Despite @kfwyre's excellent advice, I never made it out of the starting hangar. I am sorry I failed you, sensei. I blame the very limited time that I currently have for games.

The game felt like something that a younger me might have become quite obsessed about. There is a definite flow to it. It punishes you but it feels fair. It's short bursts of concentrated action. You need to learn its mechanics to get good. I love that type of design.

As I played the introductory hangar level, I kept imagining how this game would be introduced today. There would likely be a voice in the loudspeakers constantly telling you what to do. The flow would be broken, as action would slow down so that on-screen prompts can reinforce the voiced instructions: press X now to do a hoopladidoople, then press A + left to complete a flippetifloppy. And as you managed these button combos with the game holding your hand, notifications about achievements would pop up in the lower right corner. Well done, you pressed the button we told you to press! As your reward, you shall get five diamond tokens with which you can buy new cosmetics (also available through microtransactions).

Instead, the game as I experienced it just throws you in and trusts that you will figure it out yourself. It doesn't insult your intelligence or ability. It's confident enough about its mechanics and gameplay loop to know that you'll be having fun, no matter how far you progress.

And while I didn't progress far, I certainly did have fun.

For various reasons I only got one run of Hangar done this month, in which I basically just ate shit. Very reminiscent from when I played THPS2 at like 7, tried to learn how to skate, and basically just ate shit.

But I did learn how obscenely easy it is to play stuff like 2X on an OG Xbox nowadays! You straight-up compile the raw game files, and that results in an ISO that burns straight to a DVD. Crazy.

THPS remains one of my favourite series. Unlike a lot of these older series that I'm nostalgic for though, I still regularly revisit this one.

Surprisingly, quite a few of these games have received PC releases. Back in the day, I played through every game with a PC release in order. That's basically everything from THPS 2 up through American Wasteland. I later played through THPS HD and THPS 3+4 when they came to PC, too. I think I missed THPS 1+2 because it was Epic-exclusive for so long.

Of the lot, THPS 3 has always been my favourite. It was my first Tony Hawk game, so there's surely some bias there, but I still love its iconic levels. Foundry, Canada, and Airport are all fantastic stages. I recently replayed these in THPS 3+4, and it was really neat to see them in HD. They even introduced the COMBO mechanic from THPS 4 — probably the best part of that particular game — which I was very glad to see.

Underground 1 is another favourite. Introducing an edgy story to play through really captured my attention. The levels weren't anywhere near as memorable, and I don't know what they were thinking with that car driving minigame, but the career progression felt so much more meaningful than in other games. Underground 2 was so over-the-top and Jackass-inspired that it didn't carry the same grounding that immersed me in the first game.

But I've still enjoyed basically every Tony Hawk game I've played. At this point, I've seen stages like Hangar and School II so many times that I didn't feel I needed to go back and replay THPS 2 to talk about it for this CGA. Even with the more limited moveset of this classic though, its precision and feel is unmatched. They found the perfect balance in requiring skill and poise, while still allowing ridiculous tricks and arcade action.

I love how these games silently guide you. There's no giant arrows or flashing text, yet the player intuitively starts to spot ramps, rails, and lines in everyday objects. The gap bonuses are like little rewards for finding connections in the stage. It all feels so rewarding to get better at.

Lastly, they really nail the aesthetic of the skater scene. The graffiti, the clothes, and especially the music. So many great picks accompany these games, and I discovered a lot of great punk/underground artists as a result.

I think what really surprises me about these games though is how culturally influential they were. I know multiple people that bought skateboards specifically because of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. As much as Tony Hawk's may have borrowed from skate culture, it also gave back, driving mainstream adoption and influencing a new generation of skaters.

I played THPS 1+2 on the Switch, and I gotta say I'm not the biggest fan of the format. More and more as I kept playing I saw the time limit as an unnecessary and obnoxious mechanism, and I wished there was a mode where you could work on the goals without it, or at least without having to go through the tedious rigamarole of dismissing a bunch of screens and navigating menus in between each attempt.

I also gave 3+4 a try, because I had read that the format had been "fixed" in THPS 4, where the time limit was removed and challenges could be attempted at a more relaxed pace, but apparently they "un-fixed" it in the remake and added the 2 minute timer back. It just feels like the biggest wtf missed opportunity ever that, instead of modernizing the older titles in the remake to take the improvements from THPS 4, they took the complete opposite direction and arguably made THPS 4 into a worse game in the remake.

So played through a good chunk of THPS 3 (played that instead of 2, since that is the one I am nostalgic about). I managed to unlock all of the levels, but have not done every single goal on every level. Since it is a different style of game compared to other games I have played in the last 10 years it took a couple of hours before I was doing decent at it.

It is interesting how these style of games were popular about 20 years ago, but have died out since. Growing up, we had on our PS2 THPS 3&4, several SSX games, and even a wakeboarding game. But now, it seems like the genre of board sports has died out for video games. So returning to this was a fun month.

As for THPS 3, after mentioning it my brother has also started playing it. We both agree that Suburbia is a terrible level with no good long lines on it. Otherwise, it was a very polished game, and I actually quite enjoyed the 2min gameplay loop. Especially on modern emulated hardware the load times are very quick so it is easy to just pop in and do a few runthroughs of a specific level

I wouldn't call myself a completionist, but I am obsessive about completing projects I've started, which is how I ended-up playing this game and not necessarily making it very far. I unlocked the second level, but had to obsessively finish Hanger before I could move on, which I eventually did. I later unlocked France while playing the School level, but only actually tried it once, because I got focused on trying to complete the School.

Ultimately, I didn't make it very far and probably played less than 4-hours of this game. I did expect to play more, as I did enjoy what I was playing, but I do find the timer pretty off-putting. I'm an Explorer at heart and to have to restart a level every 2 minutes so I could continue trying to find stuff just put me off the game ultimately. I can see why it's appealing, as it gives you little chunks to play the game in, which should appeal to me, but I always felt like I was just getting started exploring when the level ended and I needed to restart.

So, it ended-up being fun enough, but I ended-up getting distracted by other things.

I kind of also think I have a mental block where when I feel "obligated" to a thing (such as with the CGA), my brain automatically just begins to reject it. But also, I tend to flit from game to game anyway and don't tend to fully complete much.