Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is a remake of two pivotal skateboarding games from the turn of the millennium that preserves their exact gameplay while dressing it in modern graphics. All the original skateparks, from the warehouse through the school to the mall, have been rebuilt from the ground up, but the layout of obstacles and the placement of the collectible S-K-A-T-E letters match the originals. The goal of each run is to complete a list of tasks within a two-minute time limit: reach a score threshold, find a hidden object, break certain objects. Controls are built around chaining tricks, grinds and manuals into a single long combo, broken by a single badly landed jump.

The remake added mechanics from later entries in the series, so both revert and rail-riding in either direction are available, and it expanded custom skater creation as well as the skatepark editor, in which you can build your own parks and share them with others. The PlayStation 5 version benefits from a high frame rate, essential for a game built on precise timing, and from near-instant restarting of a run, so repeated attempts at the perfect combo aren't slowed down. The soundtrack combines the original punk and hip hop tracks that made the series famous with new additions, and is a key part of the atmosphere: the music sets the pace just as much as the two-minute countdown.

Reception was very warm. Reviewers praised the fact that the remake understood why the original games worked and didn't try to rewrite them, only polish them; criticism targeted later changes to online services and the absence of a sequel. The original games' influence on the genre was enormous, as they defined an entire wave of combo-based sports arcade titles, and this remake showed that their system is still very much alive. Today Pro Skater 1 + 2 stands as one of the best-executed revivals ever: instantly understandable, hard to fully master, and one keeps coming back to the perfect two-minute run long after finishing the game.