When I was in second grade, my parents didn’t let me watch The Simpsons—my older sister told my parents to "not have a cow," and that was the end of that. Still, however, The Simpsons was everywhere. There was no avoiding the cultural zeitgeist. Specifically, there was no avoiding Bart. As little kids, we idolized his rebellion: his slingshot, his catchphrases, and of course, his badass skateboard. From the moment we watched Bart in the show opening, weaving past Moe, Wiggum, and Bleeding Gums Murphy, we all knew that we wanted to ride.
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Of course, idolizing Bart and being able to skateboard like Bart are two totally different things. When I turned eight, my parents got me my own board—a Bart Simpson Vehicle of Destructio, to be exact. I practiced riding for months, but I made little progress. Anytime I attempted anything fancy like a kickflip, I ended up on the ground. Eventually, I shelved that dream.
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A few years went by, and my classmates and I forgot all about the sport. It retreated back to its sub-culture status. In 1999, however, skateboarding hit the mainstream again, thanks to legendary skater Tony Hawk. The Birdman achieved mainstream success when he hit the first 900 (two-and-a-half mid-air revolutions in a half pipe) in competition at the 1999 X Games. It made national news. Up until then, mainstream America saw skateboarding as a dangerous hobby that burnouts practiced on the weekends. Hawk, however, turned it into an athletic, respectable pursuit, with sponsors, high profile competitions, and ESPN coverage.
Skateboarding could not have asked for a better ambassador. For all intents and purposes, Hawk was the sport. Unlike some sports figures, who inspire envy and hate, Hawk’s fellow skaters wanted him to succeed, to set the bar higher and pull off more dangerous, cool tricks. With this type of likability and connection with young people, a video game adaptation was ideal. Activision jumped on the chance, and acquired the rights to Tony Hawk’s likeness in 1999.
Have you ever been absolutely terrible at a game, but still loved to play it? For me, this was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, the original franchise starter for the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo 64. It was also remastered and released on XBox Live, Playstation Network, and Steam in 2012. I’ve broken every virtual bone in my character’s body, multiple times. I’ve watched the blood spurt out my character’s nose ad nauseam. But still, I kept playing. That’s how awesome the gameplay was, and still continues to be.
I played Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater at a friend’s house—for the record, he was much better at the game than me, and he had all of the stages and videos unlocked. Mostly, I played Free Skate, because there were no consequences. It was all about getting the highest score possible, rather than attaining specific goals.
So, I was free to break my spine to my heart’s content. I’d launch myself off a ramp, mash all of the buttons as rapidly as I could, stop mashing a fraction of a second before my character landed, and hope for the best. Twenty percent of the time, I’d stick the landing, and I’d earn an obscene number of points. The other 80 percent of the time, I’d have blood shooting out of my orifices. I never improved, nor did I want to. Plus I could enter in a code to give myself an unlimited Special Meter, so there was no incentive to hit multiple tricks in a row.
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Why did I deliberately suck at this game? I loved the adrenaline rush of the unknown, the high risk/high reward approach to pulling off impossible tricks. It’s also because I loved watching the fall animations. They looked extremely painful, and I had a morbid fascination with seeing my character’s limbs bend in impossible ways.
My favorite trick was on the Warehouse level. I would speed down the first incline, launch myself over the first halfpipe, and then, rather than sticking a ground landing, I would land and grind on the ledge on the other side. I pulled it off consistently, and scored a ton points while I was at it.
The competitive two-player mode was also a lot of fun. There was classic HORSE—the first player performed a trick, and the second player had to match or exceed it —but my friend and I spent the most time playing Graffiti. You would try to perform tricks on every possible surface in a level; pull the trick off successfully, and the surface would turn red. If your opponent performed a better trick on the same surface, however, it would turn to blue, and he'd steal your points. It would then be up to you to steal it back. And so on. And so forth.
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But the best part? The soundtrack. Sure, it sounds dated, but that only adds to its charm. It’s a whole bunch of mid-'90s punk and ska, and the developers chose obscure songs. Thus, the songs became identifiable with the game, because the players would have no other prior reference to them. My favorite song was Goldfinger’s “Superman,” which gained a sort of dark, ironic humor when you failed.
Or how about The Suicide Machines’ “New Girl”? It was a shot of suburban teen angst, perfect for showing all those parents that you won’t do what you tell them, dude. Way to fight the machine.
Most people play video games to indulge in fantasy, to allow themselves to do things that in real life, they would not be capable of. For me, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a fun, cold dose of reality. I could fire a virtual bow and arrow or shoot a virtual basketball, but I would never be able to skate. I sucked on a real board, and I sucked on a virtual board. Even video games have their limits of escapism.
Kevin Wong is a contributing writer.
