Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater not only remains one of the biggest selling video game titles in history, but its arrival took skateboarding to new heights — a fact that is being explored in the new documentary Pretending I’m A Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story. The game, which arrived in the autumn of 1999, was a risk for publisher Activision and newly-founded developers Neversoft. None the less, they pushed forward and managed to deliver something with the sort of longevity that no one could have predicted from a skateboarding video game.
At the time of the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, skateboarding video games were not exactly big sellers – regardless of the console or demographic. The sport itself had gone through a series of ups and downs over the course of the previous three decades, but had largely gotten used to the fact that it was a fringe activity. Understood and loved solely by skaters, it was rare for mainstream tastes to ever shift toward it. For a brief period in the late 1980’s, Hollywood toyed with its own portrayal of skaters, delivering films like Thrashin’, Gleaming the Cube and a short segment in Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol in which Tony Hawk and a handful of other pro-skaters took to the streets. But these efforts still did little to put skateboarding on a level where everything from its companies to its most skilled skaters were known to those outside of skate culture.
By the late 1990’s, skating was again experiencing a resurgence. Thanks to the likes of skaters such as Rodney Mullen and Daewon Song, street skating was replacing the popularity of vert skating – due partly to the latter pursuit’s need for ramps and half-pipes. This evolution was proof to Hawk that skating was a multi-faceted endeavour that could have wider appeal. As a self-professed gamer, he began exploring the idea of a skateboarding video game. After much effort, an eager partner was found in game developer Neversoft. Using inspiration from past skate games as well as Sega’s more recently released Top Skater, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was born. Nine instalments later, its impact on American skateboarding is still being felt. Pretending I’m A Superman doesn’t mince words when it comes to crediting the game for literally revolutionizing skating, but how could a video game manage such a feat?
An Easy Gateway Into Skating
Though skateboarding had featured in several video games throughout the 1980s and 90s, Hawk noticed that they all suffered from the same issues. Either the gameplay was too simplistic, or far too complex. The ultimate goal then, as Hawk describes in Pretending I’m A Superman, was to create a game that people could just pick up and play, without first having to know a great deal about skateboarding or its sub-culture. Because Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was able to pull this off, the end result was that the game was accessible to a wide variety of people – many of whom had no previous insight into skating. The more these gamers delved into the game’s world, the greater their interest in skateboarding became. For some, this resulted in little more than an understanding of skate terminology as well as a recognition of the real life pro-skaters who starred in the game. But for others, the accessibility of the game meant that the real-life possibilities of skating became more intriguing. Ultimately, the game inspired a curiosity that lead more people to buy skateboards and begin to learn how to do at least some of what they’d seen on screen.
Pro Skaters Became Household Names
As previously mentioned, because Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater gave gamers the option of choosing which pro-skater character they wanted to play as, those real-life skaters became far more recognizable. This might not seem very significant – after all, it just made these skaters bigger celebrities than they already were. The truth of the matter, however, is that prior to THPS, names like Chad Muska, Kareem Campbell and Elissa Steamer were virtually unknown to all but the tight-knit skateboarding community. The early years of skateboarding had made it a given that skaters weren’t going to become rich and famous, but with the arrival of THPS a whole new fanbase began to grow. The game’s playable skaters became instantly recognizable to millions, meaning that the companies the skaters were sponsored by gained more business, and the videos the skaters were skating in were being watched by many, many more people.
Thanks to this, skateboarding began to be seen by the mainstream as something much more than a novelty. The industry was growing in a very big way and as profits for established skate companies grew, new companies emerged. A new degree of attention was being placed on skating thanks to the Tony Hawk games, as well as on the pros who could actually pull off many of the tricks that gamers were learning about through THPS. Gone were the days of near complete anonymity for the most talented skaters in the world.
Upping The Ante
When comparing the skateboarding of today to what it was like in the '80s and '90s, it’s clear that it’s become far more technical. Even what skateboarding was a decade ago has evolved in such a huge way. Not only have decks and wheels changed, but the tricks that skaters now perform have undergone much transformation. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater most definitely played a role in this evolution, in that it inspired an entire generation to think outside the box in of what could be done on a skateboard. At times the games may border on absurdity, with gamers grinding power lines or spinning endlessly off the lip of a ramp. But because THPS provided names and examples of skate tricks, those who were new to the sport were able to learn the terminology relatively easy. Simply knowing what an Ollie was no longer meant that you were a skater, for example, but it did open you up to the vast possibilities of skating. Whether these possibilities were explored solely within the game or on a real life skateboard, expansion and experimentation reached new heights.
Today, a quick search for skate videos on social media sites will produce an enormous amount of content. Many skaters, having mastered tricks that were previously thought to be impossible or that were outright unheard of when THPS was released, are now taking things even further, with amazing results. Technical skating is thriving like never before, thanks in large part to THPS. The importance of being able to push skate boundaries without fear of injury was that ultimately, it helped to inspire a new generation of skaters to try similar things in real life. This degree of technical experimentation has taken skateboarding to heights that even Tony Hawk couldn’t have imagined when he was helping to get the first THPS off the ground.
The Olympics and The Price of Change
Skateboarding has experienced massive growth as a result of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skateboarder. However, not every skater is thrilled by the sport’s new lease on life. There’s no shortage of those who wish skating could go back to the days of being relegated to the margins of society. The friendships and bonds that come out of skating with a group of fellow skaters is sacred to many, and THPS’s success at opening up skating to a whole new generation feels like a threat to some. This divide is particularly evident when it comes to the issue of skateboarding now being an Olympic event. If ever there was proof that skateboarding has experienced phenomenal growth over the past 20 years (much of which is attributable to THPS), it’s the inclusion in one of the world’s biggest sporting events. The idea that a skater could take home a gold medal for their efforts was unheard of throughout Tony Hawk’s career, but there’s ample reason to believe that without THPS, no such opportunity could exist. Those who oppose this see the sport’s inclusion as a co-optation of what’s important to them, for little more than financial gain.
At the same time, as skate legend Steve Caballero explains in Pretending I’m A Superman, skateboarding should and can be available to everyone. Without Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, Caballero contends that his career wouldn’t have had the longevity that it has had, nor would he be acknowledged for the work he’s put into the art form of skateboarding. The same can be said for Hawk, who states outright at one point in the documentary that he does not want to go back to the days of skateboarding being an underground past-time. Ultimately, it’s clear that skateboarding owes a debt of gratitude to skaters like Caballero and Hawk, who stuck with what they loved even when it wasn’t fashionable or trendy. Through that dedication, Hawk was able to unwittingly kick-start a new evolution of skateboarding, and as strange as it may seem to say, it took a video game to rescue an amazing sport and help it grow in tremendous new ways.
