game Play

The main object of the game is to try to fulfill the main requirement for each level - which is to obtain 5 tapes. You get these tapes in different ways, sometimes you have to pick up one that is on the course and sometimes you have to obtain a certain score, etc. As you collect tapes you earn things like new levels and boards.

Each level is set up with a different course that has many things to use for tricks. There are two main types of tricks you can do - grind tricks (sliding across things) and ramp tricks (jumps and spins.) You can also do combination tricks that involve both grinding and ramps. Using the controller to do the tricks is very easy by using the directional pad and the buttons.

One of the parts that we like the best is that you can get higher points by making each player do the tricks that are their signature tricks in real life. For example, making Tony Hawk do a 900 is worth more points than making someone else do it because this is a trick that he is known for doing in competition.


Levels

There are several different levels to choose from and each one has a different theme. Some of the levels are a warehouse, a school and the streets. Three of these levels are competition levels and are all skate parks. Each level is set up with different props to do tricks on.


Videos

When you win a gold medal in each of the competition areas with one particular player, you unlock a real life video compilation of that player that you can watch. My kids love this feature. Also, if you win any medal in all 3 competitions with a single skater, you get a video of real life bloopers. I have to say that it hurts just to watch this video.


Music

The background music for this game is done by bands that are popular in skateboarding circles. My husband was pleasantly surprised to hear Primus and The Dead Kennedys while playing the game.



Bottom Line

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is our favorite skateboarding game and we have tried many. The graphics are great and my kids really love being able to actually pretend they are the skaters by doing the tricks and using the boards that are from real life. The game is rated Teen because there is some mild profanity in a couple of the background songs and when a skater crashes, a couple drops of blood are shown. The profanity isn't overtly crude or graphic and the blood is only a couple drops and is animated and not realistic looking at all, but it is there.