Tony Hawk’s Underground

I’m not a skater boy. I never was. There was no point where I did a rail slide and my knee tore, I was not a member of the United States of Skate, and I’ve never ridden a board more than two inches without serious fear for my life. But that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the culture or the things that came out of it.

Movies, clothing, music, people who made it their whole personality, right-wing fear mongering about the moral decline, and of course video games all blossomed from the early 2000’s skater boom from roughly ’99 to 2006 as people started tuning into things like The X Games to see figures like Chad Muska and the legendary Birdman himself do incredible things with a (sometimes literally) taped together plank of wood with wheels attached. 

This popularity would eventually lead to Activision creating a series of well received arcade sports titles under Tony Hawk’s name and developed by Neversoft called appropriately “Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater” but it wouldn’t be until 2003 that the series would truly hit it’s stride with Tony Hawk’s Underground (THUG).

Skate or Die

THUG is easily one of the most well-known and well-loved entries in the Tony Hawk’s series of games, and for good reason. It marked the start of a new era for the series and shifted the games away from their prior design ethos. 

The earlier games, 1-4, had a focus on the pros, collectibles, and goals loosely connected to the locale they were set in. Your reason for doing 1080 triple kickflips or bs rail slides was because the security guard at Alcatraz asked you to. THUG, the focus became you and the world of skating at large.

Missions unrelated to the story still exist, and will have you doing weird tasks for weirder people.

Following the story of you, represented by your custom character, you go on a journey with fellow amateur skater and general shitbag Eric Sparrow as you both escape the rattiest part of New Jersey to become pro skaters in a globe-trotting adventure. Pros and Missions are still here, but they’re recontextualized to be a part of the narrative now. The missions are part of the story, doing tasks to help out people in whatever part of the world you’re in while sometimes receiving guidance from the pros; everything is retooled to focus on you and make this story about you.

The Anthem

More accurately, the narrative of the game is changed to focus on the culture. You, the player, are the main focus of the story; with your rivalry with Eric and your journey to become the best pro skater of all time in the spotlight. But all this serves as a form of love letter to skating and the counter-culture formed around it. Starting out in Jersey trying to escape from drug-dealing gangs, you move from city to city competing in competitions and hitting famous skate spots digitally recreated to fit into these smaller city-themed skate parks the designers created.

Setting the tone to these stages is a soundtrack of punk, hip-hop, and various other rock genres from a Vans Warped Tour (before it sucked) scale playlist. Major bands like Alkaline Trio and Bad Religion are played alongside some smaller artists in a carefully curated backing track which seems to have been perfectly crafted to blend with the various ambient sounds of skating (even the parts where you crash face first into the sidewalk).

Skatecore 101

Wrapping it all together are the customization features in game. Many returning from prior Tony Hawk games, almost everything is expanded or updated to accommodate the larger focus on the player’s custom skater.

As always you have choices for different skateboard decks, grip tape configurations, and wheel colors. There are some artworks specifically created for the game but if you were a skater circa 2001-2003 a lot of these boards should look familiar as, true to series standards, you have major brands like Flip and Birdhouse represented in game with bright, creative art.

Not only is there a ton of customization, but it’s well organized. Making finding specific brands easier to find.

On top of your board, you of course have yourself. And the create-a-skater options in this game set a lot of the standards that were maintained for future entries. Of course you have a wide variety of shirts, shoes, accessories, and hair styles to select from but you can also adjust the size of various parts like your body and head through the scalers to create works of art just as easily as you can make hilarious monstrosities. 

Players in this entry can even create their own skate moves with the create-a-trick feature added in THUG. 

Let it Roll

Of course, no matter how good the art side of a game is (and it is good) unless the actual mechanics are solid you can only get so much enjoyment from a game. Keeping the traditional Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater control scheme, along with its four prior games of polish, though ensures that players new and old are in for a smooth sailing. 

While the button faces change how the game works across all platforms is functionally the same. Tricks are tied to the controller’s face buttons; hanging and grinding are tied to one button, grab tricks to another, flip tricks to yet another with the last button reserved for speeding up and jumping. The directions you input while tapping the trick buttons determines the type of trick you do, with special tricks requiring multiple inputs and the shoulder buttons altering how certain tricks and mechanics work.  Hit the flip button off a half-pipe while holding the joystick to the left pops a kickflip, pressing the right shoulder button after landing does a combo extending revert, and if you hit both shoulders midair, you’ll ‘spine transfer to the other side of the ramp (assuming it’s also ramp shaped over there).

From Jersey to Moscow, there’s no shortage of spots to grind and trick off of.

It’s a tried-and-true formula that works. With four prior games of polish of course it should but that doesn’t diminish the fact that while boarding you’re guaranteed a smooth experience where the only things that truly feel beyond your control are minor incidences. That said, that’s only true while you’re ON the board; one of the new features included in Underground to keep the series fresh is the ability to jump off the board and pilot things like cars. Regardless if you’re losing the wheels or behind one, the controls are substantially less polished and movements are stiff. On foot especially, it feels less like you’re turning or moving from walking to running and more like you’re snapping into a series of states.

This is all saved by the fact that while there are a few missions that require alternate controls, they aren’t so bad that completing the game would be impossible; and after those missions using on-foot controls are largely optional. You can use the ability to dismount to extend your combo for a few seconds, but this still remains optional as any score goal can easily be cleared without it.

Till’ the wheels fall off

Tony Hawk’s Underground is a classic for a reason. It’s a love letter to the world of skating and everything around it, it’s a star-studded globe trotting adventure, it’s a classic that holds up to this day. With great controls, excellently designed stages, and the ability to customize almost everything you can interact with it’s still the Tony Hawk game I come back to whenever I get the urge to play, even with the remakes of 1-4 being available.

It’s not perfect of course. The controls as mentioned earlier for anything not involving a skateboard are stiff and unpolished, and the writing leans more to the juvenile side of things. But aside from being a little crass at times it’s one of the greatest skating games of all time, and if you come across a chance to play this gem and you’re a fan of the world of extreme sports, it’s definitely worth sinking a few hours during a weekend on.

Overall Score: 8/10

Memorable moment: Landing a McTwist over the helicopter in Hawaii.