Changes In Gameplay

The changes that have been made are small, but I think, improve the overall playability of the game. You may notice that it is easier to switch up grinds. That, I think, is because the skaters ollie higher in between the grinds, so you have more time to hit the buttons for the next grind. However, it is somewhat harder to keep balanced as you are switching up your grinds. This is because if you are losing your balance during your grind and you switch your grinds, when you start your next grind, you are still off balance. So you have to concentrate on switching the grinds and keeping balance all at the same time. And oh yeah, you actually get credit (and points) for the transfers and gaps you make... at least the ones the Neversoft guys thought of hehe.

Two Player Mode

Two player rocks in the final version. There are actually three different two player games. Trick Attack, Grafitti, and HORSE. Trick Attack is essentially the same as two player on the demo. Whoever scores the most points wins. However, it is not that exciting to play. The other two games allow for more head to head, real time competition, and plenty of trash talking!!

First I'll talk about HORSE. It's similar to the basketball game. Basically, the game starts you right in front of a certain obstacle on the level you choose (the obstacle

What did you call me!?

changes each time). You get one chance to pull one trick/combo. Just one. The very first one. Your opponent has to match or beat your score, or else they get a letter. Whoever spells HORSE first loses. This game is cool because it really puts the pressure on, and you can get a lot of trash-talking and taunting in. But it is really cool because you can choose whatever word you want. You don't have to use a lame word like HORSE. Instead, you can pick a word like BITCH or COCKMASTER. And the best part is, at the end, it tells the loser "YOU ARE A COCKMASTER" (or POSEUR or TDOG or whatever word you choose). Very cool.

Grafitti is the most action packed of the two player games. Basically you pick a level (best to pick a smaller one like Burnside, Chicago or whatever). The two players go at the same time. If you are the first person to do a trick off a certain object (rail, ramp, whatever), you own that object, it turns your color (player one is blue, player two is red), and you get a point. If the other player does a better (i.e. higher scoring) trick off that same object, then they steal that object from you. They gain a point, and you lose a point. This game is good because you can see exactly where your opponent has been, and you get to talk a lot of trash when you steal their stuff. Whoever has the most points at the end wins, of course. Very fast paced, and very fun.

Special Moves

As far as I, and anyone on the Internet knows, each skater has 3 special moves that are more or less their own. You may have noticed on some of these screen shots, a "special" meter on the top left corner. The more combos and cool tricks you do, the higher the meter gets. If you don't do any tricks, then the meter slowly goes down. When you hit the top, the meter turns yellow. When it is yellow, you can do special tricks. While it is yellow, it still goes back down, but you can make it go up again by doing more tricks and it stays yellow until the meter totally runs out. If that happens, you have to start building it up all over. Also, if you fall, you have to start all over again.

Special tricks are usually really big airs or really big grinds. And you get a lot of points for them. Tony Hawk has the 540 Board Varial (same as the demo, 2000 points the first time, but if you do a 720 with it, you can get 8000 points the first time. I have also done a 900-540 Board Varial), the Kickflip to McTwist (4000 points, and as far as I can tell, you cannot spin it more), and the 360 flip to mute (1500 points, but you can spin it more). These are well known.

What is not well known is that there is a fourth special Tony Hawk trick... which is called "The 900", which is different from just plain using L1 or R1 to spin 900 degrees... it's a special move, and you get 8000 points for it!! All you do is hit the key combination, and Tony starts spinning like mad. Just let go. If you had enough

THE 900 click to enlarge.

air going up, then he will land it all by himself. If you didn't have enough air, he will crash! As far as I know, no other site on the internet has ever discussed "The 900" as a special trick. You heard it here first suckas!!

A couple of things I haven't mentioned before... there is a replay mode (cool), and practice mode. Practice mode lets you skate as long as you want. The point totals reset after every trick. Very good for exploring transfers!!

Closing Thoughts

There is nothing more that I can say about this game except that it rocks. It kicks serious ass, even more ass than Jacky Chan, and no other skateboarding/inline skating/snowboarding game ever even comes close to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.

The only problem with this game is that there is no facility to erase memory card blocks from within the game. In other words, you must have a free memory block on your card before you start in order to be able to save your game! Don't forget to make sure you have space before you start playing!!!

-- Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater will be available in stores September 22, 1999. Check out Neversoft's Site for more details.

--written by: Bryan Hong, Sea Quints Editor