Tony Hawk X
February 11th, 2008 at 12:05 am
This might not mean anything to you, but I find it completely crazy that 2008 will see the release of the tenth game in the Tony Hawk series. It’s been a weird ride for Neversoft’s skating series, which saw it come onto the scene with a gigantic bang that created a genre (and buried Rockstar’s competent Thrasher: Skate and Destroy in the process). Up to that point, you really only had two great skating games: Skate or Die and 720 Degrees. Most other skateboarding games tried to be racing games, rather than focusing on the tricks. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came in and changed all of that forever and, in the process, helped make skateboarding relevant to the mainstream in a way that it hadn’t been before.
Over the years, the series and the genre grew. At one point, it seemed like I was playing, reviewing, or looking forward to at least one "action sports" game every month. Activision tried to cash in on its own success by buying related developers, like Shaba Games. Anyone that could compete in the X Games and seemed remotely marketable ended up in a game, from Dave Mirra to Andy Macdonald, star of the quite terrible MTV Sports: Skateboarding.
The alternative sports game went from zero to choked with middling clones in only a few years. Activision was publishing games based on surfing, BMX, and… wakeboarding? Sure, why not? After putting out some pretty weak BMX releases of its own with Dave Mirra’s name on them, Acclaim and Z-Axis managed to team up and put out the best non-Tony Hawk action sports game, Aggressive Inline.
Then, instead of following up on Aggressive Inline with something even better, they turned the next Dave Mirra game into BMX XXX. What an amazing mess of a game. BUT THERE WERE BOOBS IN IT DUDES!!!!!! GAME OF THE YEAR FOR EVERY YEAR SINCE 2002 UNLESS YOU COUNT THE GUY GAME!!! Acclaim held a launch party for the game at a Scores strip club in New York. I turned down the trip, since it didn’t exactly have any interesting editorial value. Plus, the last thing I felt like doing after reviewing that thing was go stand around in a strip club with the people that made it.
I remember BMX XXX as the end of the action sports glut. The balloon was already sagging, but BMX XXX threw five pounds of rusty nails and broken glass at it to make sure it was gone for good. Unless you count Gravity Games Bike: Street. Vert. Dirt. But I’m trying to erase that from my mind.
Tony Hawk and Neversoft soldiered on and stood alone for years, a one-game genre that turned out a competent annual game that excited fans of the series. A lot of people tend to lump Tony Hawk into the same "annual series rehash" category that people who don’t play Madden do. But when you stop and think about the work that has to go into a Tony Hawk game ever year (an entirely new world, new goals, plenty of new voice, and so on), it’s probably quite an undertaking. That doesn’t even cover the gameplay changes that Neversoft makes from year to year.
Of course, it hasn’t exactly been a smooth ride. The last few games have been OK, but the magic of the early games only pops up in fits and starts nowadays. Personally, my favorite Tony Hawk game is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. That probably doesn’t surprise you too much, but THPS3 is the game that invented most of the online stuff that the series still has today. And it did it all on the PS2 before Sony’s official network adapter was even released! That’s dedication. That’s going the extra mile.
Last year, the Tony Hawk series faced the hardest competition its ever gone up against courtesy of EA’s skate., or as I like to call it, "Skate." Skate works because it’s informed by what Tony Hawk has done in the past, but it goes its own way with that information. It isn’t really trying to duplicate the things that Neversoft built. As a result of that and some really cool design choices, it’s a really sharp stab into the skateboarding genre. That’s not to say that Skate is perfect or anything, but it’s still the most exciting thing to happen to the skateboarding game in years. I bet the inevitable sequel will be pretty damn good.
The end result of all this (and the reason I wanted to write about this subject at all) is that it sounds like Activision and Neversoft are sitting up and taking notice of a competitive product that apparently outsold it two-to-one. On a recent financial call, Activision said that the next Tony Hawk game will see some changes, some innovation. For it to remain relevant in 2008 and beyond, it absolutely needs it. Let’s just hope this story doesn’t end up with Neversoft pumping a bunch of Skate’s more-realistic mechanics into the next game.
Personally, I’d like to see the series go in the opposite direction. Skate’s painting itself as simulation-like. The Hawk games have been more about pulling off insane combos, tearing apart the environment, and stuff like that. With this being the 
tenth game, why not name it Tony Hawk X and make it completely messed-up-crazy? Take it to space. Futuristic skating. Bob Burnquist has a fat skate park on Mars, and if you collect 15 tapes or whatever, you can go skate there. Hoverboards. Stuff like that.
Or just base the whole game on the events of Gleaming the Cube, a wonderful skating documentary.
OK, fine, last idea. Tony Hawk stumbles onto a time machine and decides to round up a skate crew to go back and shred some of history’s biggest moments! Grind on Hitler’s stupid face! Help Washington cross the Delaware by grinding a bunch of ropes or whatever! Then the end credits show all the things you messed up, including your skater’s face on Mt. Rushmore. Oh, and co-op. It’s all the rage with the kids these days. Meaningful online co-op with goals designed explicitly for that purpose would probably be cool.
OK, maybe some of that is a little too far gone to bring the Tony Hawk series back up to its previous sales numbers. But it would be rad. I guess we’ll all find out sometime around Halloween or Thanksgiving.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:10 am
I think I agree with you mostly. The realistic skateboarding games should be left to the new skate. series while the Tony Hawk series should do something completely insane and over the top, more so that it already is.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:21 am
I had never seen a skateboard up close when I got Skate or Die for the C64 and played it to death. I guess the Rodney Dangerfield gag was lost on most Norwegian kids my age, though.
Fingers crossed for an amazing Skate sequel.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:40 am
I think being insane crazy is how Tony Hawk killed itself in the first place, at least for me and my mates. It just started to get too ridiculous, i honestly dont think pushing that ridiculousness to new levels is going to help at this point, though i dont know if they have a choice. They tried to do the “back to skater roots” thing, i honestly think they are to far gone.
I think part of it is you can only play a game so much right? After the first 4 games, that was just enough.
I dont think it helped that as they tried to add, new catches to each installment, it started to get more and more convoluted and complex, particularly to people trying to pickup the franchise.
I think thats part of the reason Skate is doing as well as it is. The controls are new and fresh, while being extremely intuitive. The graphics are great and the animation in particular is spot on. It is totally awesome riding down a hill in that game. Its also totally awesome when you get to the bottom and hit a car at full speed. In Skate you actually feel like you are skating, whereas Tony Hawk was a separate sort of payoff for well timed button work.
If Skate didnt send me into a fit of frustration every 5 minutes i would rate it way up there.
If theres something Tony Hawk can do to revive the franchise, i dont know what it is. Seems to me over the past 4 titles they have tried just about everything.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:43 am
o yeh sorry. SKATE OR DIE was awesome.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:53 am
I am also excited to see what they do this year. I think they will end up moving more towards realism but not as much as skate is.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Ok i like the Time Machine idea. If they make that game I’ll buy it!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:49 am
Screw that. Aliens, man. Some sort of temporal rift opens and skateboarding aliens kidnap Hawk and his merry gang. They must skate for the fate of all humanity! EXTREME!!
February 11th, 2008 at 3:03 am
THPS3 is better than Skate.
Man, I miss being young and having too much time to play games.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:08 am
I was thinking about this yesterday. I agree I would like to see them go away from the visual style they have had since underground and go in directions not yet discovered!
I wanna skate through other dimension while grinding on the rings of Saturn!
How about you go microscopic and jump over proteins, and grind on DNA molecules!
Make me Rez on a skateboard.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:09 am
They will have to do something crazy to live up to Skate, that sold far better than THPS last year. If they try to do it with simulation, they will sink.
Don’t know if I will ever get into a new THPS though, since I didn’t really enjoy one of them since THPS3. :/
February 11th, 2008 at 3:12 am
I think you have the right idea, they might as well go totally off the wall with the next Hawk game. Man I remember the first Christmas I sat down to play the first game, great stuff. I also remember being really impressed by aggressive inline too. That first Dave Mirra BMX games was also a good laugh . . .speeding train + rag doll physics = hours of fun. You mentioned hover boards, which sounds cool but do you remember Airblade on the PS2? Not as cool as we hoped.
I’m a bit worried they might try cram too much in to the next Skate, there was enough on that right stick as it was, possibly too much in my opinion. I did enjoy its slower pace and the “realism”. Only real problem was the goals were all over the place in relation to difficulty. Got the most fun out of just skating around and seeing what could be done in the environment.
So, roll on Tony Hawk X. They want to sell it all they need to do is add the most graphic injuries ever seen in a skating game, ever. Get all the environmental destruction tech featured in the force unleashed and improve on the broken bones from the last game. Fail to do that McTwist? Broad snaps, knee cap pops off an his shin bone protrudes out through the skin and you get a half hour “quick time event” cut seen of him in rehab. Wont be so risky next time will ya? Activision sell millions of games, fox news reports on a slaughter simulator and we’re all happy.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:30 am
Nice article but…Points?
February 11th, 2008 at 4:24 am
Tony Hawk X? Add two more mother-effing X’s to that. I like where you’re going with the game being crazy, but just make Mr. Hawk a breast.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:59 am
hahaha, jeff you’re halarious
February 11th, 2008 at 5:01 am
I couldn’t agree with you more. In fact, it’s necessary. If the next Tony Hawk game is more realistic, even if it’s done incredibly well, it’ll instantly be dismissed as a “skate.” ripoff.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:51 am
Man I absolutely loved skate. That game was a blast for me. Seriously though, I’m not sure which idea I like best. Space is always an awesome setting for a game. No matter what the game is about. Just to think that you could skate on the moon and the gravity would be so much less, you could practically do tricks forever! And there is always the potential of having a skate competition against Martians, which would be sick. But then again, helping the Egyptians build the Great Pyramids by a clever (or even not so clever) use of grinds would be pretty wicked as well. Either way, if Tony Hawk X chooses one of these themes, it will be a hit in my eyes.
February 11th, 2008 at 5:57 am
The only THPS games I have is 1 and 3.
I have no other desire to play any other THPS game, although I am interested in Skate. a little bit.
I think that they should just move on to a new franchise. They have killed this series.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:16 am
You’re right, chasing after Skate is only going to heart the Tony Hawk series. I look at the two series like simulation and arcade racing, or Forza and Burnout. If Neversoft is going to excel, they need to embrace the fast paced arcade feel they’ve perfected and leave the realism to the folks at EA.
That being said, I wouldn’t mind a little time travel, or maybe some outlandish graphics, something along the lines of Jet Grind Radio maybe. I’d like to see some crazy character customization too. I want to be able to have a cross dressing dread-locked lizard rocking DC shoes and a hoverboard. Also, they need to bring back the secret Marvel characters.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Jeff, I respect you and everything; but please don’t you ever think about going into video game development. I’m sure if Neversoft made a Tony Hawk game based on your ideas, you would give it 6 out of 10.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:47 am
I was never into skateboarding games, but I have to admit 720 degrees is a very fun game
February 11th, 2008 at 7:21 am
The last Tony Hawk i played was Underground 2, which was pretty ok (not as good as 4 or Underground)
I’m actually looking for a good skating game on the 360. I might go for Skate but it’s been too long since I played tony hawk and I kinda miss it, so I might go for THPS 8 as well.
It’s good to see some competition in this genre anyways! Not that I’m rooting for Skate… I just want Neversoft to start working on the TH series seriously again, and stop giving us botch job games that are basicly the same every year.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:41 am
I agree with you that the series need to do something absolutly insane in thier next installment. I think they should take it toward more of a GTAish style. I mean you can’t go wrong with a game that try to be like GTA. Instead of guns and cars, why can’t you do all the stuff you do in GTA but with a skateboard??? Open world skateboarding( i know its been done before) but this time with a twist. This time its more “extreme”. Your character happened to be involved in the mob and owe a lot of people drug money ( a typical skateboarder right??) and you have to fight your way out of it. People will DIG this idea, i mean you can do a “roll-by” shooting(haha..get it?), pick up a prostitute on a skateboard, whack a prostitute with a skateboard after you’re done with her, “grind” your way to the nearest strip club, run over innocent bystanders with your skateboard, and just go around town causing mayhem…yes, on a skateboard, the list goes on and on. I think I should pitch this idea to Activistion and Neversoft, I’ll be freakin rich.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:06 am
hey man i wanted to know if you are making a turok review?
February 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Ok… does anyone else thing the first photograph looks like Rodney Dangerfield (http://www.lucasfan.com/autographs/RODNEYDANGERFIELD.JPG)
with a pink mohawk?
AWESOME.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Yeah I really hope that Tony Hawk doesn’t just rip off Skate now. I want both games to be unique so I have reason to buy them both. If they start riping each other off I’ll only need to buy one.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:52 am
I own the Shaun Murry wakeboarding game, probably the weirdest of all teh extreme sports games they made during that time but honestly it’s my all time favorite xtreme sports game. Even beats out the awesome THPS3.
Nice read.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:08 am
After reading that Jeff, I must say.
If you don’t get back into writing reviews/editorials about games for a living, you need to get into development.
Those ideas, though completely crazy are damn awesome.
If someone implemented that stuff right it would rule.
Or perhaps combine the two ideas..
Go back in time… but with a hoverboard from the future, and one of the goals of a map is to grind off of Hitlers face.
Then at the end of the game you find out the 3rd degree burns he received from the hoverboard’s propulsion device caused him to go into hiding and become a great artist.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:19 am
I would so buy a Tony Hawk, if it had that time machine thing.
February 11th, 2008 at 9:22 am
Why don’t they make the next games just a straight up fighting game, or have a fully fledged fighting engine built in to the skating, so you can just skate around and start beating other skaters up (just like all those YouTube videos!).
I really liked the time travel idea though, any game instantly gets better with temporal relocation. Chrono Trigger worked so well, now if only it had skateboards…
February 11th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Yeah okay….I liked you history of Skateboarding games and agree with most of it (Tony Hawk’s 2 is my favourite tho, altho 3 is better technically when you look back because it introduced the revert so you could link tricks forever) but yeah I found after THUG 1 I dunno, its kind of been flogging a dead horse. Like theyve just got stupider and stupider. I kinda think the reason I liked the older TH games was that it was kind of like a fighting game like tekken or something but with a point score. Like you would be pulling off all these combinations to pull off so kool looking moves and being rewarded with the ‘oh, oh, am I going to stack’ tension along with getting highscores. Like a level grind or something. Now theyve just gone tooo whacky and zaney with destruction tours, blowing stuff up and all that crap its like oookay..but how is this relevant?
February 11th, 2008 at 10:26 am
New Points! this week.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Skateboarding is like playing with GI Joes. Once you get a certain age its not fun anymore. Unless of course your getting paid to play with GI Joes.
February 11th, 2008 at 11:59 am
“Grind on Hitler’s stupid face!”
LOL!!!
February 11th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Tony Hawk games have been pretty irrelevant for a while. Skate was decent but I agree that the sequel should be great.
With that being said, I did buy a skateboarding game last year. Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground for the DS. =P A great old-school skateboarding game.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
someone already said it but: SKATE OR DIE!
February 11th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
LoL skate or die for the commodore 64. I used to play that when i was a kid. I always thought that guy looked like rodney dangerfield with a mohawk.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I haven’t played a Tony Hawk game since THUG 2 and that game left a bad taste in my mouth. I played Skate and I loved it and I hope to purchase it soon.
I really do hope that Neversoft does something different with the new TH game.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
Is it just me or are you guys ready for a new generation of consoles? The 360 is WAY tapped out and while the PS3 has got a few tricks up its sleeve I can’t help but want MORE! Even Crysis on max settings doesn’t do it for me. The only worthwhile project the current gen systems are capable of executing satisfactorily is a super high res 2D sprite based side scroller…not some DLC hatchet job or a handheld port. But that aint’t gonna happen, is it?
February 11th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
I liked THP8 myself but I hadn’t played a skate boarding game since TH3 so I guess it was more of a nostalgia experience.
I haven’t played Skate beyond the demo but It didn’t impress me from what I have seen. I like the arcade feel of TH games on the whole but I thought the mission objectives became absurd.
TH started as a semi-realistic skate boarding game focused on the tricks and thats what it needs to go back too imo.
February 11th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Wow, the space idea and the time travel idea are both pretty sweet. I want them to work averting the assassinations of famous presidents via skateboarding into it somehow. You have to pull of a huge jump onto the balcony where Lincoln is sitting in Ford’s theater and take out John Wilkes Booth, something like that.
February 11th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Ok, I know that last idea was a joke but I really wanna play it.
(Tony Hawks: Time Machine)
February 11th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
PARK EDITOR!!!
I loved American Wasteland. I spend hours on end making obstacle courses in the park editor. I refuse to buy another Tony Hawk until they reintroduce this to the series.
February 11th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
DUDE, I totally bought a linksys usb ethernet adapter to own everyone online before the official sony network adapter came out. I loved THPS3 the most, my first console online game.
February 11th, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I think Skate was a lot better than you give it credit for being.
That being said, I think the sequel will add features around the skating: smooth online play, even smoother gameplay, more customization (park editor maybe, give me something to do with all that money), that type stuff.
As for Tony Hawk, I think your ideas would make me actually want to play Tony Hawk. It’s over the top with “baditude” now, but if it went over the top, like as in grinding on Hitler’s face, I would play it. Make it something more like Jet Set Radio and make something outside the skating maybe. I don’t see what else they could add without becoming a Skate clone.
But the problem is, Activision will probably not take the risks we’re talking about taking. Maybe, because they got their asses kicked by EA, but I’d be surprised to see something really radical… plus Activision has already shown their plans to milk their franchises to an sad degree, so I don’t know how much could change.
Hey, I hope they can prove me wrong though.
February 11th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I agree that hoverboards would be awesome. With a special appearance by Marty McFly!
February 11th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
It’s kinda funny, Tony Hawk Pro Skater was the reason why I initially got into skateboarding and Xgames in the first place. Unfortunately, once I realized I couldn’t do any tricks, I returned to playing Tony Hawk (by that time, Tony Hawk 4 came out).
THPS brings back great memories
February 12th, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Those final few paragraphs were the classic Jeff we’ve missed so much. Glad to see you back on your game.
February 12th, 2008 at 10:57 pm
I understand your schemes, and I do believe we both know the obvious choice here. Fevered ranting though it may be, perhaps, in the distant future, when world hunger and war have been whisked aways to the annals of the past, our children’s children’s children (androids?) could, perchance, be enjoying…
A Burnout skating game…
(Yes!!!!!)
February 13th, 2008 at 11:02 am
I wish co-op was in every game even if it is limited (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy). To put co-op in a Tony Hawk game, it would be a great addition. They would have to think hard about how to structure that or else it will test a lot of patience. If each player is too dependent on each other, they will give up on each other (and rage in hate). So they need to separate the clocks and retries or allow a good player to save a bad player (like Rock Band).
BTW: Did you try Tony Hawk: Proving Grounds on DS? I can’t believe how well that game controls and packs so many features. I was swearing for an hour straight (in amazement) when I first popped it in. (My 360 copy is still sealed.)
February 13th, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Tony Hawk in time would be pretty sweet, no matter how ridiculous the marketing would be to get it through the door. But, also, how about Tony Hawk hits the Wonders of the World? As well as a few other international monuments…skate the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, grind the whole Great Wall of China, do a crazy air trick over the Great Pyramids–you get the idea.
February 13th, 2008 at 9:00 pm
That’s totally what the next Tony Hawk needs, dude. MORE “RAD”, DUDE! MORE “RAD”!
February 16th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
This post made me fire up my C64 and load up Skate or Die…
March 1st, 2008 at 8:25 am
Well..I’m a die-hard TH fan and I really enjoyed almost every TH game, but when Skate. came out I was like ”what?”. That ”analog sticks” system sounds good, but the reality (for me) is different. The point is, that I think that system cannot work for a whole AAA game. And skate 2? If the system will be the same again it will be FUCKING boring. The right way is to keep following the way started by Proving Ground. Different ‘’skate lifestyles”, combining offline and online mode together and for that ”I want reality” players, keep the Nail The Trick, Manual, Grab modes. I love how TH games are complex and skate. can’t top ANY TH game I think.