00:00I didn't think that the warehouse level in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater would be able to capture my
00:17undivided attention. Not again. Not now that I'm a 30-year-old equipped with bad knees,
00:22a million miles away from the wannabe Rodney Mullen that spent many a night eating sh**
00:27on these same spots two decades ago. I expected to dip in, have a little fun, eventually get annoyed
00:32with the cadence of John Feldman's voice and dip out. So believe me when I tell you that I don't
00:37know what happened. I sat down with a demo after work and the next thing I knew it was 1am. Time
00:42erodes all things, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is the one constant. I honestly couldn't tell you if the
00:48Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 remake handles exactly as it used to, but I can tell you that it handles
00:53exactly as I remember it did. I don't have a Playstation, Dreamcast or N64 to hand, but if
00:58I had made a retro library my priority for the pandemic, I wouldn't be surprised to find the
01:03conversion was close. Truth be told, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 remake looks and feels exactly
01:08as I remember it did too. There's something so strangely satisfying about stumbling upon all
01:13these special spots from 20 years ago. It's as if they've been preserved in a small cordoned off area
01:18of my brain for later use. A dopamine hit released every time I hit one of those lines or gaps that
01:23is enshrined in blue on the combo chain. The warehouse demo is missing the glowing SKATE letters
01:29and the secret VHS tape, but I already know where they'll be in the final game from Instinct alone.
01:34And in their absence, I'm still having a bloody great time smashing past the sick score boundary
01:39and hitting a 5-0 on the big rail. Some things never change. That's because there's something to the
01:44speed and momentum here in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 remake. It invites competition and escalation
01:50in a way few other games have been able to achieve. The hangtime is as satisfying as ever too,
01:55lingering long enough to tempt you into inserting a faceplant through your combo. The magnetic snap
01:59to rails and the drag of grip-take across concrete, your weight shifting in tandem with that of the
02:04balance meter. Listen, I don't know how much you can ultimately divine from one demo, but if this is
02:09truly representative of the wider experience, then this will be the Tony Hawk's game we've been waiting
02:13a long time for. And that's the tricky thing with nostalgia, because we have been waiting not
02:18for something new necessarily, but for something old. It's put the developer Vicarious Visions in
02:23the unenviable position of needing to recreate a feeling, rather than the experience itself.
02:28And it has to do this while it works to both erase Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5 from living memory,
02:33and establish a platform for the series to make an endearing return. Thankfully, the studio charted this
02:38path once before, as it revived Crash Bandicoot alongside Toys for Bob in 2017. The N-Sane Trilogy
02:45is a success story few could have predicted, although it has established a precedent for retro revivals
02:50within Activision. After an evening with the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 and 2 Remake Warehouse demo,
02:55I can't wait to drop into School 2. I 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 something I never
03:05thought I'd find myself saying again. There's enough in here that makes me wonder whether
03:08Vicarious Visions is actually capable of picking up where Neversoft left off, in its pro skater years,
03:13had it avoided an American wasteland of its own design.
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