Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

The skateboarding series that literally dominated the gaming world at the turn of the millennium made it to the smallest screens too. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is one of the most acclaimed skating games ever, and its conversion to the Game Boy Advance proved that the spirit of this legend could be squeezed into a handheld too.

The gameplay principle rests on chaining tricks and building combos. Within a time limit you ride through the levels, complete objectives, collect the letters SKATE, hunt for hidden items and try to rack up the highest possible score. The key novelty that the series introduced precisely with the second instalment on consoles was the manual, a two-wheel ride that lets you link individual tricks into endless chains. The GBA version rendered this system in an isometric view adapted to the capabilities of the handheld hardware.

The original Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 was developed by Neversoft and published by Activision in 2000. The game is to this day considered one of the highest-rated titles in history and ranks among the top-rated games ever according to review aggregators. The soundtrack full of punk and hip hop became cult and defined the sound of an entire era.

The cultural impact of the series was enormous. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater helped popularise skateboarding among young people around the world and turned the name of real skateboarder Tony Hawk into a global brand. The games sold in tens of millions of copies across platforms and inspired an entire genre of extreme sports titles.

The handheld GBA version had a clear purpose: it offered the core pillars of the gameplay, chaining tricks and collecting scores, wherever you happened to be. Even with the technical compromises of the isometric view, it kept that addictive principle of chasing the highest possible combo, thanks to which players keep coming back to the series.

Why play it: A handheld version of one of the highest-rated skating games of all time, an addictive chase for the perfect combo that you can take anywhere.