The Music of Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater
Each Tony Hawk sport, beginning with the unique, had a rigorously curated soundtrack of each basic songs and modern tunes, normally oriented in the direction of punk rock. The primary Professional Skater solely featured ten songs in its soundtrack with a decidedly extra punk and thrash orientation in comparison with its sequel. Punk stalwarts like The Vandals, Lifeless Kennedys, and Goldfinger are among the many standouts. The Professional Skater sequels wouldn’t solely broaden upon the variety of tracks obtainable of their soundtracks but additionally characteristic a broader number of genres whereas retaining its punk rock roots.
By 2000’s Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater 2, the soundtrack expanded to incorporate nu-metal acts like Papa Roach, hip-hop teams like Naughty by Nature, and onerous rock bands together with Rage In opposition to the Machine and Powerman 5000. The Professional Skater soundtracks instantly turned a agency a part of the video games’ id, from Goldfinger’s “Superman” changing into the sequence’ unofficial anthem to the rousing open notes of Rage In opposition to the Machine’s “Testify” greeting gamers as Professional Skater 2 booted up. Tony Hawk noticed how track selections in underground skating movies and skate parks made an enormous deal in how skaters and the group have been perceived. This consideration to element carried over to the Professional Skater soundtracks.
The Professional Skater builders recalled that the primary sport’s restricted price range and recognition helped them safe bands that have been much less inquisitive about working with bigger tasks and studios. This helped lend to the sequence’ sense of authenticity and avenue cred amongst skateboarding communities and introduce newcomers to that underground scene. By the later sequels, Hawk remembers larger bands approaching him to probably safe a spot on sport soundtracks, a few of which Hawk declined as they didn’t match the ethos of the video games and the better skating group.
Capturing an Period
After all, whereas the soundtrack is a significant a part of Professional Skater’s continued nostalgia issue, it’s removed from the one factor that makes the sport sequence so distinctly consultant of its period. The final aesthetic of the Professional Skater video games feels so uniquely late ‘90s and early 2000s and one thing that competing modern excessive sports activities video games, and even subsequent Tony Hawk sequence, didn’t distill in their very own gameplay experiences. This nostalgia additionally goes past the technical presentation of the Professional Skater video games as a result of it stays lovingly intact on trendy consoles with the acclaimed 2020 remake, Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater 1 + 2.
Becoming a member of Tony Hawk was a roster of handpicked standard skaters on the time, starting from Kareem Campbell to Bucky Lasek, fronting manufacturers that one might discover on t-shirts in every single place on the time, like Component or Volcom. Gamers would observe down VHS tapes to assist earn factors to unlock future ranges whereas the environments they may skate in, from deserted procuring malls to real-life areas like Venice Seaside, felt evocative of the time. Even the video games’ unlockable characters, like Darth Maul, Spider-Man, and Jango Fett, all mirrored standard films of the period and match seamlessly into the primary playable roster.
There’s something within the spirit of Professional Skater and the skating group that related with a technology, grounded in simply sufficient verisimilitude to really feel like the true world with a rascally spirit that didn’t converse completely to jocks like Madden or FIFA, however to players of all backgrounds and social strata. The vast majority of the tunes that have been on every soundtrack weren’t essentially blowing up charts on TRL whereas the skaters have been not often paradigms of standard athleticism. The Professional Skater video games invited everybody to leap in and play whereas its consideration to element and authenticity helped reinforce its modern qualities transitioning into early 2000s nostalgia.
