Tony Hawk as soon as modded his good friend’s PlayStation 1 so as to get suggestions on early builds of the unique Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater. That is in accordance to the Birdman himself, who instructed the story throughout a panel at iicon (a brand new convention for online game business professionals) in regards to the lasting legacy of the THPS sequence.
Again in 1998, Hawk was working with Neversoft on early variations of the soon-to-be legendary skateboarding recreation, which on the time was borne out of a modified model of the failed Bruce Willis-branded recreation Apocalypse.
“Each week they’d burn a CD for me, and I performed it on my modified PlayStation 1,” Hawk mentioned. “I might make feedback, after which the following week I get a disc within the mail with all of the updates.”
“I used to be actually enthusiastic about it, however I used to be additionally form of remoted in my pleasure as a result of I used to be the one actual skater engaged on it, and so – I hope I don’t get in bother for this, 20 plus years later – however I began making copies of the burns and sending them to skaters that I knew had been hardcore avid gamers.”
Hawk mentioned at one level he modified his good friend Atiba’s PS1 – presumably referring to skater and photographer Atiba Jefferson, who later appeared in THPS 4 – to find a way to play the burned recreation discs so as to give him suggestions.
“He actually did have invaluable suggestions, and he began letting folks come over to play the sport. I imply, we had been going rogue,” Hawk mentioned.
However at one level, Hawk began listening to rumors throughout the hardcore skate neighborhood, with feedback like “have you ever guys performed ‘the sport?’” beginning to flow into.
“That is once I knew we did one thing proper, and that the skate boarders had been going to take pleasure in this,” Hawk mentioned. “And to me, that was the mark of success. I had no concept that it will ever transcend simply the skateboard world, however the truth that they only referred to it as ‘the sport’ gave me a way of pleasure.”
Elsewhere within the panel, Hawk commented that, in the event that they get to make one other one, Tony Hawk’s Underground is the following recreation he’d like to see remastered.
“What’s subsequent, that’s all the time the dialog. As a result of we are actually making our manner by the sequence as remasters and remakes, and to be trustworthy, probably the most noise that I hear about remastering the sport, is for Underground, and has been for the previous few years. I don’t know who I’m pitching this to, however that’s the one, if we get to do it.”
Nonetheless, the developerment staff behind the latest THPS 3+4 remaster, Iron Galaxy, faced another round of layoffs earlier this month which follows a major round of layoffs from 2025.
For extra from iicon, take a look at our writeup of Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s feedback in regards to the much-debated value level of GTA 6.
Bo Moore is IGN’s Senior Supervisor of Tech. You will discover him on-line @usebomswisely.