Tony Hawk has announced he’s no longer working with Activision, but the publisher still owns the license to the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater franchise.
Apparently, people are still pestering Tony Hawk about his all-but defunct game franchise since the former pro-skater took to Twitter to tell people he doesn’t have much control over the game series anymore.
"To anyone asking me to 'remaster" old games, or complaining about THPS servers being down: Activision owns the THPS license but I am no longer working with them,” wrote Hawk on Twitter. “If I had the skills / authority to reboot servers or code games for newer systems on my own, I would be happy to..."
In case you were born after the year 2000, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was an incredibly popular series that allowed the player to assume the role of the world’s top skaters from the era, skate-boarding having a bit of a renaissance at the time.
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Not only could gamers assume the role of skaters like the titular Tony Hawk, they could also create their own personalities or even obtain ridiculous skins like Wolverine from X-Men or Shrek from… Shrek. Why anyone would want to be a skateboarding ogre is a question best left to the experts.
The original series was published by Neversoft who won critical acclaim for their innovative, open-world designs for players to rail and kickflip to their heart’s content. The series peaked around the early 2000s with Pro Skater 3, 4, and Underground, achieving low-90s critical reviews on Metacritic.
Unfortunately, the franchise started to fatigue shortly after then as each new release was more or less the same. Neversoft eventually was folded into Infinity Ward to work on Guitar Hero and Call of Duty games until finally closing their doors for good in 2014.
Activision handed over the franchise to developer Robomodo in 2008 with the franchise immediately taking a nosedive without a helmet. Each release was critically panned, culminating in the disastrous Pro Skater 5, which featured graphics better suited to the PlayStation 2 despite releasing on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. That’s not even mentioning the launch day patch that was larger than all the data on the disc combined.
So, if you’re holding out for a reboot of the THPS franchise, we wouldn’t recommend holding your breath.