Music in Video Games: Tony Hawk Games

Oh boy, where do I start with this one. This is the big one, the game series that influenced and redefined what my music taste was and formed it to what it would later become. All my love for music, soundtracks, favorite bands, and this blog to some extent is thanks to these amazing games. As many of you might have noticed in previous band of the weeks, they usually have the same origin pointing to one of these games, I've been wanting to write about them for a while now but never did because it feels like such a daunting task considering how much I have to say about all of these games. So all that being said, let us start from the very beginning, I am going to go from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to Tony Hawk's Proving Ground excluding what comes after them, because for me, that's their prime. They all vary from here and there but games after proving ground just don't make them justice with the exception of the fantastic Remake made by Vicarious Studios Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1

The one that started it all, Neversoft's first Tony Hawk game, it was very successful, enough to span countless sequels. Where I stand with this game is more of an appreciation for starting the franchise, this is because I played it very late in my life in the Dreamcast. When I played it I had already played all the other games from Pro Skater 2 to Proving Ground excluding Project 8, I ended up getting a copy of this game just to complete the collection and because I wanted to experience the start of it all, but you can imagine having played all of the others made passing this one particularly hard and pretty annoying at some points.  Of course, I understood it was because I was so used to certain mechanics at that point that it was impossible to rate this game fairly. That being said the soundtrack as always was superb in every regard, and future titles hooked me on bands like Goldfinger and Suicide Machine for a very long time, so I already knew most of their songs vividly, so when Goldfinger’s “Superman” started playing I was excited because it had my favorite Goldfinger song in, a song I indirectly fell in love with thanks to Pro Skater 4 that had “Spokesman” and at the end of it all, this is why I love these games, for all the songs and bands I now know directly or indirectly. 

 Favorite Songs:

 Goldfinger - Superman

The Suicide Machines - New Girl 

Suicidal Tendencies - Cyco Vision

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

The one that started it all for me. This was my very first Tony Hawk game. I had a copy of this game for PlayStation 1 so yeah, I had the “good” version of the game and I loved everything about it. By far one of the games I played the most as a child. By this point the music didn’t really capture my attention as much, that comes a bit later in future titles though it still had some jams that I loved and had them engraved in my subconscious when I looked them up when I was older. I have very fond memories of this game, from the amazing tricks, sound effects that still are prevalent in my mind, exaggerated blood particles when they bailed and the thing that blew my mind the most, I could ride a skateboard with Spider-Man. I also quite enjoyed the cheat codes here and there, my brother and I would put the flying cheat code and always went to the New York stage and crash against the taxi’s while flying to make them bail harder, a bit sadistic but it was very fun to do. This game was stolen from me when someone broke in and stole my PlayStation with all my games, I longed so much for this game that I tracked it down later in life and bought it again to play it in my PlayStation 3. Still find it fun to this day, this game is just among the greatest.

Favorite Songs:

 
Millencolin - No Cigar

Lagwagon - May 16

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

Pro Skater 3 is a weird one for me because just like Pro Skater 1 I got it out of order. My next game after Pro Skater 2 was Pro Skater 4 for the GameCube and man did that game changed everything for me but more on that later. Pro Skater 3 was an odd one because I got it in between of Underground 1 and 2. This is why I tend to prefer Pro Skater 4 even though everyone tends to say Pro Skater 4 is just an updated version of 3 with not much improvement but for me Pro Skater 3 was a downgrade from 4, not saying that I don’t like it I absolutely love this game and have countless hours in it, I just wanted to make clear and explain why I prefer 4 from 3. Even though I did not physically own Pro Skater 3 by the time I was playing Pro Skater 4 my cousin did have it, so there were times I just played both simultaneously. Now this game introduced something very important to the franchise and you veterans out there know which mechanic I am talking about and that is the “Revert”. This completely changed these games to a more combo oriented system and I for one love this, making crazy amount of points is exhilarating. So even though I do not love this game as much as the next one it holds a special place in my heart for introducing my favorite mechanic in all these games. Extra points for having one of my all-time favorite songs in the soundtrack and of course all the crazy secret characters.

Favorite Songs:

Adolescents - Amoeba

Guttermouth - I'm Destroying the Word

Zebrahead - Check

Motorhead - Ace of Spades 

 

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4

This was one of the first games I got for my Gamecube, from here till project 8 I played all games in the Gamecube. This game how I mentioned above changed everything for me. This was the first game I started to really pay attention to the music, many of my favorite bands today are from this title and from another future entry that we will get to soon enough. This entry in the franchise brought the pseudo free roam newer games will all in some way adopt. I welcomed this change back then because I was pretty terrible in Classic mode and got more annoyed than enjoyment out of it, always liked more the free skating aspect of the stages and also played split-screen with my younger brother most of the time anyway, this game also sparked a lot of my dumb teenager humor from years to come, some things that still crack me up a bit to this day, it was just such a silly experience and jokes but all so fun, playing split-screen and finding all the secret areas and playing with my favorite secret character Jango Fett, Eddie and more. As I said this is where I really started paying attention to the music so the list for favorite tracks will grow exponentially from here.

 

Favorite Songs:

Goldfinger - Spokesman

Less than Jake - All My Best Friends Are Metalheads

Flogging Molly - Drunken Lullabies

Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast

The Distillers - Seneca Falls

AC/DC - TNT

Avail - Simple Song

System of a Down - Shimmy

Tony Hawk's Underground

I am just going to straight up and say it, this game is not my favorite from the bunch when I consider from Pro skater to American Wasteland, at least soundtrack wise it's my least favorite and I just overall don’t enjoy this one as much as the rest. I remember renting this game first and loving how amazing the graphics for the time were and the whole getting off the board aspect was fantastic, still is for me, but as other games in the series started to come out and this feature became more and more normal Underground started to fell by the wayside. The downfall of this game for me was the music and general vibe of the game, this one is a bit more serious and even though I enjoyed passing it, it’s been the only one from this list that I have never wanted to pass again.

 Favorite Songs:

Sublime - Seed

The Adicts - Viva La Revolution

Transplants - California Babylon

Kiss - Rock and Roll All Nite

 

Tony Hawk's Underground 2

 

Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 is by far my favorite game in the series and the one I have played the most. For me, the overall feeling of this game‘s gameplay is on point, almost fine tune to perfection from all the other entries and feels about right in all the trick systems and combo progressions. It felt convoluted enough to make crazy ass combos but not all over the place as American Wasteland kind of feels. The story though is all over the place taking a more Jackass approach that was really in by the time this game came out and in a way making Tony Hawk feel like a minute character of sorts, but back then I was really into Jackass and all of  these things so this game felt perfect with my dumb teenager self, now story wise I find it silly but makes me happy in a nostalgic sort of way. But that is not even remotely all to why I love this game because I have not talked about the amazing soundtrack or all the wacky crazy secret characters and stages. Let us start with the characters, this game had a crazy amount of characters, I mean you could play as Shrek before he was even a Meme this game was ahead of its time, not just that, the create a character of this game had a bunch of options, I made over 5 to 6 characters that I fell in love with, thanks to this game the name “Skullky” came to be because that was the name I gave my character due to the fact that he was a skeleton with black wings and a jester hat, different times man. I was so obsessed with this Skullky Name and idea for a character that I went to other Tony Hawk games and made him from a Kid in Pro Skater 1 to 3 to growing up from Pro Skater 4 and Underground all to his undead form in Tony Hawk Underground 2, you can imagine how disappointed my little kid’s brain was when I couldn’t make my character in American Wasteland an undead skeleton. That being said you can see how much this game has impacted me that I later on adopted the name Skullky to be in a sense my online name everywhere, from emails, Game avatars and pretty much everywhere I could and still can, it is still my first option. This game pretty much changed everything in a way, especially when it came to its soundtrack. I loved every single song, almost all of my favorite bands come from this game, my love for Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash began thanks to the soundtracks inclusion of “Ring of Fire and That’s Life” I owe so much to this game that it is not even funny, so yes this is without a doubt my favorite out of all of them and one of my all time favorite games in general. Also, if you haven’t Check out Thugpro and have the same passion for this game and all of the series as a whole definitely check it out. It's a mod that uses Tony Hawk's Underground 2 as the base engine for the gameplay but adds every stage from the franchise and has an online mode which is pretty great too.

Favorite Songs:

 Rancid - Fall Back Down

 The Suicide Machines - High Anxiety

 The Distillers - Beat Your Heart Out

The Explosion - Here I Am

Violent Femmes - Add It Up

Frank Sinatra - That's Life

Johnny Cash - Ring of Fire

Atmosphere - Trying To Find A Balance

Dead Boys - Sonic Reducer

 

Tony Hawk's American Wasteland

 

I am in odds with this game, because I love this game a lot but there are certain things that just don’t work for me and found it super annoying in my replay marathon while I was waiting for the release of Pro Skater 1 + 2. So, I am going to start with the positives, the soundtrack of this game is great, in the top 3 of soundtracks for sure, this one goes a bit more emo/alternative but it was a good transition, giving this game a somewhat identity separating it from the rest, one of my favorite songs of all time comes from this game. I really liked the "free roam" this game had, even though it wasn’t hard to tell when the stages where loading in the odd tunnels from stage to stage but it was still fun to just jump and ride your way to the stages you wanted to go. I found the BMX stuff interesting, when I was younger the more the game had the better but as I replayed it, it was just a bit less exciting and didn’t really cared for it. Now for the neutral stuff. The whole parkour system was cool at first but kind of felt flat quick for me. The whole using a story with made characters instead of real personalities, it was interesting, but it was like a whatever change. Now the bad, I find it pretty boring the fact that it’s just LA all the time, I missed the wacky stages and different locations from here and there, here all the stages in a way feel kind of sameish, there is some exceptions of course but for the most part the theme of this game is just California. The splitscreen in this game for some reason never worked for me. All the other games are fun in multiplayer, this one was just not. I felt less incline to play this version with my brother and always opted to just go to another game in the series. Then there is the feel in general, in this game you feel more floaty in a sense and faster instead of how Tony Hawk Underground 2 felt good and fluid, this one just feels like is to much sometimes, other than that this game is pretty fun. Just feels odd in some areas. I also always felt meh about the fact that you can’t build the park your way, you just see all the pieces you’ve collected just spreaded around in this giant park. This is one of the odd times where I actually prefer the mobile version of the games, I truly consider American Sk8land a lot funner than this one and I enjoyed the story and gameplay a lot more to some extent, mostly because that game feels like a mobile version of Pro Skater 4 for the DS and that’s awesome, you even pick the pieces to your park, is not much but it is more options than the ones you get in the Console Version. Overall way more ambitious but here is where the decline for me starts. 

Favorite Songs:

 Frank Black - Los Angeles

 Black Flag - Rise Above

 Dead Kennedys - California Über Alles

Green Day - Holiday 

Saves the Day - Sonic Reducer (The Dead Boys) 

The God Awfuls - Watch It Fall 

Thrice - Image of the Invisible 

Bloc Party - Like Eating Glass 

Felix da Housecat - Everyone Is Someone in LA 

The Bravery - Unconditional 

The Thunderlords - I Like Dirt  

 

Tony Hawk's Project 8

 

 

I really don't have much to say from this title, this was the last game I got for my collection, I even played Proving Ground first. Me being a Gamecube kid I didn't have the chance to play this game when it came out(like so many other games), I was very frustrated of course I really wanted it. Later on I got a PS3 but by the time I got the console the newest one Proving Ground was already out so I just jumped straight to that one and also got Sonic 06...so by comparison Proving Ground was a masterpiece in Video Game engineering. I even sold Proving Ground then got seller's remorse due to the fact that my collection was incomplete and I re bought Proving Ground and I still didn't have this one, so when I finally got it, the game just didn't say anything to me of course I already played a shit ton of Proving Ground and Skate 3 by this point so it is due to these reasons that out of all the "Prime" Tony Hawk Games this is the one I played the least and hence my least favorite. I know for some people this one is by far better than than Proving Ground, but for me this is just Proving Ground with less stuff that was already American Wasteland with even less stuff. So...yeah that's all I got.

 Favorite songs:

Gym Class Heroes – "The Queen And I
I don't really remember anymore so moving on.

Tony Hawk's Proving Ground

 

 

I have a lot of fond memories from this game, being one of the first PS3 games I had and like I said compared to my other first PS3 game Sonic 06...this game actually worked, all jokes aside I really enjoyed this game. By the time the graphics were amazing, this was for me the next gen buzz that feeling you get with a new console, of course put into perspective that I jumped from Gamecube never playing PS2 or anything like that to the PS3, this was an extreme difference. Other than the graphics I really liked the whole agro kick mechanic, the nail the trick mechanic(even though it was a Project 8 thing but it was new for me here) and the agro shove I think it was called, the thing were you just hit people around, especially with the flying cheats that made dudes rag-doll to hell 100 mph. I especially loved the simple video editing software it had, the whole setting up the camera angles and making montages with all your clips with the game's music, that for me was really cool and got me hooked in the whole idea of video editing from a very young age. So in a sense I owe a lot to this game considering Video Editing is what I ended up pursuing later on in my adult life. But now for the bad things, even though I played this game as much or even more than past titles, the music never really did it for me and that for me was a super mega con, the fact that till this day when I think of this game only one song pops in my head and it's a violently average song bewilders me considering that this game comes from a series that kick started all my music tastes. Also the level design was bland at times and the wackiness that was such a Tony Hawk staple was fizzling out here. The story in itself was fine, kind of similar to Underground 1 where you're just trying to get famous but I don't remember much from it, something that is not the case with Underground 1. Later on I got Skate 3 and the identity of this game became clearer because it was so painful obvious that they were trying to imitate the Skate Franchise formula, and that's where I think this game falls because when Proving Ground remembers it's a Tony Hawk game it shines with the silly cheats, crazy abilities and random missions from time to time. So for me this game will always have a weird feeling to me because I appreciate when I used to play it but now it sits in a weird middle where if I wanna play a Tony Hawk game I'll play anything from American Wasteland to the original, and if I want to play Skate, I'll just play Skate. This one is just in a weird middle.


Favorite Song:

Angels & Airwaves - "Secret Crowds" 

Nirvana - "Breed"  

The Rolling Stones - "Sympathy for the Devil" 


And that's it! for the people that like rankings here are two of them:

Ranking based on Soundtrack:


1. THUG 2

2. THPS 4

3. THAW

4. THPS 1 & 2 (putting it together due to the remaster)

5. THPS 3

6. THUG

7. THPG

8. THP8

Ranking based on Game:

1. THUG 2

2. THPS 4

3. THAW

4. THPS 3

5. THPS 2

6. THUG

7. THPG

8. THPS

9. THP8