The History of THPS

Introduction

On 29^th of September 1999 and 20^th of September 2000 Neversoft and Activision released two games that has changed skateboarding games forever. These were Tony Hawks Pro Skater and Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 respectively. This was a time when video gaming took another turn for the better. They took an abused genre and created one of the greatest games ever to be released on a home system. With quality graphics, an intuitive control system, and unbelievably fun game play, the games literally disappeared off the shelves, leaving retailers baffled... but what happened in the days before the releases? Where did these games stem from? If your anything like me you've asked this question 1000 times as your run through the different levels trying to take your combo's to the point of perfection. This article will in essence run you through how it began to the point of the release of Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 and the anticipation surrounding it.

.... the beginning

The game originally began development around May 1998 after Activision approached Neversoft with the idea of creating a skateboarding game, there was an overall feeling that “It was a sport that nobody had really captured well in a game...aside from 720” The Apocalypse project was in development at this point, and Neversoft jumped at the chance to create it. The game ended up being based on the Apocalypse engine albeit an extensively tweaked version. Some may have thought this an ominous concept to begin with since the game Apocalypse (starring Bruce Willis) was met with a somewhat mediocre response by the general public and critics alike. It was at this point Neversoft found some magic, the tweaked engine and the physics model packaged with the graphics and gameplay resulted in one of the most popular games released on the Playstation to date.

The original title for the game was ‘Pro Skater’ this was obviously because Tony hadn’t been signed to the project at this stage, he signed on a few months after the project had been started, the intended goals in the game have remained unchanged up until the release, the idea of progressing through your professional career still holds true in both games.

The idea as Ralph puts it in an Interview with Blitzkrieg in 1999, was "to deliver a cutting edge game that represents the sport of skateboarding well and will provide the gamer hours upon hours of game play". Which we know now they delivered without a hitch. (thanks guys), The original team consisted of 11 people, and by the time Tony Hawk was signed the actual game was nearly 80% complete. Following the introduction of Tony and the rest of the Professional Skaters, motion captured animations became a part of THPS and brought a new level to the realism of the game, the consultation on level design from Tony resulted in the levels being unbelievably popular and the base on which these were all created was an engine which Neversoft had dedicated themselves to bringing one of the most robust 3D engines ever seen on the Playstation. Not to take anything away from the designers and animators who had their work cut out for them, creating some of the best environments and characters you could ask for in a skateboarding game.

The first Tony Hawk Pro Skater loading screen

During the development Tony was sent numerous builds of the game to test, and rumour has it at some stage he had the Playstation version of THPS2 emulated on a laptop which he could take with him wherever he was at the time.

Numerous beta versions of the game began flood the ‘warez’ scene, people could for the first time ever, play what was to become the basis of our community. It was a precautious moment when you reached for that gold disc and inserted it into the psx. What would it be like? How would it play? Would it be reminiscent of the horrid Extreme Games Titles? Were just some questions running through peoples minds as they closed the Playstation lid and booted it up. Then the prize was there in all it’s glory, the numerous characters and the list of levels, some of which never made it to the final game were there ready to be conquered.

The Freeway and Downhill some of the levels that never made it the final cut

The levels for THPS/2 grew larger, had parts cut out due to memory constraints or perhaps they just didn’t work with the levels anymore as part of the development process. San Francisco is an obvious example of this where in the render of the level used on the level select screen in the final version there is an extra room visible on one of the buildings.

Room not included in the final release on San Francisco