In brief: Many people may be shocked to learn that it’s been twenty years since the release of the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, or Tony Hawk’s Skateboarding for those who live in Europe. To celebrate the anniversary, Hawk himself has shared a clip showing some of his work on the game. Sadly, though, it was never used.
While it was eventually ported to consoles including the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast, THPS was one of the best reasons to own a PlayStation back in 1999. Even those who previously had no interest in skateboarding were taken in by the game, which was incredibly addictive and fun. It also had one of the most memorable soundtracks of all time, permanently embedding Goldfinger’s ‘Superman’ into players' brains.
Yesterday, Hawk posted a short video on Twitter showing a motion capture session he took part in for THPS back in 1999. Despite managing to perform a series of impressive tricks while wearing a lycra suit covered in small balls, none of the footage appeared in the game. According to Hawk, there wasn’t enough time to add any of his motion-captured skating into the title.
In keeping with the THPS 20th anniversary, here is our motion capture session from 1999. We didn’t end up using any of this data because there wasn’t enough time to program it into the final game, but at least I got to do a bunch of hard tricks while wearing an embarrassing suit. pic.twitter.com/pHw09SX3tg
— Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) 3 September 2019
As noted by Kotaku, Hawk put out a call over the weekend asking if he could borrow a copy of THPS after discovering he didn’t own the original. He later posted a short video in which he takes on the famous Warehouse level from the game.
THPS was released 20 years ago today. It was an unexpected phenomenon and brought a new audience to the skateboarding world. My friends at @THPSfilm are finishing a documentary about the series https://t.co/zpUC6WSQGr
— Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) 31 August 2019
Meanwhile, here I am this morning skating the warehouse ➡️➡️⭕️ pic.twitter.com/9eCEvgxzod
Fans of the Tony Hawk Skateboarding series should check out an upcoming documentary, ‘Pretending I’m a Superman,’ which looks at how skateboarding became part of mainstream culture by examining the success of the THPS franchise.
https://www.techspot.com/news/81733-tony-hawk-reveals-motion-capture-clip-first-pro.html
