Lately I’ve been replaying the first 2 Tony Hawk games and honestly - two levels from the first one stick out to me.
The Warehouse. First level in the game, starts with a small room - you ride through the glass and immediately start on a steep roll in, before getting to the half pipe with kicker ramps on the side. Quarter pipes all over the place, a large kinked rail, and two kickers with a gap. The secret tape is in a room above the half pipe.
The design and layout really invites you to make lines that flow with the level to get the objectives. The ramps on the edge of the half pipe (if you just hold X your first time through) shows you the enticing secret tape.
The fact the first game had all the objectives be “tapes” really speaks to 90s (and early 2000s) skate culture (the lead creative director got the position because he was a skater. So he knew what brands and pros and stuff to make it feel authentic). Your video part could make or break your career - even if you didn’t do competitions. Companies put out videos to
1) showcase their team but also
2) it was a promotional product, but it’s a promotional product people willingly BOUGHT.
Skate videos exist now but Instagram and YouTube changed the game. You don’t sell it anymore, you put them out online, and you never do a full length (typically they were 60-90 minutes). You upload individual skaters parts. And your company needs to have a steady supply posting them - rather than a video every year or two.
So now you get frequent clips, but sometimes not even set to music.
My other favorite level in the game is Burnside
I love Burnside as a level it’s very fun to play. I also love it because it’s a real skatepark with a cool history that is only like 2 hours away from me. It’s located in Portland Oregon; and there were no indoor parks (Weird for a state that gets so much rain, Washington also has few indoor parks). So in 1990 a group of skaters picked the area under the Burnside Bridge, kicked out the homeless people, cleaned it up (a lot of needles an shit soiled clothes) and started pouring concrete with no permits.
The city basically gave them the go ahead once it started because it honestly cleaned up the area. There’s no staff, and it gets no city funding (but is considered an Oregon landmark now). A group of locals basically have a group that oversees it, and maintains it. A few years ago a high rise was built next to it that blocks sun/moon light from it, and so the high rise paid for the purchase and installation of some lights.
Here’s a picture of it I took about 3 weeks ago while I was there
They really did nail it - the game has a chainlink fence around the park that doesn’t exist, BUT past the fence in the closed off out of bounds area - the Brown brick building to its right is in the right space, the empty lot to the left USED to match, the loading docks behind it also match, and amazingly enough - the port-o-potties ALSO are in the right spot (the game has two, there’s only one really there but probably had two in 1999 if the rest of the accuracy is anything to go off).
The park in the game is really fun to skate and you can do some insane stuff that is NOT gonna happen IRL - because it’s based on a real park, all the ramps, gaps, rails etc are scaled to the player character models rather than the over the top physics engine.
