In a new interview, Tony Hawk discusses how he went from pro skater to the legendary video game icon that he is today.
When Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater came out back in 1999, not everyone knew just who Tony Hawk was. Nevermind the fact that by the time DOOM came out he’s already won 73 out of 103 professional skate competitions and was basically the king of all skateboarding--skateboarding was still just a fringe culture to most gamers.
Then Pro Skater came out for the PS1, and Tony Hawk became a household name.
A new interview with IGN discusses how Tony Hawk went from skateboard god to video game legend. It all started way back in 1998 when Tony was looking to get into video games. An avid lifelong gamer, Hawk was looking to attach his name to a game that he could be proud of.
Enter Activision and Neversoft. They reached out to Hawk to showcase a prototype skateboard game where they basically ushered him into a room full of suits in Santa Monica to show something that looked like “Bruce Willis with a gun strapped to his back skating through a desert.” That concept was quickly scrapped, but Hawk noted that the controls felt good and “intuitive,” even to non-skaters. But it wasn’t a skating game.
"So my goal was that with my influence, with my voice and resources, we can make this game authentic to skaters,” Hawk said. “The goal was to have skaters want to buy a PlayStation, in my eyes.”
Using the same control scheme as the prototype, Neversoft went back to the drawing board and (with the help of Hawk) eventually produced Tony Hawk's Pro Skater for the PS1 in 1999.
Nobody expected this game to be the success that it did. Originally planned for 250,000 in sales, the game would eventually move over 5 million units combined between the PS1, Dreamcast, and Nintendo 64 ports.
It also didn't hurt that 1999 was also the same year that Hawk performed the world's first 900 at that year's X-Games competition.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 came out in 2000 and was an even greater hit, becoming one of the highest-rated games of all time. And now, Activision is looking to cash in on that nostalgia by remaking both games on modern consoles.
And at 52, Hawk will probably take the record as the oldest video game mascot to still sell millions of copies.
Source: IGN