This review is part of a series looking back at significant albums on their anniversaries. Through the benefit of hindsight we will be viewing the album not just as it was released, but how it stands the test of time, as well as its place in the band’s discography and the genre in general.
Activision / Neversoft – 29 September 1999
Those who can do, those who can’t blister their thumbs by playing the video game so much.
Growing up, I tried to skate, I could stand, I could coast, I could fall flat on my ass over and over and over again. No matter how badly I wanted to be the star of the sequel to Gleaming The Cube, my lack of coordination (and lack of an adopted brother with accidental criminal connections) made it a non-starter.
So, I soaked up as much skate culture as I could without skinning my knees and filled the role of poser quite well… but then 25 years ago everything changed and made my cosplaying a skaterat seem less pathetic and more culturally accepted.
The influx of interest in the sport changed the world’s outlook on skaters, too. No linger was skating thought of as a less-athletic, more destructive hobby. The sportsmanship was put on display to the gamers and their families. Tony Hawk was a well-known name becoming a household name and nobody had a bad thing to say. Would Bam Margera’s Pro Skater been as accessible? Probably not. Actually, the series tried to branch out with Mat Hoffman Pro BMX, Shaun Palmer’s Pro Snowboarder and Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer but each lacked the selling and staying power of the THPS/THUG series.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was a literal game-changer. The mechanics from Neversoft quickly became the bar to which all developers needed to rise to. But honestly, nobody needs to give a fuck about the back end. This game changed the cultural zeitgeist, seemingly overnight. No game made a bigger global splash than THPS, evolving not only the gaming world, but the skating world, the music world, the fashion world. Mario Bros may have been ubiquitous in the 90s but nobody was walking down the street seeing mustachioed men in red ts and overalls quite the way you were flooded with chain wallets, dickies and Birdhouse t’s in the months after this game dropped.
It’s amazing what can happen when everyone starts to land a pop shoveit over the Kicker Gap
One month earlier the sports world was rocked when Tony Hawk landed the first 900. The world at large was then introduced to the subculture through that highlight and this game and that subculture permeated pretty much everything. The preppy girls were trading in their Abercrombie graphic t’s for Independent hoodies and suddenly everyone knew who Goldfinger was.
Oh god… that fucking soundtrack, right? Dead Kennedys, Suicide Machines and The Vandals were front and center in the game and fans outside the scene were being made. Even The fucking Ernies were getting a sales boost thanks to the game.
The soundtrack was perfect for the time, 3 months earlier Blink182 took over the radio waves with Enema of the State and THPS opened up the pathways from that sunny and silly SoCal pop-punk to new sounds like Speeddealer, Even Rude and Primus. Later iterations expanded into hip-hop, metal and eventually new voices covering classics in American Wasteland. An argument can be made, and I’d be happy to make it, that Tony Hawk is as responsible for the success of Warped Tour as Kevin Lyman. Sure, Lyman combined the skate and punk cultures into a traveling circus, but Tony Hawk Pro Skater expanded that reach beyond those 2 subcultures and into suburban homes across the country.
I can not be the only one with countless memories of getting together with friends and playing this series laughing and talking shit. I remember working at Blockbuster and a few of us busying out a rental PS1, plugging it into the DirecTV display and rotating turns between customers. I remember leaving the pizza place I was working at late at night with this girl who worked there and going to her house to play together, which may have been the real key to the courtship of my wife. The connection to the game was personal and public and everything in between.
By combining innovative gameplay, a sport primed to breakout, fashion and a perfect soundtrack, the game crafted a legacy. One that lasted across 19 releases on 24 gaming platforms over 25 years, a legacy that remains evident today in the Olympic skaters (don’t fool yourself, the sport isn’t likely to become part of the Olympiad if not for the game’s pervasion of the global psyche).
After 25 years, it’s still always time to power up your console, let the muscle memory take over and see how many Christ Air rotations you and Rune Glifberg can pull off in Roswell.
Bad Dad (occasionally called Ed) has been on the periphery of the punk and punk-adjacent scene for over twenty years. While many contributors to this site have musical experience and talent, Ed’s musical claim to fame comes from his time in arguably the most punk rock Blockbuster Video district in NJ where he worked alongside members of Blanks 77, Best Hit TV and Brian Fallon. He is more than just an awful father to his 2 daughters, he is also a dreadful husband, a subpar writer, a terrible dresser and has a severe deficiency in all things talent… but hey, at least he’s self-aware, amirite?
Check out the pathetic attempts at photography on his insta at https://www.instagram.com/bad_dad_photography/
