Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater rolled into gaming history in 1999 but is getting a full facelift this fall.
It was a pillar of the skateboarding — and sports — gaming world, with revolutionary physics and fully 3D worlds to kick flip through.
There’s something about skateboarding that’s proven attractive for developers over the years, and we’ve seen a lot of games based around the crazy tricks and inner-city lifestyle of skaters.
While Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater received a bunch of sequels, skateboarding games flourished since its original release. Here’s 10 of the best — and most inventive.
10 Skateboard Park Tycoon 2004 Back In The USA
While the skateboarding on offer is subpar compared to the Tony Hawk games, it’s an interesting take on the genre. The game gives players full control over their own skate park, to design ramps and rails and then invite AI skateboarders in to ride it. It’s a trip down memory lane, with dated graphics, a lovely pop rock soundtrack and carved itself out a pretty inventive spot amidst all the Tony Hawk copy cats that popped up in the early 2000s.
9 Shaun White Skateboarding
The fiery-haired snowboarding celebrity took a trip into the Skateboarding world in 2010, with a fun and creative Ubisoft take on the skateboarding genre.
In his game, skateboarding's illegal in a black and white world. The story is undeniably cheesy, and the skateboarding extremely unrealistic.
The controls are simple — flick the sticks for a wacky combination of tricks. But it’s not the best game — and probably worth a pass.
8 Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland
Tony Hawk games have spread out across the gaming world, united by skateboarding but each with a different flair.
American Wasteland is a step up in the series’ gritty direction (more on that later) and offers up a story that’s distinctive and fresh — especially in 2006 when it came out.
You’re a no name kid trying to make it big in L.A., a city here that looks pretty great by 2006 standards. In American Wasteland, the series had firm footing with gamers worldwide, and you can tell. The trick system stays much the same as previous iterations, but the large open world of L.A felt glorious and massive on first play-through.
7 OlliOlli
OlliOlli is a sweet little side scroller, tricky enough to keep you skating for hours but just as satisfying as many 3D skateboarding games.
Unlike other skateboarding games, OlliOlli is all about finesse — land perfectly to score enough points to progress to new levels. It’s no skateboarding simulator, but fun enough to compete with the genre’s best.
A great addition was OlliOlli2: Welcome to Olliwood.
6 Tony Hawk’s Underground
Geez, Tony Hawk kept Activision busy. Underground is the fifth Tony Hawk game to come out, and really captured skateboarding’s culture at the time (with some hefty celebrity appearances).
It was one of the first games to let players step off the skateboard, explore places and do challenges on foot. It brought in customization and a full story mode exploring skateboarding’s counter-culture — as well as typically insane arcade trick combinations. A true classic.
And the early 2000 punk soundtrack never gets old.
5 Skate
Skate was a trailblazer in the same league as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. It’s a simulator based on flick controls, with a controller taking charge of each foot — quite a different feel than tony Hawk’s button mashing mayhem. It was also a huge open world which blew past Tony Hawk’s Proving Grounds (a far less inventive and more derivative game) to take advantage of the PS3 and Xbox 360 hardware. Arguably, Skate set the stage for the more immersive skateboarding simulators gamers can play today.
4 Session
If you want a completely opposite experience to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, try Session. It’s a polished skateboard simulator, only available on PC, which sacrifices a lot of fun for mind-blowing authenticity. A simple kick flip requires incredible finesse, and the learning curve is as steep as a halfpipe.
Unlike Tony Hawk games, and EA’s Skate Series, Session’s playable environment is a pretty realistic version of a small section of Manhattan: no vert ramps or suspiciously skate able shipping containers to be found here.
It’s a nice — and impressive— addition to the genre, but far too difficult for all but the most addicted skaters.
3 Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3
Okay, Okay. so there’s a few Tony Hawk Games on here — and for good reason. They’ve been the engine of the genre, bringing skateboarding onto each new generation of consoles. Pro Skater 3 is no different. A big— perhaps the biggest — addition was the revert, an ability to loop ramp tricks into rail grinding combos. It sounds like a small change, but shifted the way players skated, adding in the ability to shred ramps just as hard as rails.
The game also added a bunch of new content and locations — and has a pretty historic claim to fame: it was the first online title for PS2.
2 Skater XL
Skater XL isn’t even released yet — it’s slated for a July drop— but has generated more excitement than any other skateboarding game in a decade (except maybe Tony Hawk’s upcoming remastered game).
The precision and finesse is similar to Session, but players of the PC early access version say it’s a more rewarding and intuitive system, with a joystick controlling each foot.
There’s 60 real-world skate spots to shred, and a online community is already thriving.
It’s a skateboarding game for the current generation of consoles — something we haven’t seen work out yet (looking at you, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5).
1 Skate 3
This is, for many player’s money, the definitive skateboarding game of the last 10 years — maybe of all time.
EA built Port Caverton from the ground up, and it’s a mega-sized skateable city with a quarry, super park, countless rails, and annoying NPCs.
Released in 2010, it’s hard overstate the impact Skate 3 had on skateboarding games — 10 years later and the game still has a thriving community (who are desperate for Skate 4).
No matter what games come out in the next years, it’s a sure bet that players will still flock to Skate 3’s intuitive flick controls which make skateboarding seem incredibly difficult while also allowing for gnarly tricks and insane combos.
It’s a skateboard simulator with a dash of arcade thrown in, a fun storyline where you build your brand, and in-depth park editor.
Skate 3 is the whole package.