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News.com.au
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Tony Hawk reveals what he really thinks about his own game
When the first Tony Hawk Pro Skater video game hit the shelves in 1999, skateboarding was starting to flourish after being considered a niche, unpopular hobby for years. However, the video game (released on all the major consoles of the time including Nintendo 64, Dreamcast and Nokia N-Gage phones) changed the way broader society engaged with skateboarding. Now, on the cusp of releasing a remake of two of the games, Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater 3 + 4, Hawk has sat down exclusively with to talk about video games, skating, and what he's up to these days. '[The video games] changed my life, certainly my recognition factor,' he said. 'My name is now synonymous with a game. When some people say Tony Hawk, they don't mean me as a person at all. 'I would say that happens more often than not now. It also changed the landscape of skating. It changed the popularity of skating. 'It got a whole new generation into the sport. And then, eventually, it actually changed how people skate because people that were first starting out were playing the game thinking all these combinations were based in real life, when we were putting them in because they were fantastical. 'Now, when you see the skaters of this generation who are competing in the Olympics and the X Games, they're doing these tricks that were only possible in video games 20 years ago.' The game itself was made by video game studio Neversoft, fresh off its successful third-person shooter game Apocalypse. One little known fact about the development of the original Tony Hawk Pro Skater is that it's built on the same engine as Apocalypse, and so the first prototype of the game Hawk was shown featured the likeness of Bruce Willis as the player character. It came about after several other game publishers had released skateboarding games with varying success. Sadly, Bruce Willis was never included in the finished game. According to legendary skateboarder Rodney Mullen (dubbed 'the Godfather of freestyle skating', and inventor of many of skateboarding's most iconic tricks), the success of the game and subsequent growth of skateboarding is down to who Hawk is as a person. 'Tony is the perfect ambassadorm' Mullen beamed. 'He is that gifted, he is that core [of skating]. And he's able to navigate the outside world in a way a lot of us couldn't if we tried, I certainly couldn't.' However, it turns out that real life skating skills don't translate to the digital world. When asked if he was any good at the game, Mullen said 'I'm terrible, I don't even play it. It's easier to skate.' The same goes for musician Lupe Fiasco, whose iconic skateboarding song Kick, Push is featured in the new release, and who performed at the recent THPS Festival launch party in Los Angeles. While he enjoys playing the game, when asked if he was any good at it he said 'No. I absolutely am not.' However, Bam Margera, a professional skateboarder best known for starring in the MTV reality shows Jackass and Viva La Bam, is an avid gamer, who loves the game to the same extremes he pursues everything he's passionate about. 'I was so addicted to this game that I was missing flights over it and I had to put it away,' he said. 'I missed seven flights in a row because of it. So, that just shows how addictive this game is. It's very versatile. 'You can play it forever. And everyone, young and old, has played this game. That's why it's so rad that they're making a new one with all kinds of new features in it.' One thing that was very notable in our interview was just how down to earth and normal Tony Hawk is. It would be easy to get a massive ego when you've reached that level of fame and skill, and yet he was laid back and completely without the attitude that sometimes comes with fame at a young age. He is still the most recognisable skateboarder of all time, and likely the only skateboarder most people could name, yet his hilarious interactions with people who half recognise him, but not really have gone viral to the point of becoming a meme. Despite this trend first going viral in 2018, Hawk says it still happens a lot, but with a twist. 'Nowadays, I still get a lot of the same interactions of mistaken identity,' he revealed. 'In fact, just in New York last week at a coffee shop, 'Hey, did anyone tell you you look like Tony Hawk?' 'But the funny part about it now is sometimes I can't tell if they're joking or not because now it's become a sort of meme of its own and so when people say it, I'm taken aback. 'Like, wait, are we doing the joke or do you really? But this guy was not doing the joke. 'That's the thing about it that drives my daughter crazy, because I don't say I am unless they ask, because I feel like it's pretentious to be like, well, actually, that's me.' Skateboarding is having somewhat of a renaissance at the moment, with more and more kids (and millennials) taking up skateboarding. Part of this is because everything that was cool in the early 2000s is now back in style. But according to Hawk, there's more to it than that. 'It's because it's easily accessible and also skateboarding is prolific now,' he explained. 'There are skate parks in most cities. It's part of people's consciousness. 'So, almost any kid that is of an impressionable age is probably being exposed to skateboarding somewhere, somehow, and is probably interested in trying it.' The early games were occasionally criticised for not including many female skaters as playable characters, something Hawk is trying to remedy now. 'I always wanted the game to represent real life skateboarding. So at the time of the first game, yes, there was a great imbalance of gender and race,' he said. 'I thought it was important to include everyone, but that was kind of a representation of the ratios at the time. 'I'm just thankful that now, I mean, skateboarding is the most inclusive sport. 'If you go to a skate park right now there's people of all ages, all races, all genders, all skill levels, all backgrounds, and they all are enjoying it equally and encouraging each other. 'There's just no other activity or sport like that. It's beautiful.' The inclusion in the Olympics has likely drawn more awareness of the sport amongst younger generations, but Hawk is adamant that the Olympics needed skateboarding more than skateboarding needed them. 'I thought that the Olympics needed our cool factor more than we needed their validation,' he said. 'I stand by that. The fact that it's now in has been great for international recognition of skateboarding and international growth and having skateboarding in more unlikely places. So that's cool. But yeah.' As for what Hawk is up to these days. It's a pretty varied list. He recently became a grandfather after his son Riley Hawk and his wife Frances Bean Cobain, daughter of iconic Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Hole singer Courtney Love, welcomed their son Ronin in September 2024. 'I'm a grandpa, so I'm doing a lot of that,' he said. 'In fact, I was doing that this morning before I left for this. Still skating as much as I can, but advocating for skate parks through our foundation and surprisingly doing a lot of speaking engagements.' Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 + 4 is in stores 11 July 2025. Alice Clarke is a freelancer writer who travelled to Los Angeles as a guest of Activision.
Business Mayor
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
The enduring cool of skateboarding games
More than 25 years after the first Tony Hawk's Pro Skater put skateboarding games on the map, developers are still finding new ways to explore skating in video games, especially in 2025. Skateboarding fans are about to have some promising new games to play, with Activision's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 remake releasing in July and EA is set to launch its online-only, free-to-play Skate revival this year. In 2022, my colleague Andrew Webster wrote that we're in a golden age for skateboarding games, and things haven't really slowed down. So what is it that makes skateboarding so good for video games, and allows so many different expressions of the sport from different studios? 'I think skateboarding is one of those things that's just always cool,' THPS 3 + 4 game director Kurt Tillmanns tells The Verge . 'It's an evergreen fantasy, in both real life and games. Being a skateboarder is a sign of what and who is cool.' He says 'there's a reason that we're all in awe of what these people can do.' Part of what makes skateboarding cool is the music, fashion, and art, and video games let people experience that skateboarding culture, too, Tillmanns says. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4. Image: Activision Also, 'it's safer,' jokes Andrew Schimmel, a senior producer at Snowman, the creators of the Skate City series. He says there's a lot of people that would probably love to try skateboarding but don't want to risk breaking a bone. 'Being able to dive into a fantasy world where you can act that out and see the gnarly consequences and not have to suffer from them is like immediately appealing.' Read More Riot doubles down on music for Valorant Champions Tour 2023 It helps that games take so many different approaches to skateboarding. 'The skate community is so diverse, so it makes sense that there's an appetite for all different types of games — some more realistic, some more arcade, some more casual,' says Skate executive producer Mike McCartney. For the new Skate , 'it's all about re-creating a skateboarding experience that reflects the freedom of exploration, discovery, and expression you see in skate culture. We really wanted to respect the roots of the franchise, while bringing the game forward.' Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games will always have what's in the title: 'They've got Tony Hawk, and they've got pro skaters,' Tillmanns says. That includes things like their styles and their personalities — even the special tricks for the skaters are a representation of their style in real life. Tony Hawk is very involved, too, even with the 3 + 4 remakes. Hawk 'is where the culture comes from' and he has a 'real eye for detail' about what goes in the games. 'He knows that this game is the lexicon for skaters for the next few years,' according to Tillmanns. The THPS series also strikes a nice mix of an arcade-y experience and a skateboarding simulation. It has generally realistic physics and locations, but also lets you pull off outlandish tricks, strive for video game-y goals (S-K-A-T-E, anyone?), and play as some not-real characters in wacky places. For the Skate City games, the Snowman team had to think a lot about how to make skateboarding work on mobile. The first launched as an Apple Arcade exclusive, and Skate City: New York is currently an exclusive there, too, so the Snowman team had to figure out a mobile control scheme that 'feels novel and fits the sport' that's also approachable enough to serve a wide audience, Schimmel says. Your two thumbs represent your front and back foot, and you flick your thumbs to emulate flick tricks with skateboarding. Read More vWii Homebrew Channel with Gamepad Support - Skate City: New York. Image: Snowman Developers I spoke with think there's still a lot of ways skateboarding games can grow, too. 'Skateboarding never stops evolving and neither will our game,' Skate 's head of creative, Jeff Seamster, says. 'The creativity of skaters consistently blows my mind. The spots they find, the tricks they're (still) inventing, the vibrant style… we couldn't have imagined today's scene from where we were standing 15, 10, or even five years ago. So, who knows what we'll see tomorrow?' 'Multiplayer and online can always be the next frontier,' Tillmanns says. THPS 3+4 will have crossplay, and the team is excited about 'increasing that pool of online players to something that we've never seen before in a Tony Hawk game.' Schimmel points to games like OlliOlli World (a cartoony, side-scrolling skateboarding adventure) and Skate Story (a psychedelic-looking skateboarding game set to launch this year) that are highlighting skateboarding in different ways. 'In terms of what hasn't been done, I think there's probably lots to explore,' he says.
San Francisco Chronicle
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- San Francisco Chronicle
Tony Hawk skates in U.N. Plaza, says S.F. will be featured in his next video game
Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk recently took a spin of San Francisco's newly refurbished U.N. Skate Plaza and left inspired. 'If you build it, we will come… do vert tricks (and sloppy kickflips) on banks & curbs,' Hawk posted on Instagram, along with footage of himself performing tricks such as a rock ' n' roll and boardslide through the space. An off-camera voice can be heard cheering Hawk on with remarks such as 'Yeah, dude' as he and fellow professional skateboarder Kevin Staab take turns shredding up the course. The clip, shared on Tuesday, April 29, was set to the song 'Dean's Dream' by the rock band the Dead Milkmen. 'Fun fact: SF — and this song — will be in the new @tonyhawkthegame,' Hawk added. The influential skater's new video game, 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4,' will drop on July 11, marking the latest installment in his highly regarded 'Pro Skater' series from the early 2000s. A revamped version of the two games, originally released in 2001 and 2002, it follows the full remaster of 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2,' which came out in 2020. 'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4' is expected to feature various AEG-managed and owned venues such as Los Angeles' El Rey Theater, which is hosting Tony Hawk Pro Skater Fest on May 8. The event, which fans can tune into via livestream, will celebrate the game's launch and is expected to feature performances from artists on its soundtrack such as rappers Danny Brown and Lupe Fiasco as well as rock band Adolescents. Full details about the San Francisco level in the video game, which Hawk hinted at in his recent post, have yet to be disclosed. But he seemed to be doing his due diligence researching the city. He even made a stop at Flour + Water Pizzeria 's first-ever standalone pizzeria at Mission Rock, and posted a Boomerang of his pepperoni pizza to Instagram on Tuesday.
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
From half-pipes to high finance: What investors can learn from Tony Hawk's unexpected success and smart investments
When you think of Tony Hawk, chances are you picture him pulling off a 900 or flying high in a skatepark. And while Hawk managed to conquer the skateboarding world thanks to his legendary skills, he managed to hone some pretty serious financial tricks too. In a YouTube video, the old-school skater chats with hosts of Nine Club Clips to reveal what he learned about finance and the power of money as he built his brand and his business. I'm 49 years old and have nothing saved for retirement — what should I do? Don't panic. Here are 5 of the easiest ways you can catch up (and fast) Home prices in America could fly through the roof in 2025 — here's the big reason why and how to take full advantage (with as little as $10) Americans with upside-down car loans owe more money than ever before — and drivers can't keep up. Here are 3 ways to cut your monthly costs ASAP Here are three key lessons investors of all types can learn from Hawk's journey. Tony Hawk has invested in multiple business ventures, including his skateboard company Birdhouse and various clothing and video game projects. And while Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video game series was a massive hit, even Hawk himself didn't anticipate just how successful it would become. After the release of the fourth game in the series, he was shocked to learn that the first three games were still in the top 10 sales. The result? A surprise $4 million royalty cheque that changed his life. This is why it's so important to be ready to seize opportunities. Sometimes, a single investment or venture can unexpectedly take off and change your life overnight. But this only happens if you're in the right place at the right time, with the right mindset, to take advantage of the opportunity. For investors, this highlights the importance of staying connected to your passions. By backing businesses that align with his personal interests, Hawk has been able to stay engaged and motivated — and ready to seize opportunities when they come. Read more: Jamie Dimon issues a warning about the US stock market — says prices are 'kind of inflated.' Crashproof your portfolio with these 3 rock-solid strategies Now that you've made your fortune, how will you make use of it? Hawk didn't just sit on his newfound wealth. He used a significant portion of his earnings to give back through his Tony Hawk Foundation, which builds skateparks in underprivileged areas. Philanthropy can be a powerful way to share your success, and it also builds a lasting legacy. Whether donating a portion of your earnings to charity, investing in sustainable businesses, or supporting local initiatives, giving back can create a ripple effect beyond financial returns. Beyond personal fulfillment, charitable giving can have tax advantages and can be an integral part of estate planning for those thinking long-term. Despite his wealth and fame, Tony Hawk is known for staying grounded. He doesn't flaunt his success, preferring to focus on meaningful projects and personal fulfillment rather than flashy displays of wealth. Hawk's humility is a reminder that staying grounded is key to long-term success. When things are going well, it can be easy to get caught up in chasing profits and showing off. However, staying humble, avoiding risky or showy investments, and keeping your focus on long-term goals can help you sustain your financial success. True wealth isn't just about money — it's about how you use it and how it aligns with your values. Whether it's being prepared for unexpected success, giving back to the community, staying humble, or diversifying your investments, Hawk's approach is one we can all learn from. His story proves that the principles of success — whether in skateboarding, business, or investing — often overlap. So, as you roll toward your own financial goals, remember to take a few tips from the 'Birdman' himself. One dozen eggs in America now costs a record high of $4.95 — here are 3 simple ways to inflation-proof your retirement portfolio Rich, young Americans are ditching the stormy stock market — here are the alternative assets they're banking on instead Protect your retirement savings with these 5 essential money moves — most of which you can complete in just minutes This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
New Call Of Duty Map Is Teasing The Next Tony Hawk Game
Another day, another piece of evidence that seems to indicate we are getting a new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game in the near future. This time it's a teaser found in a new Call of Duty Black Ops 6 map. On February 20, Call of Duty Warzone and Black Ops 6 received a big new mid-season update. The patch added a ton of content, including some really expensive TMNT skins, new weapons, and—most importantly for THPS fans out there—Grind, a skateboard park map. And it's in here that we got out latest piece of evidence that a new Tony Hawk video game is soon to be announced. As spotted by Charlie Intel on Twitter, in the new Grind map, you can find a skate shop area and in there you can spot a small poster that clearly includes the OG Tony Hawk's Pro Skater logo as well as a date: March 4, 2025. In response to the teaser, Tony Hawk himself simply replied with eyeball emojis, seemingly confirming that, yeah, this is for sure a teaser for a new game. (Xbox on Twitter also replied with the same emoji.) Why did this appear in a Call of Duty game? Well, remember that before Activision was a Call of Duty machine, it published all the past Tony Hawk games. So this seems to be a bit of corporate synergy. How fun! This is just the latest (and most concrete) evidence of a new Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game. Earlier this week a skateboarder who appeared in the last game, 2020's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2, claimed he's appearing in a new Tony Hawk 'remaster.' And in 2024, Tony Hawk himself claimed the series had a future and that he was working with Activision again. And on top of all that, on Wednesday, it was reported that Microsoft (which owns Activision) was planning to announce and release a new Tony Hawk game in June as part of a yet-to-be-announced summer event. The game is reportedly Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4, a project that was pitched years ago but which Activision passed on. The game is claimed to be called 'Project Chicago' internally and is set to shadow drop during the Xbox event this Summer. We'll have to wait and see if that report is accurate and just what that Call of Duty map is teasing, but it does seem like something is coming pretty soon and as a massive Tony Hawk's Pro Skater fan, I'm excited. . For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
