Boomin’ extension – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2

A lot has been written about the soundtracks of the Tony Hawk games. It was rightly one of the areas of the recent remake which was given the most attention. The rock and hip-hop songs are a massive part of the atmosphere of the games, almost as central to the identity of the series as Hawk himself. The music goes with the splatters of blood when your skater falls, with moments of rebelling against authority, keeping a scuzzy edge that keeps some friction even as the skateboarding starts to leave it behind.

And just as the musicians were important to the games, the games were important to them. Goldfinger singer John Feldmann credits Tony Hawk’s Skateboarding with making their classic “Superman” their biggest song — “It was never a radio single, its popularity is testament to how powerful and how important that game was for the culture of our scene.”

My confession is that I pretty much never listened to any of it. “Superman” was undeniable, but the way the soundtrack was mixed buried the songs almost as deeply as in Gran Turismo, and “Superman” was the only track with a melody that cut through the sludge enough for me to notice. By the time of the second game, I pretty much turned off the sound from the beginning. I have my own musical associations with the series though, in an adjacent (and equally male) area of rock. 

To get the full nostalgic experience of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, I need to put on a more British playlist of the era’s indie rock as might have been played by Steve Lamacq on Radio 1’s daily Evening Session, playing loud while I gamed on mute. My Vitriol’s “Always: Your Way”. Placebo’s “Special K”. Most of all, Muse’s “Plug In Baby”. I go to Tony Hawk 2’s school level, stick that song on, try for an initial huge combo by hanging right, wallriding up to the roof and going for big air out the window, and I am completely transported back to the bedroom I shared with my brother in early 2001. One more try at that combo as the riff chugs and Matt Bellamy wails, and then restart for just one more, and just one more, through until the song was over.

There is a whole type of game, and accompanying mode of playing, that I associate with listening to music on the radio, or on CD, anything but the game. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is one of the best examples. Playing involves a lot of repeated actions: holding down X to jump, following with a rapid set of square/circle+direction combos, chained together with triangle+directions for grinding on rails and edges. To improve your score you need to use different directions each time, so it needs complex patterns nearly but not quite repeating. As momentum carries your skater to new places in the level you also need to be able to adjust to new circumstances. Getting good at all of that uses a particular type of focus. It’s a skill to learn, but one that often works best when trusted to muscle memory, mind not quite fully on it. It’s an ideal situation for dedicating mental space to listening to music at the same time. And so I have memories of hearing particular songs for the first time tied completely to spaces in this game.

That doesn’t mean the game isn’t great in its own right. I loved it despite knowing next to nothing about skateboarding back then, and I loved it again now. The core mode of racking up score is brilliant. The way your score multiplies as you link tricks together, but only registers once you land safely, tempts you into longer and longer combos while being ready to punish you cruelly for the first bit of hubris. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, even more than the first game, also makes sure you have lots of things to do outside of the score challenges Its levels are expansive, interesting, and filled with different elements and goals. There’s always something else to reach for, be it collecting sets of items, or trying to reach that tantalising far off place. All of that comes back round to the best thing about the game, about exploring and mentally mapping a space, uncovering its surprises, ready to internalise that knowledge and string together a traversal in response.

As part of that, one key addition to the moveset in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is the manual, a quick up-down on the directional pad that lets you turn any flat space into part of a combo. That single-handedly multiplies the possibilities for routes, and is part of letting the levels become bigger and more ambitious without making them too much more difficult. The manual lets the scores escalate even more wildly, in the same way as the performance with its absurd tricks and multiple spins. 

During my new career as Elissa Steamer (whose inclusion was important for many), I got right back into going for the score challenges. More than once I tried and tried and failed to make the score in the allocated two minutes, only to then plough through it on another attempt within thirty seconds and two extended combos. When it finally goes right, it feels like magic at your fingertips. There is a joy to trialling, drilling, improvising, and finally pulling off the ridiculous. Levels that let you do things like leap between roofs, grind along subway rails, or skate on a helicopter’s blades to make it take off, write that feeling in big letters (possibly spelling S-K-A-T-E). And doing it all to a rocking soundtrack, of the game’s choice or otherwise, is even better.

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Top of the charts for week ending 30 September 2000:

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