When I was a senior in high school, there was this kid, TJ. He always wore cool shirts – Weezer, Pearl Jam, Counting Crows. So one day I went up to him and said, "let's start a band." We barely knew each other at that point, but we decided we would start a band. We traded mixtapes back and forth to come up with a sound. I introduced him to the Pixies, The Lemonheads, and The Dandy Warhols. He turned me on to The Rentals and Sunny Day Real Estate. We recruited two other buddies, made a demo tape, played a few shows, and eventually burned out as college hit.
A year or more went by, and I was in need of a roommate. Me and TJ ran into each other, and he agreed to move in. His mom bought us a bunch of groceries. And he hooked up his Dreamcast. I had taken a bit of a break from gaming during this time. But now, here we were. We were like nineteen, and living in a crappy apartment. We went to school in the day, then work at night, then came back home and hung out. Sometimes other friends came over. We'd sit in TJ's room, playing Dreamcast games, smoking cigarettes and drinking cheap alcohol. We'd talk about movies and girls and we'd listen to a lot of music. He introduced me to Death Cab For Cutie, and Pedro The Lion and various punk and emo stuff I was missing, and I brought my indie collection like Pavement, Modest Mouse and Built To Spill. It was like high school 2.0. Of all the Dreamcast games we played, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is the one I have the most memories of. We actually played the first game, too. And other games, that I'm forgetting. But so many nights were just me and TJ (and probably our friend, Brian) doing two-minute runs of THPS2. I basically consider that game to be the reason I got back into gaming in college. And everything about it screams nostalgia for me. Today I'm playing the very glorious new version of it on my Xbox Series X. It's honestly a dream-come-true port for me. I almost can't believe it exists. But it does. The visuals are unreal, and the controls are spot on, and most of the music is here. But there's also plenty of quality of life improvements, and cool tweaks to be appreciated. Most importantly, diving back into THPS2 is like riding a bike (or skateboard). It all comes crashing back so easily. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is an absolutely perfect game for me. And even within a series that I've adored since release, it's rather impossible to top this entry. From the opening moments of being dropped into The Hangar – effectively a rehash of the original game's opening level, and a small environment meant to work as a tutorial level – you know that something special is happening here. Maybe it's the introduction of the manual, but everything just feels slightly tighter, and slightly more possible. Following that, we get School II – an obvious sequel level from the first game. But this time it's got a crazy dude in a golf cart that will send you rag-dolling just as hard if you happened to get hit by a taxi in the NYC level later on. Then you've got a competition level, bringing things back to the level layout of the first game before getting dropped into NYC and everything just opens up. NY City feels like the first truly sprawling level in the game. There's taxis and a park and stores and various levels of verticality. Everything feels big and spread out, and there's a lot to discover. The thing that makes it brilliant is that it starts as this little microcosm – there's streets, stores and restaurants below a park – and then things open up. Once you collect the subway tickets, you get access to the train (which is actually elevated). From there, you access this whole other area. It's deceiving and awesome. It's here – about a third way into the game – that you start to realize the scope of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. NY City and Venice are both insanely detailed and full of little secrets that really capture the potential of the game, and point to the future of where the series will go (for better or worse). And not for nothing, but this game eventually goes from contiguous United States to Hawaii before stopping in South America and then eventually outer space. When I say the scope is rather large, I'm not kidding. It's also impossible to talk about this game without a nod to the incredible soundtrack. "Guerilla Radio" by Rage Against The Machine and "When Worlds Collide" by Powerman 5000 were hits at the time, and "Bring The Noise" by Public Enemy and Anthrax was a hit in 1991. I love both of these songs, for sure. But for me, it was all the random tracks by bands I'd probably ignore otherwise that really stuck out, and still stick out to this day. Lagwagon's "May 16" is the perfect example here, much like Goldfinger's "Superman" was for me in the first game. To this day, I can't hear either song without feeling a tinge of nostalgia for playing these game on Dreamcast back in the day. Of course today (early 2023) I'm actually playing the new HD version on Xbox Series X. And of course music licensing is tricky, so a few songs are missing and a whole bunch of new songs are present now. I would have been perfectly happy with just the original soundtrack, but it is what it is. The new songs can feel slightly out of place, but they don't really take away from the experience given the modernized visuals. I mean, while the game feels like the original game, I know that there's a new level of gloss here that was missing back then, plus the added inclusion of ramp transitions which were originally introduced in Pro Skater 3. But the HD re-release does look incredible. And it plays rather flawlessly. I've loved this series so much that I was one of those chumps who picked up Pro Skater 5 against my own better judgment. So I'm pleased as punch to see 1 + 2 remastered for modern audiences. I can only hold out hope that this means that 3 + 4 are next. Or that we'd see an honest to goodness Pro Skater 6 that we can all be happy with.
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