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GBA

North America

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 GBA

by Jonathan Metts - May 26, 2001, 8:30 pm EDT
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This game is incredible! Check out what Jonny learned from playing THPS2 on GBA during E3.

During my five-minute visit to Activison's booth while waiting on an appointment elsewhere, I was determined to play the much-hyped handheld version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. It took a few minutes of waiting, but I finally got my greedy hands on this sweet little game!

The first thing I saw was the character select screen. As you cycle through each skater, his or her stats and polygonal model show up on the screen. The 3D models look pretty shabby up close...very jagged edges, and of course no texture mapping. They look kinda like very rough versions of Final Fantasy VII's character models, if you can believe it.

The great news is that they only look bad up close, because the in-game graphics are outstanding. The models themselves wouldn't look so fantastic just standing still; it's the animation that really makes them shine. Each skater moves with a speed and fluidity and realism that I've never seen done with 2D sprite models, much less on a handheld. To see Mr. Hawk perform his medley of spins and grabs is truly a joy. Even crashes look cool, and blood surprisingly ends up all over the floor when you take a hard fall. The skateparks themselves have a very pre-rendered, high resolution look to them, but the fixed isometric view is distracting and really the only thing that keeps the game from looking and feeling exactly like its console predecessors.

You've probably already heard about the control scheme: B to ollie (jump), A to grind, L and R for mid-air tricks. It took me a minute to get used to (plus it's been a while since I played any Tony Hawk), but pretty soon I was pulling off some simple grabs. However, even veteran virtual skaters will need to relearn the ramp timing, because now you're seeing those jumps from above and not behind. There's also the issue of movement control against a fixed camera...if your skater is facing down, you'll have to press right to turn left and vice-versa. Again, it's distracting and can cause some unecessary crashes, but I'm hoping I can eventually overcome that flaw with practice.

That's really the only thing THPS2 on GBA has against it right now: it's so much like the real thing that the little problems stand out much more. It hinders your ability to become immersed in the game (which happens so much in the console versions), but hell, it's distracting for me to even be playing a GBA game that looks that good! Two or three minutes just isn't a fair timespan to judge how those tiny flaws will work out over the life of the game, but I'm hoping that the game will suck me right in and I won't even notice after a few hours. As it stands, Vicarious Visions has crafted the most impressive game engine I've seen on GBA, and Tony Hawk 2 looks literally one or two generations beyond every other GBA game I played. What I'm most interested in now is whether the gameplay will be as deep and addictive as the big versions, and whether THPS2 can hold my interest for very long without multiplayer modes. We'll see in June!

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Genre Sports
Developer Vicarious Visions
Players1

Worldwide Releases

na: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 GBA
Release May 30, 2001
PublisherActivision
RatingEveryone
jpn: SK8: Tony Hawk no Pro Skater 2
Release Dec 14, 2001
PublisherActivision
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