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The Verge
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Verge
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. 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.' 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. 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.
Digital Trends
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 gives me hope for the series' future
Table of Contents Table of Contents True to the past Keeping up with the present Looking to the future For aging millennials like myself, this coming July 11 is just as important a holiday as Independence Day. That's when developer Iron Galaxy will release Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4. The remake package will bring two skating classics back into the mainstream, faithfully recreating the series' critically acclaimed third installment and radically reimagining its fourth. It'll even come with full cross-platform support, including Nintendo Switch 2, and allow users to share their create-a-parks across any platform. It's bound to bring up a lot of nostalgia for thirty-somethings who still know every word to CKY's 96 Quite Bitter Beings. But the remake package isn't just about looking back at the past; they're just as much about the skate culture's present and future. At a preview event, I went hands on with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4. While collecting secret tapes and skating around Alcatraz brought me back to my parent's living room, I still felt like I was playing something that belongs in 2025. Whether it was the great modern music cuts or one of the package's excellent new parks, it never felt like Iron Galaxy was simply coasting on millennial nostalgia. Instead, this very much feels like an audition for a brand new Tony Hawk game, one that's in-tune with what skateboarding is today rather than what it was in the 2000s. It represents the past, present, and future of skate culture in one package. Recommended Videos True to the past Picking up right where 2020's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 left off (minus its original developer), the new package unifies the series' third and fourth installments into one consistent package. That's a bit complicated to properly pull off, as the originals are very different games. While Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 followed its predecessors' lead, the fourth was an entirely different creative swing that introduced more story and open-ended exploration. Iron Galaxy rebuilt the latter to structurally match the former, with two-minute runs full of challenges to complete. In an interview, Design Manager Mike Rossi tells me that the decision simply came down to trying to create a unified collection that takes what's great from 4 and melds it into 3. There's a balancing act here between staying faithful to these games while reinventing them, and that spectrum is represented at a few levels. I see the first side of it right away when I dive into Foundry, one of THPS3's most iconic levels. The new version is almost exactly how I remember it, tossing me into a rectangular room full of catwalks to grind on and molten fire traps to avoid. The only difference? It gets one heck of a makeover. Foundry is a perfect showpiece for the technological overhaul here, as flames spew out of pipes as I grind past them and I can see light reflections in the metal surfaces. It's much more spectacular than anything I've seen in the series before, but it still feels entirely in the spirit of the original level with no ramp or collectible out of place. Other levels from 3 similarly benefit from the glow up. Suburbia feels like more of a real town, with a greater density of detail and interactables like a skitchable ice cream truck that rounds the cul-de-sac. Rio is the same graffiti-filled park where I need to compete in heats, but it's bathed in warmer light that better fits the South American setting. Canada initially feels like an entirely new level, but I mostly chalk that up to whiter snow and more detailed trees that bring a formerly sparse park to life. Every time I felt like the levels were entirely redesigned, I'd look up the originals and realize that Iron Galaxy was sticking much closer to the script that I thought. That's a testament to its ability to make something old feel modern. It's also immediately apparent that Iron Galaxy didn't try to fix what wasn't broken when it comes to controls. I was able to start skating on pure instinct as soon as I picked up the controller, pulling off manuals and kickflips from muscle memory. It feels remarkably smooth and perhaps even speedier than ever thanks to quicker recovery times after falling (which I did quite a bit). I can tell that the movement matters a lot to the development team when speaking to Mike Rossi, who credits the original games' movement as being part of its timeless appeal. 'A big thing is how the character actually feels and plays,' Rossi tells Digital Trends. 'To me, games that always are touted as timeless, they have really solid, tight controls when you're playing. Mario 64 is a great example of that. You can pick that up and it still feels awesome. I think that's the same with Tony Hawk. With that, paired with the levels and how they were designed, those kind of go together. Your base foundation of how your character feels and how the world interacts with that were very well done, so as a result it becomes timeless in a sense.' I got a feel for that the deeper I got into my demo, as I found more ways to fluidly chain together my combos. Iron Galaxy has created more opportunities for that with subtle tweaks. Wall planting is a great way to extend my score when I'm about to crash, as is skitching on the back of a car, a THPS4 feature that's been added to 3. Old levels like Suburbia give players opportunities to incorporate the latter and also feature some subtle environment tweaks to give players more rails to hop to from a skitch. Those changes are tastefully implemented, keeping the feel and spirit of THPS3 intact. Keeping up with the present Though it's very faithful in a lot of respects, there's a lot about the package that feels totally new too. THPS4 may as well be a new game, imagining what would have happened if the original developers never experimented with the original trilogy's beloved structure. The skateparks I played (College, San Francisco, and Alcatraz) all felt just right in that two-minute arcade structure, even though they were designed for more of a free skate experience with NPCs that handed out missions. I collected lost packages, photobombed tourists, and skitched off the back of a professor's stolen car all within the time limit. For those who want an experience that's a little closer to the original game, the package does let players adjust the timer in levels. It can be set for up to an hour, which should help dial the pace back to the original game's. It is an odd change though, as we're not exactly getting a proper THPS4 remake here. It feels more like a level pack for THPS3. It almost makes me wonder if this entire remake series would have made more sense as one live service offering that added new parks from the series' past, skaters, and gear over time. While that change might ruffle some purists' feathers, other new additions feel incredibly natural. The soundtrack is, predictably, a highlight here, as all of the newly included songs pair perfectly with the original list. Tracks like Wavves' King of the Beach and Fontaines D.C.'s Boys in the Better Land keep the vibe feeling up to date with what today's skaters, and those who came up between the originals and their remake, are listening to. It's when I find my head bobbing along to Run the Jewels that I really see beyond my personal nostalgia and see THPS 3 + 4 as something that's trying to bridge the gap between generations of skate culture. That was especially important to Tony Hawk himself. Rossi tells me that the Hawk Man was extremely involved in the development process, personally testing builds on a monthly basis. He had significant input that went beyond adding new songs to the playlist. Rossi tells me that Hawk's job was to make sure the whole thing didn't feel outdated. 'A big thing for him is to make sure the trick names are accurate and the tricks are representative,' Rossi says. 'It's important for him that it's properly representative of how the current culture is referring to things. So, if a trick name has changed, or how they're referring to a trick in the current vocabulary of skate culture … or we have icons in the menus representing certain tricks. He'd be like 'This icon looks more like this other trick.' And then he'd send some reference images of what that trick looks more like and he'd be like 'I think this pose captures it better.' He's clearly very passionate about it!' My experience with skate culture is that it feels like it's much more inclusive and open to everybody. Making sure that modern skate culture wasn't left out was equally important to Iron Galaxy. Rossi and I speak at length about the differences between the 2000s skating scene and now. He points to how inclusive and community-driven skating is, something that naturally found itself reflected in the remake's larger roster of skaters (including eight new ones) and genre-spanning music. Rather than trying to recreate someone's idea of the 'good old days,' Iron Galaxy held a mirror out its window and created a skating game that reflected what it sees today. 'For me personally, skating feels like another place where people can go and have a community,' Rossi says. 'My experience with skate culture is that it feels like it's much more inclusive and open to everybody. It originally was much more punk and rougher, whereas I feel like now it still has that tough exterior, but at the same time you'll still get a lot of support. I always feel very awkward when I'm at a skatepark. I can't do very much, so I'm always working on my basics. But I can still have a chat with someone who's doing way cooler stuff, and I don't feel judged or dismissed.' Looking to the future The best moments of my demo weren't spent reliving classic levels but rather skating in an entirely new one. THPS 3 + 4 peppers in brand new skate parks into a Tony Hawk game for the first time in over a decade. This was Iron Galaxy's chance to prove that the series isn't entirely tied to the past – and it nails that assignment. I spent a considerable amount of time exploring Waterpark, a brand-new level that drops me into a run-down amusement park. It's full of giant slides I can grind down, a goofy pirate ship attraction, and cutouts of a beaver mascot that I need to smash through. Missions have me grinding on pipes to break valves and looking for a way to get into a shuttered arcade. It's an excellent playground with more secrets and pathways than I can find in two short minutes. What's remarkable about it is how much it feels like an authentic Tony Hawk level rather than a cheap imitation. It's not just that it's filled with tapes and 'SKATE' letters to collect, but that it's so sharply designed. I begin each run atop a row of slides that I can hop between to extend my grind. Iron Galaxy seemingly knew exactly how I'd try to hop off of that structure, too. On one run, I jump off to my left, landing on another rail that deposits me perfectly down to one on the ground below. It almost feels like a good Sonic the Hedgehog level, giving me plenty of ways to carve a path around the park in an uninterrupted trick string if I'm skilled enough. It has the same exact spirit of the old parks and that's by design. 'One of the directives I gave the level design team was that this needs to feel like this was left on the cutting room floor,' Rossi says. 'Like we found the collision and markup on a hard drive from 4 and revitalized it. With Waterpark and any of the new stuff we added, we wanted to make sure it felt like something that was always there. One of our engineers came up to me one day and said 'I've been playing a lot of Waterpark, it's really fun! I looked online to figure out how to complete a goal and I couldn't find anything. And I was like dude, you have just made my day!' Sure, there's still room for remakes if Activision decides to reheat Underground, American Wasteland, or the dreaded THPS5. But Waterpark leaves me eager for an entirely new mainline Tony Hawk game, because Iron Galaxy understands both the series and today's skate culture at large. I'd take another dozen levels like Waterpark, an even wider range of modern skaters, and a soundtrack that finally puts Pup in a Tony Hawk game. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 feels like one more temperature check to see if the world is really ready for a new installment. I certainly am based on what I've played here, and I hope this new generation of skaters gets an original game to call their own soon. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 launches on July 11 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC.
