Checking My Blind Spots: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
I skitched the elephant!
One thing I’d like to do here at Skitching the Elephant is use the whole thing as an excuse to try to tackle some of my gaming blind spots, which are numerous and embarrassing. While there are certainly more decorated games to try from my list, the one I wanted to tackle immediately was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. Do you ever look back and realize you sort of wrote something off unfairly, without proper intel? No? You don’t? Oh. Well, that’s what I did here, anyway.
Some history with me and Tony: I had THPS on the Nintendo 64, and I played it more than any game I’d ever played in my life at that point (until WrestleMania 2000, but that’s another story for another day). I never actually owned the sequel, although I was able to grow decently familiar with it, between friends owning it and the normal-at-the-time thing where you play a few levels from a demo disc over and over.
My brother got Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 on his GameCube upon release and it blew my fucking mind. To me, it’s still the best Tony Hawk, and therefore one of the greatest games of all time. If nothing else, it added the revert move following 2’s manual, enabling skaters to string together air and grind tricks in a single combo — making your imagination and Chad Muska’s rail balance ability the only barriers between you and infinity. It ruled.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 came out in the fall of 2002. I was fresh out of high school, living with friends and working as many shifts as I could at a movie theater to afford rent and booze. I wasn’t paying the most attention to video games. For about a year, I think the only games I played were with my roomates (things like Vice City and WWE SmackDown! Here Comes the Pain) and other than that, it was just an awful lot of drinking Miller High Life while playing darts in what was intended to be a dining room. What I’m saying is, THPS4 wasn’t exactly on my radar when it came out.
Eventually I settled down a little, and my brother bought me a GameCube of my own when they dropped to 100 bucks, and it wasn’t long before I wondered what Tony and company had been up to. I bought the new-at-the-time Tony Hawk’s Underground, despite being skeptical about getting being asked to hop off of your skateboard and run around in the game.
But I played through it and loved it.
I think I always incorrectly assumed that 4 sank the series, and Underground was dispatched to bring it back, hence the shakeup in titles. I ended up with the idea in my head that 4 was the series at its most derivative, a lifeless entry into a beloved franchise that necessitated a back to the books approach to the next one. But no, that was 2015’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. I realize that now. I also realize that THPS4 is a worthy successor to one of my favorite video games of all time, and is a perfect bridge between its predecessors and successors.
Also, it’s fun as hell.
While every entry prior introduced a crucial new element to the actual skating itself, the big change here is a little more radical, and evident from the beginning.
THPS4 actually was the first game to do away with the traditional list of goals for each level and instead task you with seeking out people all over the level to give you goals (a mechanic I’d thought Underground implemented). This added a ton of variety, personality, and originality to the proceedings.
You couldn’t quite get off of your skateboard and run around yet, but you know something? A few times I really wished I could have!
I get why some people might think it’s weird to get off your skateboard in a skateboarding game, but if I’m able to do things like stop people from being bullied through the sheer power of skateboarding, I ought to be able to run around a little bit. I don’t think that’s crazy.
Anyway, you can’t get off the board, but THPS4 did introduce skitching — a not-exactly-essential-but-fun-nonetheless element that I, again, incorrectly assumed was introduced in Tony Hawk’s Underground. It was here that the Birdman took over for Marty McFly in making sure that kids will always be aware of one of the more dangerous things you can do on a skateboard. Wear a helmet if you think you’ll reach speeds over 50 mph, children!
You skitch all kinds of stuff in Tony 4. It’s ridiculous and I love it.
How much do I love it? I named this whole fucking thing after the part in the zoo level where you hold onto an elephant’s tail and ride like hell.
It’s the exact type of big, dumb, silly bullshit I love in video games that I hope to talk about here. I’m not big on ‘Game of the Year’ discussions. I’d rather talk about the zoo level in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. So that’s the kind of thing we’ll be doing here.
Actually, this whole thing reminded me of this other game, Skitchin’. Do you know about this?
First, a quick history lesson. Rollerblading was invented in 1991, by a man on LSD trying to build a pair of roller skates for his son on Christmas Eve. He and his disappointed wife decided that it was too late to find a different present, so they went through with gifting him the monstrosity. The child ended up enjoying them, and long story short, a cultural fad was born.
Though it gained popularity quickly, rollerblading wasn’t considered very cool at first. Skaters and BMXers made fun of it, and hockey players forcibly took rollerbladers’ wallets on sight for years. The promising young rocket shoes were in desparate need of a cooler image, and thus, games like 1994’s Skitchin’ were deployed.
Electronic Arts’ Skitchin’ is a whole heck of a lot like the old Road Rash games that were also on the Sega Genesis, if you ever played those. As in, like, built on the same engine. Very, very similar games. Only instead of motorbikes, you’re all out rollerblading — and you could skitch, baby.
It’s an interesting mechanic, like a form of sanctioned cheating. Is a man named Jackal giving you a hard time, punching your lights out while you rollerblade down the streets of Detroit? Just grab onto a car’s bumper as it speeds by and get the hell out of there.
It feels unfair, until you’re rollerblading several minutes later and that dipshit Jackal goes scooting by you skitching a Jeep himself, that son of a bitch. You can’t hold onto the bumper of a car for too long before you eat fuck, so the timing actually adds an interesting element to the game.
The animations are really great here, too. Really some serious blading going on here, and the standard issue unbuttoned shirt looks great flapping in the wind. The soundtrack is actually a bunch of nu metal by way of Sega Genesis bangers, too. Pleasant surprises all around!
Something I thought was odd and funny was how using the rear-view mirror is so integral to catching a car as it whizzes by (the timing obviously being of utmost importance). How these bladers are able to use a rear-view mirror, I’m not sure.
But, assuming this game is accurate to the culture — if you ever see a guy rollerblading in the road holding up a mirror, be careful. That rollerblader isn’t doing their makeup, they’re getting ready to grab onto your shit. You can’t be too careful.
Speaking of which, bless EA’s hearts, they make safety equipment mandatory. I couldn’t tell if the knee pads helped when the cars ran me over or the opponents punched me in my face, but I appreciate their attempts at normalizing the practice all the same.
Is this game as good as Road Rash? Nah, not really. Does it feature a considerable amount more skitching? You bet your ass.
Gonna revert (!) back to THPS4 now, thank you for indulging me. I felt like it was worth diving into Skitchin’ here on day one. This is a Skitch-oriented newsletter, after all. Actually, shit. Maybe I should’ve sat on Skitchin’ for a minute, huh? I think I’ve used up all the good skitching stuff, and this site is like 30 minutes old. Crap.
Overall, THPS4 has a big goofy sense of humor that I love, but I want to point out that, sadly, a good amount of it lands somewhere between dumb and mean. Incoherent homeless people shouldn’t be ridiculed in skateboarding games. We should be making fun of cops, guys. Come on. Even a dork like me knows that.
A few missteps aside, the game’s overall tone is defiant and funny. The Jackass-ery that some say caused the series to jump the shark in later games like Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 was just starting to creep in here, without taking over the proceedings entirely. (I like THUG2 a lot, but find most criticisms of it to be valid. Oh, you think it’s a little dumb that you can play as Steve-O and ride a mechanical bull around while doing tricks on it? You’re not wrong. Not at all.)
This probably makes me a simpleton (or at the very least a predictable 39-year-old), but I played through the game as Bam Margera at one point, hoping for some Jackass/CKY stuff, and by god, I was not disappointed. Each skater unlocks a special goal once you have accomplished enough stuff in the game, and the shopping cart antics I discovered is just the sort of stuff I was hoping to unlock. In a series that also included skaters from the Star Wars and Spider-Man franchises, I love that Jackass made it in there as well. You might say it had overstayed its welcome by the next few entries, but I say it’s a shame we never got to skitch Don Vito.
Those were my impressions on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4. Sorry it was mostly about skitching. Really incredible game though — I’m sort of sorry it took me so long to play it, sort of happy I got to discover it for the first time over the last few weeks.
Oh, there’s just one more thing.
I feel like I’m obligated to mention the soundtrack at some point in an article about a Tony Hawk game, and this one really slips. Slops. Fuck. What are the kids saying? Sleeps? This one sleeps? Look, I don’t know, but it’s really good. Here’s a spotlight on five stellar songs from it.
Freightliner - Hot Water Music
Hot Water Music used to write songs that were somehow messier and more complicated than every other punk band. As years went on, they settled into a more traditional approach to song structure — relying more on verses and choruses, but never sacrificing their intensity. By my count, they’ve made a bunch of great albums, and two perfect ones: Fuel for the Hate Game from the earlier style, and Caution from the later. A tight, polished track from the more recent (and again, perfect) Caution would’ve made a ton of sense (something like ‘Wayfarer,’ ‘Remedy,’ or ‘We’ll Say Anything We Want’), but instead NeverSoft reached back to the band’s debut full length from 1997.
This version of Hot Water Music was more content to play chaotic and passionate swirls of music, leaving you to remember the vibe of a song more than a repeated hook. ‘Freightliner’ spends about 12 seconds being a standard three chord rocker, before quickly departing into the stereo sounds of Chuck Ragan and Jason Wollard’s duel guitar-and-passionate-vocal interplay, anchored by nothing short of my favorite rhythm section in punk rock, bassist Jason Black and drummer George Rebelo. From there, they never let up.
Incredible band, incredible song. Love that they used this semi-deep cut here.
Big Shots - eyedea & abilities
Late-night HBO in the ‘90s was a wild place, man. In addition to some of the least sexy sexual content you’ll ever see, you never quite knew what new show or special they were going to throw at you. In addition to discovering made-for-3:00 a.m. bangers like Mr. Show and Reverb, one night they showed some hip hop rap battle thing that I now know was Blaze Battle 2000. My brother and I were captivated, and it wasn’t hard to tell that the clear standout was a scrawny white guy by the name of Eyedea. He eviscerated every single person he went up against.
Fuck 8 Mile, watch eyedea react to his opponent mocking him with dance moves at the 2:22 mark of this video.:
This all happened around the time of Napster, and therefore when Eyedea hooked up with a guy named DJ Abilities to release their first of three albums under the Eyedea & Abilities moniker, I couldn’t download it fast enough. (Possibly an issue with my dial-up modem, but I digress.)
That album, First Born, didn’t feature that many songs that showcased the angry, spitfire rapper that was verbally beating people to a pulp. The rhymes and skills were still there, but this wasn’t a rapper trying to win a battle, this was an artist making an album. The Eyedea found on First Born is excited to be rapping to you about everything he thinks of, and he thinks about a lot. About Plato and hip hop, and what happens in our brains when we think, and the whole damn universe. It can be all over the place at times, but it’s anchored by the sheer talent and passion on display.
The act would continue to refine until their third LP, the brutal and brilliant By The Throat. Eyedea seemed to be thinking just as much as ever, but here almost exclusively about pain, struggle, and loss. DJ Abilities’ samples and scratches are (mostly) replaced with live instruments, all crashing cymbals, distorted guitars, and thumping basses. A rapper coming apart over an explosive backdrop, punctuated by haunting choruses that sound like the wails of Thom Yorke. Sadly, this brutal and beautiful record was Eyedea’s last. He died in 2010, a year after the release of By The Throat, of an accidental overdose at the age of 28.
‘Big Shots’ is a snapshot of a young emcee playing with language and writing love letters to the music he adored. It might not be as deep as a lot of his ouvere, but listen to that third verse — the one about rappers, the egotistical bastards — and tell me you can’t hear the smile on his face as he increases the tempo and builds up to the twist ending. Whether battle rapping, rhyming his ass off in the studio, or wrestling with life itself, Eyedea never commanded anything less than my full attention. I hate that his journey from talented up-and-comer to tormented artist taken prematurely happened at all, let alone so quickly.
T.N.T. - AC/DC
I’ve always liked AC/DC just fine, a rock solid rock band with great rock riffs and memorable tunes about when and how to rock. I recently read a book about the life and career of music producer Rick Rubin, and he said at one point that he considered AC/DC to be the best rock band of all time, just everything good about heavy music distilled to its simplest core.
Now, I don’t necessarily listen to everything Rick Rubin says, but when the guy that produced everything from ‘Fight for Your Right’ to ‘Raining Blood’ to ‘You Don’t Know How It Feels’ says a band is the best ever, I will consider them with fresh ears.
And honestly, I get what he means. I think I feel the same way about The Ramones. But I get it with AC/DC, too. It’s okay to not want to convey anything that complicated with your music. I’ve heard people complain about AC/DC’s simple drums and redundant songs, but again — similar to The Ramones — that doesn’t make them bad. It just makes them AC/DC. I’m not convinced wackier drum beats and more ballads would’ve made them a better band. And I’m quite sure it would’ve made them a more forgettable, less impactful group.
Listen to that intro, that patient guitar riff. When played over actual skate footage to open THPS4, it really feels like something amazing is about to happen. And do you know what? It fuckin’ does as soon as you press a button.
My Adidas - Run DMC
Rick Rubin produced this song, too. I know, I know, shut up about Rick Rubin, but should I pretend I don’t know that? This shit rules. I don’t know if this was included to reinforce the connection between skateboarding and hip hop by way of their culture’s fixations on fashion and footwear, or if, you know, it just really rules. But yeah, this song’s on there and I don’t know what else I could really say about it.
Oh, I like this better than that Korn song about Adidas.
Shimmy - System of a Down
They get lumped in with nu metal these days, but System of a Down were and are one of a kind. One of the bands us punk kids could agree with our metal friends on back in high school (others included Rage Against the Machine, Snot, and uh, Sublime?). The metal kids claimed them, but the way tons of SOAD songs are often composed of ~2 riffs and/or ~2 chords always gave them a punk spirit to me.
‘Shimmy,’ like so much of their stuff, feels less like a traditional song and more like a band improbably linking several insane parts together, somehow making them all flow into one smooth thing, which makes it a perfect soundtrack choice for a game that gave you the same powers.