00:00I didn't think that the warehouse level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater would be able to
00:17capture my undivided attention.
00:19Not again.
00:20Not now that I'm a 30-year-old equipped with bad knees, a million miles away from
00:24the wannabe Rodney Mullen that spent many a night eating s*** on these same spots two
00:28decades ago.
00:29I expected to dip in, have a little fun, eventually get annoyed with the cadence of John Feldman's
00:34voice and dip out.
00:36So believe me when I tell you that I don't know what happened.
00:38I sat down with a demo after work and the next thing I knew it was 1am.
00:43Time erodes all things, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is the one constant.
00:47I honestly couldn't tell you if the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 remake handles exactly
00:51as it used to, but I can tell you that it handles exactly as I remember it did.
00:55I don't have a Playstation, Dreamcast or N64 to hand, but if I had made a retro library
01:00my priority for the pandemic, I wouldn't be surprised to find the conversion was close.
01:04Truth be told, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2 remake looks and feels exactly as I remember
01:09it did too.
01:10There's something so strangely satisfying about stumbling upon all these special spots
01:14from 20 years ago.
01:15It's as if they've been preserved in a small, cordoned off area of my brain for later
01:19use.
01:20A dopamine hit released every time I hit one of those lines or gaps that is enshrined in
01:24blue on the combo chain.
01:25The warehouse demo is missing the glowing S-K-A-T-E letters and the secret VHS tape,
01:30but I already know where they'll be in the final game from instinct alone.
01:35And in their absence, I'm still having a bloody great time smashing past the 6 score
01:39boundary and hitting a 5-0 on the big rail.
01:41Some things never change.
01:43That's because there's something to the speed and momentum here in Tony Hawk's Pro
01:46Skater 1 & 2 remake.
01:48It invites competition and escalation in a way few other games have been able to achieve.
01:52The hang time is as satisfying as ever too, lingering long enough to tempt you into inserting
01:57a faceplant through your combo.
01:59The magnetic snap to rails and the drag of grip take across concrete, your weight shifting
02:03in tandem with that of the balance meter.
02:05Listen, I don't know how much you can ultimately divine from one demo, but if this is truly
02:09representative of the wider experience, then this will be the Tony Hawk's game we've
02:13been waiting a long time for.
02:15And that's the tricky thing with nostalgia, because we have been waiting not for something
02:19new necessarily, but for something old.
02:21It's put the developer Vicarious Visions in the unenviable position of needing to recreate
02:26a feeling, rather than the experience itself.
02:29And it has to do this while it works to both erase Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 from living memory,
02:34and establish a platform for the series to make an endearing return.
02:37Thankfully, the studio charted this path once before, as it revived Crash Bandicoot alongside
02:42Toys for Bob in 2017.
02:44The N. Sane trilogy is a success story few could have predicted, although it has established
02:48a precedent for retro revivals within Activision.
02:51After an evening with the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 remake warehouse demo, I can't wait
02:56to drop into school too.
02:57I can't wait to hit Downtown, and Venice Beach, and Hangar.
03:00Vicarious Visions has made me want to play more Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, and that's
03:04something I never thought I'd find myself saying again.
03:06There's enough in here that makes me wonder whether Vicarious Visions is actually capable
03:10of picking up where Neversoft left off in its Pro Skater years, had it avoided an American
03:15wasteland of its own design.
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