Introduction

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD arrives like a familiar mixtape you dug out of your mum's attic: nostalgic, slightly dusty, but still capable of making you headbang and yell "kickflip" at the TV like it's 1999. This 2012 offering from Robomodo and Activision is not a full-on port of legendary PS1 classics, nor is it a bold reinvention - it's a high-definition remix. It stitches together seven lovingly remade levels from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Pro Skater 2, then sprinkles in DLC-stage additions from Pro Skater 3 and a soundtrack that's part classic and part new hopeful banger. If you loved chaining combos until your controller begged for mercy, Pro Skater HD will put that itch back under your fingernails.

Gameplay

The bones of the game are gloriously, unapologetically old-school. Pro Skater HD embraces arcade-style skating: grinds, flip tricks, aerials, manuals, and the holy grail of combos. Landing tricks in sequence multiplies your score - nail the final trick and the points are banked; blow the landing and those delicious digits evaporate like your dignity after a manual fall. The game faithfully recreates the mechanics of the early titles, which means no modern gimmicks or motion-board nonsense. The learning curve is the delightful sort where muscle memory and timing beat brute forcing. Levels are selected from the first two Pro Skater games and include the usual suspects: Warehouse, School II, Mall, Hangar, Marseille, Downhill Jam, and Venice Beach. These are compact playgrounds, designed for flow and scoring rather than photo-realistic open-world exploration. Objectives in each stage reward you with points and progression: get a high score, collect the letters S-K-A-T-E, find a hidden DVD - basically the same checklist that made you replay tiny maps into the wee hours as a teenager. Completing objectives gives you points to upgrade a skater's attributes, nudging the game toward light RPG-lite gratification. Robomodo also kept quirky modes that keep things fresh. Graffiti mode returns, turning trick landings into turf wars of color; Hawkman is back, challenging players to collect colored pellets via specific move types; and a fresh addition, Big Head Survival, makes your skater's noodle inflate dangerously with each mistake - you must shred combos to keep your head under the poppable threshold. This mode is ridiculous in the best possible way and feels like the kind of madcap addition that should have been in every sports game forever. A notable mechanical wrinkle came via downloadable content: three Pro Skater 3 levels (Airport, Canada, and Los Angeles) and, crucially, the revert. The revert allows you to flip direction while retaining momentum after landing a vert trick, enabling the long, score-stacking combos that Pro Skater 3 was famous for. Initially intended to be DLC-restricted, Robomodo eventually patched reverts into all levels after release delays - a smart move, because without reverts some runs feel artificially capped compared to the original trilogy's potential. Skater selection is a nostalgic parade: Tony Hawk, Rodney Mullen, Eric Koston, Nyjah Huston, Andrew Reynolds, Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins Pastrana, Chris Cole, and Riley Hawk make appearances. The roster swells slightly with later updates, adding Jake Harrison and Emily Westlund, plus classic canon oddities like Officer Dick and Ollie the Magic Bum, and the new bonus robot Roberta. The Xbox 360 build let players skate as their avatars, but PS3 players still get a full roster of pros. Multiplayer and community features are present but lean. Online leaderboards exist for all modes, and console versions include online play, which is nice for flexing your combo-building supremacy to strangers. Local split-screen is absent, and the lack of a park creator - a beloved feature that let people craft chaos - is a sore point for fans who wanted to remix levels themselves. Critics noted these omissions; for purists who think THPS is all about perfecting tricks on existing maps, the core experience remains intact. For creative types, it feels like someone's taken your LEGO set and removed the instruction manual while keeping the best bricks.

Graphics

Visually, Pro Skater HD is a tidy facelift rather than a photorealism overhaul. Built in Unreal Engine 3, levels have been redone in high definition with crisper textures, updated lighting, and a general polish that makes grinds sparkle and ramps look a bit more modern. Robomodo worked with Tony Hawk to recreate the look and feel, and the comparison shots show a clear effort to honor the originals while reducing PS1-era jaggies from existence. That said, the remake doesn't pretend to be revolutionary. The levels retain the compact, playground design of the originals and don't try to blow you away with sprawling geometry or next-gen particle effects. The art direction leans toward functional clarity: ramps behave like ramps, rails feel rail-y, and landmarks are recognizable. If you're expecting an open-world skate paradise, you're going to be disappointed; if you want the classic maps to look less like a polygon soup and more like a nostalgic music video, this hits the nail on the grip tape. Animation is competent: skaters perform tricks with satisfying snap and recoveries mostly feel fair. Every now and then you'll notice a hiccup or animation clip that's less graceful than memories suggest, but these are small stains on an otherwise solid high-def coat. The soundtrack, which blends seven tracks from the originals with seven new songs chosen by Robomodo, sells the vibe well. Music has always been half the soul of Tony Hawk games, and the HD soundtrack largely nails that punk/alt/rock energy that makes you want to combo just to hear the chorus change at the right moment.

Conclusion

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD is a love letter with a couple of missing pages. It's a faithful, high-def remix of early Pro Skater levels that nails core mechanics and combo joy, sprinkles in wacky modes like Big Head Survival and Graffiti, and brings back that soundtrack-driven momentum that made the originals legendary. The addition of Pro Skater 3 DLC and the revert mechanic salvaged a lot of the endgame combo potential, making high-scoring runs feel properly epic again. Where it stumbles is in expectation management. This is not the full anthology series revival some fans wanted: no park creator, no split-screen, and a smaller level selection than die-hards might crave. Robomodo's decision to release this as a downloadable remix instead of a content-packed remake meant sacrifices that reviewers noticed - some loved the purist approach, others wanted more bells and whistles. If you're on PS3 and you miss the days of chaining combos to shrieking punk, Pro Skater HD will probably make your thumbs very happy for a few dozen hours. It's not perfect, and its modest ambition keeps it from being a 10/10 salute to skateboarding history, but it does what it sets out to do: remind you why you learned to manual in the first place. Consider it a tasty nostalgia snack rather than a full-course meal. Pop it in, crank the soundtrack, and try not to swear when you bail on a 10x combo - those points are precious, and so is your pride.

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