The Birdman is back for another romp through various cities, two glorious minutes at a time.
What Is It? It’s Tony Hawk! Check my review of the first game in this series for the basic rundown, because pretty much everything about the game carries over here.
Briefly: two levels with two minute timers followed by a competition level with one minute to try to earn gold. Repeat three times and you have Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2.
The biggest gameplay changes are the introduction of the manual and wall rides. Both of these help you extend your combos to chain together some ridiculous moves for massive points. The manuals could not yet be connected when on a pipe in this game, so it keeps the truly insane 100k+ point combos out of reach for most of us mortals, but you will still be able to score way more points than you could in the original.
The levels are a step up from the original. They share some familiar traits along the way, but everything is just a bit better, with just a bit more thought put into them. Take the New York level, for instance, it does not have a halfpipe, bowl, or other appropriate “do a bunch of aerial tricks in a short period of time to hit the score goals” spots. This makes those of us who prefer aerial tricks find other ways to score on this map, which can be frustrating but is ultimately fun being forced to play the level a different way than you do the others. (Yes, for the sticklers, the area down by the art piece is a decent set of two quarter pipes, but the gap you have to skate through between them is small, I inevitably hit it and ruin everything.)
This is simply classic Tony Hawk. Take your runs, chain together big moves for massive points, kickflip TC’s roof gap, and do it all while listening to an amazing soundtrack.
The Best Part: The SICK score challenges. Each non-competition level has three target scores to hit, with SICK being the highest of the three. The scores it requires are perfectly selected so that they are all quite difficult, but achievable, to hit your first time through when your skater stats aren’t maxed out. Philadelphia is the last normal level in the game and I spent 90 minutes trying to hit the 250,000 SICK goal. It was a fun puzzle to solve trying to find the best line to take from the start to get to my preferred spot on the map (the half pipe, obviously!). These scores will push and occasionally frustrate you, but they are incredibly satisfying and worth the grind.
The Worst Part: I could have used a few more tracks on the soundtrack, but that’s the minorest nits to pick. The soundtrack here is legendary, diverting from the original game by hopping genres to include a handful of hip-hop tracks on top of the punk. “No Cigar” by Millencolin was on every mix CD I made for a few years after this game was released. Rage Against the Machine, Powerman 500, Bad Religion, Naughty By Nature, Anthrax/Public Enemy….phew, what a list. Special shout out to the song “Cyclone” by Dub Pistols, I had never heard of this group when I looked up the song but it might be the biggest earworm in this game.
The Verdict: This is THE Tony Hawk game in my book. A true 10/10 experience for me. Much of that is rooted in nostalgia, of course, but I had an absolute blast playing through this 25 years after its release and hitting 100% with my custom character to unlock Spider-Man as a playable character (Spidey is woefully underrated in terms of stats, but has some great custom special tricks FWIW). The controls are perfect, the maps are classic, the soundtrack will be etched into your brain. It may not be a pixel-perfect game, only because no games are, but I can’t find a meaningful flaw playing this decades later.
How to Play: PlayStation 1*, Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Windows, Mac
*console played on for this review
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