Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a port of the Playstation One Tony Hawk title released in 1999. The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was revolutionary - the game changed the way developers approached extreme sports titles, and made an even bigger name for Tony Hawk. Five years later, gamers have been treated to a pocket edition of Tony Hawk on the N-Gage. Sure, editions have appeared on the Gameboy Color and Gameboy Advance but Nokia are hoping that once you play Tony Hawk on the N-Gage you won’t want to go back to those editions… and you probably won’t want to either.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater features a career mode, a 2-player mode (using Bluetooth or one game deck) and a free skate mode. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater also features N-Gage Arena support so you can take on gamers around the world, though the competition is fierce and competitive.
There are ten official skaters for players to choose from including Bob Burnquist, Kareem Campbell, Rune Glifberg, Bucky Lasek, Chad Muska, Andrew Reynolds, Geoff Rowley, Elissa Steamer, Jamie Thomas and the Tony himself. This N-Gage version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater also represents the first time the title has gone fully 3D on a portable console and it looks good.
Neversoft has clearly tried to make sure that the Tony Hawk experience transfers well to the N-Gage and has made a direct port of the PS-One version. Don’t expect too many N-Gage exclusives except for a few unlockable levels. It would have been nice to see more effort put in and N-Gage exclusives included but unfortunately this isn’t the case.
Using the eight way navigational button on the N-Gage, players are able to perform literally dozens of moves which is what makes Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater so unique. Players are consistently trying to improve their scores. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater features three groups of moves (grab tricks, grinds and flip tricks) with each group containing eight moves – however this isn’t including combos.
The main part of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater lies in the career mode. The career mode is divided into nine levels and players are given two minutes to skate around and fulfil certain goals. The goals include collecting S-K-A-T-E letters, obtaining high scores and finding secret tapes. The levels are extremely varied, ranging from a warehouse, a school and a mall. The career mode is fairly lengthy and fulfilling every goal will take a significant amount of time.
The overall appeal of Tony Hawk is still present in this title. It is really a great title for portable gaming with pick up and play appeal but features an in-depth enough career mode for extended gaming sessions.
The 3D capabilities of the N-Gage are only beginning to be exploited and because of this Tony Hawk does suffer from a bit of slow-down when the action gets intense, this normally happens when your skater smashes through a pane of glass. It isn’t too much of a hinderance to the game but can become a bit irritating.
Graphics in the game are great and a welcome step up from the isometric view we are used to from the Gameboy Advance version. Each of the skaters look different from each other and the environments are direct ports from the PS-One version, there has been no downgrading to the levels. The draw distance can sometimes be a problem but eventually gamers will memorise the small levels and this becomes less of a problem. This does make Tony Hawk a little unforgiving for beginners.
The control system is very similar to the old PS-One style controls. The raised 5 button controls jump, and the controls are pleasantly intuitive, and utilise the keypad intelligentlywhilst only requiring a few minutes to get used to. From then, gamers can pull off those fluke tricks really well.
The sound in Tony Hawk is brilliant considering it is on a MMC card. The music mainly comprises of punk rock compilations, and suits the game well and is good inspiration to get a higher score. I was surprised at the quality of the output for the sound. It isn’t quite as clear as a television but it is much better than expected. The normal skating sounds are also included which all come across well.
Tony Hawk on the N-Gage is one of the most pleasant games to be released, and is addictive and easy to play. It was pretty hard for Neversoft to ruin the Tony Hawk experience but we’re still glad that it is just as playable now as it was five years ago. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is one of the reasons to own an N-Gage, it is the best version of Tony Hawk currently available on a handheld and only suffers from minor frame-rate problems. We would have liked to have seen more N-Gage exclusives included, but this is a pretty standard, accurate PSX port.
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