I'm in the midst of wedding planning and would like to hear your experiences, as I have only been to one wedding.

I'm curious about if you've picked up on any unique considerations that went into the structural/event design as well as the emotional takeaway from attending the event:

What made that wedding distinct from the others?
What aspects of the wedding did you find thoughtful and memorable?
How did that wedding make you feel as a guest?
How do you want to feel as a guest at a wedding?

Hey, wanna listen to some tunes? throws a tape at your head, causing Out With The Old to play

Introduction

Legends come in many forms. For some, it's charting unknown space in a wildly complicated ship. For others, it's carving their own path as a pirate on uncharted seas. And for many gamers, it's stopping every "big bad" you can think of: chaotic embodiments, pantheons of mythic gods, egocentric wizards, and so on.

But this month, we're not chasing cosmic threats or fantasy epics. We're hitting the skatepark to prove our mad boarding skills, with Tony Hawk himself as the centerpiece.

He's the same guy who landed the first-ever documented legendary 900° aerial spin in competition on June 27, 1999, popping it out of a half-pipe in a single leap. He'd later land two more 900s in the 2010s, get credited with inventing 88 named tricks, and appeared in countless videos, films, and TV shows, both as a skater and as himself.

Just ten days ago, the second and final day of Vert Alert, his own vertical skateboarding competition in Salt Lake City has wrapped up. That pedigree is exactly what backs the entire Tony Hawk's franchise, especially the first four Pro Skater games and the gloriously unhinged Underground series.

Pro Skater 1 took the bare-bones fundamentals of real-world skate tricking and mapped them onto a video game blueprint. Suddenly, you could chase mastery without wrecking your body through endless falls.

The core loop has you choose a skater and board from a roster, each with different tricks and stats that shape your playstyle. Then, drop into one of several skate parks to chain stunts for big scores and complete literal fetch-style goals within a tight time limit.

Our CGA Game of the Month, Pro Skater 2, expands and refines that foundation in almost every way, including:

• Manuals: The game-changing addition that lets you chain tricks on flat ground without being forced into a stop when you run out of rails or airtime.
• Bigger, more varied levels: More complex park design with more routes and secrets.
• Deeper Career Mode: Instead of just grabbing tapes, smashing objects, and chasing high scores in 2-minute runs, you get more varied and elaborate objectives.
• Expanded roster and tricks: More skaters, more moves, more ways to play.
• Create-a-Skater and Create-a-Park: Full customization for both your rider and your levels.

The one big mechanical piece still missing? Reverts to chain aerials into each other. That wouldn't arrive until Pro Skater 3, and is finally addressed in the 2020 remake, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, which also folds in various gameplay tweaks from later entries up through Underground 1.

My Personal Background

When I was a kid, I vaguely remember seeing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 everywhere: for sale and rent in every store, featured in strategy and tips magazines, and even in those massive Sears holiday catalogs. We also had friends who were always messing around on real skateboards.

All of that eventually convinced my brother to rent Pro Skater 3 on GameCube. We both took turns with it. We loved how addictive and technical the gameplay loop was, but we didn't end up buying it, or any of the sequels, because we assumed it would be a short, shallow experience that wouldn't stay relevant.

We were wrong.

In 2004, our parents bought us a PS2 copy of Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 instead of renting. That game blew us away: twice as many intricate, unique levels, plus new gameplay elements layered on top of the already addictive core.

A few months later, I beat both Story and Classic modes, which unlocked a set of hidden characters. The most shocking (and hilarious) one is tied to a movie finally coming out in 2027, an icon of the 2000s both commercially and as a meme.

The fun didn't stop there. I accidentally discovered a bunch of out-of-bounds glitches thanks to weirdly programmed boundaries (the Los Angeles level sticks out in my mind; I loved those rebounding invisible walls I could endlessly jump off). I also managed to clip Player 1's position marker into odd places in Create-a-Goal mode. We felt like we were game developers, which might be what inspired my brother to pursue a career in the video game industry. Good times.

Fun fact: at one point, he even helped debug the then-upcoming Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5. Many of the bugs he found and documented still made it into the critically panned final release, because the game had to ship before the licensing deal between Activision and Tony Hawk expired at the end of 2015. And it barely had any development time… Yikes!

Regardless, I'm looking forward to trying the original PS1 version of Pro Skater 2 for this month's CGA, warts and all. It has the gameplay loop I know and love, and I can get over the fact that I can't walk off my skateboard anymore, something I haven't dealt with since beating American Sk8land on Nintendo DS over a decade ago.

Game Information

Years of the release: 2000, 2001, 2006, 2010, 2020, 2021

Platforms: PS1, PC, GBC, Dreamcast, Mac OS, GBA, N64, Xbox, Windows Mobile, iPhone, PS4, Xbox One, PS5, Xbox Series, Switch 1

Genre(s): Action, Sports

Links: Original - Mobygames, Original - Wikipedia
Windows - Mobygames
GBC - Mobygames
GBA - Mobygames
2x - Mobygames, 2x - Wikipedia
1 + 2 - Mobygames, 1 + 2 - Wikipedia

A brief overview at some of the versions:

• PS1

  • Easiest to access in terms of controller layout and emulation.
  • Great baseline "classic" feel.

• Windows

  • Potentially the most authentic way to experience Pro Skater 2 if you're comfortable with modding and tinkering.
  • Requires tracking down a out-of-production software and configuring it properly.

• Dreamcast

  • Similar to PS1 in feel, but with a noticeable visual fidelity boost.
  • Often considered the best-looking original-console version.

• N64

  • The most technically compromised 3D version.
  • Still functional, but stunts feel awkward with the C-button layout.

• Xbox (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2x)

  • Essentially "what if Pro Skater 1 + 2 came out right after Pro Skater 3?"
  • Adds mechanics and quality-of-life improvements from later entries.

• GBA

  • A surprisingly playable top-down/isometric conversion of the full Pro Skater 2 experience for a low-powered handheld.
  • Requires adjusting to the perspective and controls, but it holds up.

• GBC

  • Drastically different due to hardware limits and too few buttons.
  • Becomes a sidescrolling, scope-limited version of Pro Skater 2 with mediocre controls, despite being an improvement over the GBC Pro Skater 1.

Where to find the game:

• Physical Release: Prices seem to be fairly reasonable on eBay. A loose cartridge/disc is usually much cheaper than a Complete-in-Box copy (which includes the game, manuals, and box), but not by much.
• Digital storefronts: A convenient fallback solution, especially with its frequent sales. Only applies to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2.

Game Setup

The main purpose of this topic is to get people up and running with the game. As such, it's recommended that you:

• Share what hardware you're playing it on
• Share if there are any tools/mods that you recommend
• Share anything you think is important for people to know before they start the game
• Ask questions if you need help

Another purpose of this topic is to revisit the game and its time period:

• Do you have any memories or associations with this game itself?
• What about its system or era?
• What aspects of retro gaming were common at the time?
• What other games from the same time period are you familiar with?
• What are you expecting from this game in particular?

Finally, this topic is the beginning discussion for people starting to play it:

• Post updates sharing your thoughts as you play.
• Ask for help if you get stuck.
• Offer help to others.

It is recommended that you reply to your own posts if you are making consecutive updates so that they are in the same thread.

IMPORTANT: Any links to the game should be legal distributions of the game only. Please do NOT link to any unauthorized copies.

IMPORTANT: Put any spoilers in a dropdown block. Copy/paste the block below if needed.

<details>
<summary>Spoilers</summary>

Spoiler text goes here.
</details>

FAQ

Without further ado, let's hit the parks and go buck wild with tricks and stunts!

> CONTINUE

(Credit to @Boojum for the splash screen. Still rock-and-rolling after a year!)

I recently got promoted and my new position is about 70% travel.

Planes are loud.
Airports are loud.
Malls are loud.

I'm looking for really good noise cancelling, over ear headphones that have a hidden mic.

Ideally they would be good at playing audio on a plane and for taking zoom calls on my laptop. Bonus if switching between my android phone and MacBook is simple/without known issues.

Price is not a concern.

Wanted to post this on the monthly mental health megathread but I was at a friend's birthday party at the time (we drank, eat a lot of pizza and played plenty of board games) and I think the only way this will get remotely noticed is as its own post.

I [34M] am living with my parents [68F/81M]

My dad has become an especially big point of contention. He's been so mollycoddling and babying towards me that it's caused a lot of problems. He's also obese, doesn't clean up after himself, to the point where there are tissues everywhere acorss the house, the TV remote in the kitchen is greasy to the touch, and you'll go to the toilet and find a seat drenched in piss half the time. He's in that stage of his life where he doesn't give a fuck, and has been through stages of (IMO) gradual dementia. During these years he has turned increasingly toxic and controlling - though in retrospect he was that already.

I'll give a recent example, and a reason as to why I didn't post when the megathread opened up. On Bank Holiday Monday, a day off before I was meant to actually start in my new job, my dad woke me up around 9am, having set up my WFH desk (I didn't ask him to, he does that a lot) then went into a swear-filled rant about how I didn't tell him when I told him I wasn't working. That fat grubby bastard didn't even check to see public holidays and assumed I was working when I had repeatedly said I would start Tuesday.

As early as when I turned 18 (I ended up going to a local-ish university) and had a student property brochure on my desk, my dad went berserk at me when he saw it and went into a rant about how I hate him and pretty much guilt-tripped me into not moving out. My university was close, so I doubt I could have been able to move into student accommodation anyway.

He has a myriad of health problems. Aside from complications from falling from a warehouse roof (he used to be a carpenter, ended up borderline crippled before I was born and having to retrain as a design & technology teacher as a result), he has arthritis, COPD, complications from the fucktonnes of painkillers he takes, had to get a hip replacement a few years ago and needing to be catheterised a year ago.

Other things:

• My brother [now 39M] had an argument with my parents when I was 19/20 years old about how they were mollycoddling me during my second year of uni. They had a huge shouting match and he ended up not talking to them for almost an entire year because they really pissed him off. He didn't even talk to me for about a month. And I got the blame for it all because I was "breaking up the family."

• The responsibilities of looking after my dad have increasingly fallen upon me, especially towards dealing with technical issues and a lot of things like applying for a blue badge or paying council bills have turned almost wholly digital. He sucks with computers. My brother and I originally agreed on getting him a tablet because it would be easier to use, that wasn't really the case. He struggles to use any new technology, and at this point I struggle to even teach basic tasks like checking emails to him because he just seems so senile now.

• My dad has had a recurring porn problem for the better problem of two decades. To add to that, he's the kind of guy that will just click on anything and end up getting infected with a browser hijacker or something worse. It's so bad recently that my bro has recently advised me to put parental filters on the router but dunno how I will even do this because I'm not the one with the technical background. This was put in place long ago when we were still living together but I initially saw this as my older bro imposing browsing restrictions upon me to spite me (I couldn't access porn or dating sites until I was about 20) - now I see why he did it.

Going on to my brother, he's the one who ended up having the experience of independence. They didn't challenge him and if anything they saw him as the problem child and promoted me as the favourite (He used to bully me a lot, and I think that influenced things.) He ended up being the one that would be financially successful (despite our secondary school predicting otherwise), with a good career, having a long-term partner, a daughter, and being the independent one.

As for me, I graduated with a History degree in 2013, spent 18 months unemployable, lucked out working 3 years in customer service, pivoted towards accountancy, worked a bunch of accounts admin jobs, ended up progressing, getting laid off in 2025 when I was close to moving into my own place, having to pull out, then recently ending up back in employment. I didn't even lose my virginity until a year ago because my situation made me practically repel women.

I dunno how I can escape from my current situation. I have been working as a contractor for my current employer since April, but only became a permanent employee two days ago. A bank would want evidence of 6+ months of stable employment before they could extend a mortgage offer.

I worry that I am going to end up being the de facto carer for my dad in the coming months and having any kind of social life ruined, which has just made me resentful because of the experiences I've had. I don't like that I am going to have this potentially pawned upon me because I got unlucky and couldn't move out.

I've looked at renting but in Bristol, good fucking luck. I've viewed a few places but they're all overcharged HMOs where the owners have tried to convert nearly every part of the house into a box bedroom to maximise profit. The last one I viewed reeked of BO and I saw the previous tenant's laundry including her knickers spread out on the bed during my viewing. It was gross.

How do I get out of this situation? I doubt I can buy a place anywhere near the south of England anytime soon, and none of my friends are looking for any roommates...

Have you watched any movies recently you want to discuss? Any films you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

I've only had one cavity in my life and that molar was removed today. I've got about 2-3 weeks of a super soft / liquid diet ahead of me, but I'm running low on ideas.

Tuesday was day one and I had:

Breakfast:

• yogurt + honey
• a protein shake

Dinner:

• more goddamn yogurt
• pho broth
• another protein shake
• bowl of ice cream (very rare)

Breakfasts will stay the same, but I will be adding in slamming a raw egg like tough guys did in the 80s.

Today (Wednesday) is likely to be a cooled butternut squash soup and whatever else I can think of.

Anybody go through this and have any good suggestions? I'm a good cook and I can buy anything else and I'm not in any pain, so nothing is off the table so long as it fits the soft/liquid format.

Bureaucratic nonsense; a glaring inefficiency; “that’s just how we do things here”; etc.

Whatever it is, it’s absurd, but you’re also powerless to do anything about it and just have to live with it.

Tell us all about it.

Note: “workplace” can refer to career, school, home — wherever you do work in the face of absurdity

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?