While you're here, check out this other video of mine where a THPS veteran breaks down the six most insane techniques discovered by the Pro Skater community: ua-cam.com/video/MAcOYtq7Y74/v-deo.html
Exactly! We still want skateboarding games, we just don't want poorly made/rushed ones! The old Tony Hawk games are some of the best of all time still.
Game Brain esp how it goes straight into the meat with a brief prerequisite... no bullshit high fake energy and no fucking 10 sec channel logo intro with loud ass dubstep. Thank you.
Huge companies always have that issue cause they have leaders who don’t know shit about their industry, just basic business principles that they feel apply towards every situation. You see it so often, how they think they know what’s best without ever asking the consumer.
i remember when my buddy got the jam pack demo with THPS on it. all my friends would go to his house after school everyday and play the one level for no joke 5 hours a day everyday until the game came out. It completely blew our minds. It was Game changing
See if you can get any more details on this. Would love to have Chris's input on Session! This is what makes games good! Network and creatively share ideas that will give us consumers a great skateboarding game.
It would be cool to have a panel with members of the THPS team and the Project Session team don't you think? Organising this interview with Chris took months so getting something like that produced would take, AGES. I'll look into thought. Great to hear your thoughts!
I'm definitely gonna be following this story. Project Session's looking great but they could definitely benefit from the aid of some veteran developers with time.
"...and then all the suits decide 'well, clearly people don't want skateboarding games anymore', you know. Well, yes they do! They want a better one. They want on that's a lot cooler." I'd like to think the same for Guitar Hero and even Rock Band games. I always thought that GH Live and Rock Band 4 kind of failed was because of the setlist.
Annie Mood hey. Check out clone hero. It's free for pc, and has all the latest gh features and more. It's free, and has wndlist possibilities for songs, highways, videos, etc. it's pure gold!
Annie Mood Well the main reason those games died is because they were making new ones every year and ended up flooding the market. People simply didn't need that many rhythm games. Hell, I still play guitar hero 3
Annie Mood it's also unbelievable how much stuff is missing on Rockband 4, I mean it's a new console and it's only got half of the stuff 3 did, that and the setlist kept getting worse and worse
I agree there's still a big market for rhythm games. Osu! has millions of active players who would all like to branch out, but your only option is obscure Japanese arcade games that can only be found in Japan.
I think THPS 1-4 is one of the best examples of a game series perfectly refining itself after each title. Every entry a classic in its own right. Masterpieces. Then it all kinda went weird..
Agreed. Part 3 was the biggest step in my opinion. It just felt next level and the graphics were amazing at the time. I played those four games for hours on end.
Wow. This was an incredible interview. Thank you so much for such rich content (if he ever happens to read the comments, thank you to Chris Rausch also for long service to one of my two or three most cherished franchises). I almost cried a few times during. The Pro Skater series (along with The Sims), literally, franchises I've been playing since I was a small child and loved to death. I played the Playstation Magazine demo disc THPS1 build, played the hell out of retail THPS1/2 solo and in trick attack with my siblings. Tony Hawk's Underground was the first game in the series that I owned myself in middle school (prior games were technically my brother's). The open world, the characters (Stacy Peralta, Bam Margera, Eric Sparrow, etc), it was an incredible experience. That franchise raised me, and I feel like I love it/can appreciate it even more as an adult. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 in particular, one of the best games of all time, and one of the handful of best direct sequels ever. Create a Skater, create a park, replays, Hangar/School II/Marseille/Venice Beach/etc. Also think spine transfers came in THPS2. For the franchise as a whole, it obviously had a lot of ups and downs. Being forced to churn out a game annually, it inevitably ran into a lot of the feature creep stuff COD and Assassin's Creed are experiencing right now. I enjoyed Underground 2/Project 8/American Wasteland/Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD/etc, but obviously, the first 5 games (namely, THPS 1-3 and Underground) were special. Secret characters (Officer Dick, Ollie the Magic Bum, Darth Maul, Spiderman, etc), secret stages (there was a Kiss world in one of the underground games, I think, and I remember the hidden cave on Marseille in THPS2), etc. Just an incredible series that I've spent a lot of time with. The gameplay meta of THPS is my favorite in the history of video games. Everything Chris described in the interview, they executed on. The balance, individuality and variety, along with the endless replayability the series is known for. Also loved hearing him talk about the Skate series which offered fundamentally different but also extremely fun elements to skateboarding games. Hope to see the genre make a comeback. Both for the arcade and simulation styles.
HEY guys look up Project session.. its a new skateboarding game coming out in the summer of this year. they did very well with the kickstarter they had.
"Guerrilla Radio" and "Blood Brothers" are 2 songs that are engraved in my brain because of the second game, great memories staying up all night at friends houses playing them.
Imagine feeling that THUG was the moment the game started going downhill since childhood and then hearing the lead developer say the same thing when you are an adult. Closure is real guys.
Watching this in 2023. Great interview I like how the footage matched the topics. I’m 30 years old so all this stuff was happening at its peak when I was a young teenager. Great times.
To help out with the skate conversation. Skate 3 was rushed because black box was getting hit hard by the recession back in 2010, so rather than not putting out anything, they put out what they had. Then black box gradually went under and ea bought them as ea was only the publisher out of a contract where black box would make ea titles like need for speed underground and ea would make black box titles if they wanted to make their own. Then when they went under, they got bought by ea as to be used as mobile game devision, but ea got hit by the recession and let go of all their employees while keeping the game rights. Black box had massive plans for skate, like a map editor that was gonna be 1000% better than what we got, and a better hardcore mode that had a balance meter type system. Black box did fix the game a bunch, but it was with the dlc that not many people bought. Black box did hint a bunch as to what was going on though, especially how this was gonna be the unofficial last game, the biggest one was the "jumping the shark" reference right at the start of the game. One of my friends worked for black box, his brother is a pro snowboarder that went to the first two Olympics and started at my home hill (wont give personal info other than that). Black box was not a bunch of programmers that got contracted to make the game, skate was made by the developers who skated on their spare time as smaller game based around the game of s.k.a.t.e, but the majority of black box was made up of skaters or people who had similar interests, including the people in charge. Skate worked because it was the made by skaters and understood the skater impute more. This is why the game felt more natural to skating, where thps felt like a mortal kombat as that was the trend when thps1 came out. I wish myspace saved all my messages with my friend back when skate 1 came out. :(
Great Video! But i wonder why no one ever talks about Project 8 and Proving Grounds. I mean it were decent games at last, and by far better than shred and THPS 5. But i feel like the world never took notice that these two games even exist which is sad, if you ask me.
The Tony Hawk series holds a special place in my heart. I loved exploring every area, looking for things to grind and kickflip off of. The music and atmosphere were so perfect. I would love to see a fantastic reboot of the series. Great video man!
That was a fantastic and very in-depth interview. Amazing quality, very professional and interesting, and i learned pretty much everything i wanted to know about the development of the TH series! And I love how Chris gave his opinion on the newer games including Skate. Inspirational! I only wished he mentioned something about the soundtracks of the series, the songs in those games are what I feel really made the unique game even more unique !
the rise of these tony hawk/skate games youtube videos make me hopeful for the future of skating video games. thanks game brain we always need more publicity for these games
It's insane how many people started skateboarding because of this game. Before this there was a game called Street Sk8r on PS1, it had a good soundtrack just like THPS but it was very similar to Top Skater. THPS raised the bar just like EA Skate did after THPS. The creative aspect of it is what made the game so much fun in my opinion. I used to be pretty active on the THPS official forum back in the day on Delphi, some of the devs would post on there as well. It was a great community. I skipped school when the THPS2 demo came out just to play it, that's how much this game meant to me and a lot of other people at the time
Very enjoyable interview. This brings me back to Pro Skater 3, the one that shaped my early gaming days. It's always interesting to hear other people talk about the Tony Hawk game that meant the most to them. I regret not looking into the other ones simply because 3 felt like the definitive one to me.
this was a very interesting interview, I was actually quite pleased to learn a fair bit about what happened behind-the-scenes on some of these games, as I still play a handful of these today and I still love them greatly, but it also gave great insight to how things are where they are now. I'm just sad that Neversoft is gone, since they made some of my absolute favorite games, like Spider-Man for the PlayStation 1, or even Gun on PlayStation 2/PC, I will forever cherish these games for the great passion and well thought out design they had in the early years.
I was a teenager and skating right when the first game came out. It hit home for not only skaters, but also people that had never been on a skateboard because it was just fun to play and had great mechanics. Before that, there were only the game "Street Sk8er" on the PS1, which was really just a copy of the Top Skater arcade game and played similar. You just raced checkpoints and had no control over the moves. It was fun at the time, but left a lot to be desired. When Pro Skater came out it just made Street Sk8er competely irrelevant with how the moves worked and how it was an open world environment you could skate around in. It was just what you wanted out of a skateboarding game.
playing 2 + 3 as a 7 year old was influential, played it with my twin brother and he would always say he wanted to be a skater, i thought he was crazy. soon enough we got skateboards and skated for years as did many of our friends and family. spectating my friends play thug2 was fun because of how cinematic and over the top it is. in retrospect the dev effort could have been better spent but it left a big impression on me as a 10 year old. the soundtrack for all of these games stuck with me and playing the remaster a couple years ago was a lot of fun.
Skate 3 is WAY better once you get the dlc and access to merge glitch parks. Skate 2 is for cavemen as that's what the characters look like. Skate 3 has the best of it all, just shit vanilla map.
I think that closing dialogue from Chris basically sums it up no just for skating games, but for recent gaming in general, its not that no one wants to play these games anymore, we just want better ones...
This was awesome. I never owned these games but my friend had an xbox and we would play then sometimes. They blew me away cause I never had a home console until later when I got a ps2.
To this day I think if they just kept upping the graphics, move sets, Easter eggs/special tricks/levels, but kept the game play, experience, and format generally the same, the games would still be popular. They could have just come out with a new one every 3 years or so.
I played THPS 1-4, then AMPED 1-2, then SKATE 1-3. Once they start making your board glitter and have way too many outrageous components, it just kills the organic feel and spirit of skateboarding and snowboarding in the games. It's hard for developers to create motivational objectives in games with that perfect balance of realism while still escaping it. It's what we play them for. They did an amazing job in these titles with that. I loved being able to dress my characters in actual clothing that I owned as a teenager... so with games like SS Tricky (although still pretty fun), it was just so unrealistic and outrageous with tricks and characters to the point that I couldn't relate to it. I'm also not a fan of anime-type characters, so I'm a little biased.
I played the July 1999 OPM demo for thps1 so much the disc stopped working. Got that game the following Christmas and played the hell out of it. As for Ride I recall seeing those games (and decks) in the Amazon facility I use to work in as late as 2019. Probably still in there.
Watching the THPS footage almost made me dizzy, and reminded me that I don't miss THPS' "go up the halfpipe, do forty kickflips and a 900, grind along a powerline, backflip off and land a 100m drop to a perfect manual". That Skate footage was a breath of fresh air. I loved the frustration of spending an hour trying to nail a line where I manualed on a flat, grinded (ground?) a planter, then manualed back out, because when I did, it was an achievement. Session is looking amazing, and will be much more difficult than Skate, especially now that they're adding in a catch mechanic where you have to push a button to catch a kickflip.
This is such an amazing video good job! I was absolutely shocked when I saw you only have 8k subscribers. Your channel is very underrated. I hope that changes you deserve so much more. Such a professional, interesting, educational, & unique video! Absolutely perfect!
Great video! Very excited to hear these games are coming back soon, and that the original code (probably Chris's!) is being used to make sure the remaster feels right
Another phenomenal piece of delicious journalistic goodness, Mr Game Brain. It's both fascinating and depressing to hear a first-hand account of all the corporate fuckery that goes into killing a beloved franchise. This channel deserves so much more than 5.4k subscribers! I hope UA-cam eventually recognises you and gives you some more consistent exposure. :)
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground was the last great Tony Hawk game. It's a shame the series has gone downhill so much. Hell, my copies of the the Tony Hawk games from childhood on are so scratched up from playing them, they just don't work anymore. I've hard to replace copies and I'm still looking for some of the games to replace when I get the money. But the Skate games really do scratch the itch, and I'm grateful for that. Skate 1 and 2 are pretty damn good. Skate 3 wasn't the best, but it sufficed and slightly improved upon the formula that was already in place. I don't know, though. It would be cool to see a good Tony Hawk game again.
The physics were a step up from what they were in Project 8. Glad they took out the ragdoll physics when you bail. I do wish they would have kept the option to roll out of a bail, though. Never seen that mechanic used in any other game. I thought the physics in THPG were on par with that of older games, though. Plus with the "Sim Mode", it made for slightly more "realistic" skating, but I do have to admit that could have been done much better. Much too slow in Sim Mode, and the gravity was downplayed a little too much.
Project 8 was good for what it was, being on new consoles and everything. Proving Ground just took everything P8 did and expanded on it, made it better. It's extremely overlooked because most people prefer Skate. And while Skate does deserve the praise it gets, Proving Ground is still worth playing at least a couple times.
I first played THPS on the Jampack Summer '99 Demo Disc. So when the game came out I rented it I was amazed at how much better it looked from the early demo. More detailed characters, standing up animation, and BLOOD which was not in the old demo. It felt like I was playing a sequel altogether.
Man, this was a great listen, it confirmed a lot of the more subliminal feelings i had for thps 3 and 4, and thug1 and 2. Thps2 was my first heavily played thps, but i played or owned them all through to american wasteland, and you can really feel that thps1 and 2 was somehow more focused and passionate and less rushed and demanded than 3, with the crew expanding five fold. Also the story behind thug 2 really rings true, it seems really over the top in a lot of the ways i remember that game. Of course thps is the more over the top and arcade-y franchise in hindsight with titles like skate, and now session, but yeah, even at the time i remember feeling like thug2 kinda went a bit too heavily into that sugar fuelled short attention span explosions and yeah fucken rocket powered segways or whatever, it just was a bit surreal, even for the tony hawk games. Rest in peace to the franchise, damn sure didnt play any of the games with the peripheral frisbee or anything, it's a sad way to go, for such a legendary franchise that really did have a lot of heart and innovation and simply, invention in it. Thanks for the vid and thank you to the best of these games for the countless hours well spent, for introducing me to so so much great music, and for tony hawk for changing the world. I wouldnt have started skateboarding without these games, and to this day skateboarding is still the extreme sport that turns up in ads for smartphones and shit. It's inherent beauty in fluidity has permeated culture like nothing else. I love you skateboarding 🙏
So glad you enjoyed it friend, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts! I agree with your thoughts on THUG 2, I think Pro Skater will always live and die by its skateboarding alone. Everything else is ancillary.
Just found this channel and I love the way you do these interviews, I'm surprised you don't have more subs. Awesome videos man, keep it up! It's awesome to hear these stories and answers from actual developers of my favorite games.
Bought that jampack for $5 from the real canadian super store back in the day! I used to load it up after the game was actually released to see the differences
This guy is crazy, THUG1 & 2 were the best games in the entire franchise, for me that was peak popularity and what I dumped the most hours into. THUG 2 was so much fun
Very very interesting interview ! iGlad to see Chris Rausch still being stoked about skate games, and actually it's pretty cool that he loved the Ea skate games. Very interesting for skate video games culture ! thanks :D Maybe one day he'll be interested on working a new skate game. Who knows
Great interview. I love hearing behind the scenes stuff like this. And he’s right there’s still a huge demand for skate games. I work retail near a school, and swear kids still come to me in 2018 asking for Skate 3.
JoJos GameShow Probably because it's backwards compatible on Xbox One (and got an emulator side 4K update for the Xbox One X). Great to hear though. There's a democracy and community to skateboarding games that's just special.
This was great, thank you. I adored THPS despite never picking up a skateboard in my life and was sad to see the franchise as well as Skate die a really untimely death. *_cue Superman by Goldfinger_*
Great point, things turned around a lot since this video was made! So much has been learned about how not to 'bring back' old franchises. The sad reality is returning to what made them good is a great fix for a few remasters, but moving forward how series like THPS progress is pretty hard to see.
While you're here, check out this other video of mine where a THPS veteran breaks down the six most insane techniques discovered by the Pro Skater community: ua-cam.com/video/MAcOYtq7Y74/v-deo.html
Two years later: We get the best remake ever in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2. Damn I’m happy!!!!
Exactly! We still want skateboarding games, we just don't want poorly made/rushed ones! The old Tony Hawk games are some of the best of all time still.
I just wish Thug Pro would kick into full gear and make companies realize that people actually still want skating games like that.
Just ordered tony hawks project 8 for ps3. Cant wait to play it.
Robomodo is the main issue
Yes, the th games are timeless, until today they look and play great.
Week ur in luck. There remastered it
Fantastic interview. Great to hear some of the behind-the-scenes on the THUG2 period especially. Thanks a lot for posting.
WOW. Thanks so much man, I'm a huge fan of your channel so it's incredibly humbling to hear from you. I really appreciate it :)
Writing on Games THUG2 WAS ASS
@@thegoat186 imagine
Refreshing to see an earnest video straight from a developers thoughts rather than a random youtube dude spouting nonsense. Loved it.
thanks so much for the support, i really appreciate it!
Game Brain esp how it goes straight into the meat with a brief prerequisite... no bullshit high fake energy and no fucking 10 sec channel logo intro with loud ass dubstep.
Thank you.
Takeaway: Activision really knows how to run a great idea into the ground.
Would you say they took it Underground.
@@shukrysii828😎
Konami: hold my fucking panchinko machine.
Huge companies always have that issue cause they have leaders who don’t know shit about their industry, just basic business principles that they feel apply towards every situation. You see it so often, how they think they know what’s best without ever asking the consumer.
WE NEED MORE CARS
i remember when my buddy got the jam pack demo with THPS on it. all my friends would go to his house after school everyday and play the one level for no joke 5 hours a day everyday until the game came out. It completely blew our minds. It was Game changing
That’s awesome.
A massive "thank you" to you and Chris for this video.
a massive thank you to you aswell well for checking out the video! appreciate the support
a massive thank you to chris for existing in the right time and place for these wonderful games to exist
Put Chris in contact with the Project Session guys!
Great idea. I'm sure he's seen the project already, I wonder what he'd think.
See if you can get any more details on this. Would love to have Chris's input on Session! This is what makes games good! Network and creatively share ideas that will give us consumers a great skateboarding game.
It would be cool to have a panel with members of the THPS team and the Project Session team don't you think? Organising this interview with Chris took months so getting something like that produced would take, AGES. I'll look into thought. Great to hear your thoughts!
Yeah you are probably right. It would be worth a shot to try an connect on social media. I'll even try to show any of the session guys.
I'm definitely gonna be following this story. Project Session's looking great but they could definitely benefit from the aid of some veteran developers with time.
"...and then all the suits decide 'well, clearly people don't want skateboarding games anymore', you know. Well, yes they do! They want a better one. They want on that's a lot cooler."
I'd like to think the same for Guitar Hero and even Rock Band games. I always thought that GH Live and Rock Band 4 kind of failed was because of the setlist.
Annie Mood hey. Check out clone hero. It's free for pc, and has all the latest gh features and more. It's free, and has wndlist possibilities for songs, highways, videos, etc. it's pure gold!
Annie Mood Well the main reason those games died is because they were making new ones every year and ended up flooding the market. People simply didn't need that many rhythm games. Hell, I still play guitar hero 3
Annie Mood it's also unbelievable how much stuff is missing on Rockband 4, I mean it's a new console and it's only got half of the stuff 3 did, that and the setlist kept getting worse and worse
DJ Hero was underrated too.
I agree there's still a big market for rhythm games. Osu! has millions of active players who would all like to branch out, but your only option is obscure Japanese arcade games that can only be found in Japan.
First time I got a chance to play this game was at a McDonald. They had a ps1 controller hanging out from the wall and the game blew me away.
TeschkeFilms Hey kid wanna play some Tony Hawk?
Fantastic video dude, definitely worth the wait :)
THANKS MAN. Means a lot to hear that, hope you're well!
I'm good dude! Settling back into reality haha, stoked for your sub growth!
I think THPS 1-4 is one of the best examples of a game series perfectly refining itself after each title. Every entry a classic in its own right. Masterpieces. Then it all kinda went weird..
Agreed. Part 3 was the biggest step in my opinion. It just felt next level and the graphics were amazing at the time. I played those four games for hours on end.
Would love to see more interviews like this
Wow. This was an incredible interview. Thank you so much for such rich content (if he ever happens to read the comments, thank you to Chris Rausch also for long service to one of my two or three most cherished franchises). I almost cried a few times during. The Pro Skater series (along with The Sims), literally, franchises I've been playing since I was a small child and loved to death. I played the Playstation Magazine demo disc THPS1 build, played the hell out of retail THPS1/2 solo and in trick attack with my siblings. Tony Hawk's Underground was the first game in the series that I owned myself in middle school (prior games were technically my brother's). The open world, the characters (Stacy Peralta, Bam Margera, Eric Sparrow, etc), it was an incredible experience. That franchise raised me, and I feel like I love it/can appreciate it even more as an adult. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 in particular, one of the best games of all time, and one of the handful of best direct sequels ever. Create a Skater, create a park, replays, Hangar/School II/Marseille/Venice Beach/etc. Also think spine transfers came in THPS2.
For the franchise as a whole, it obviously had a lot of ups and downs. Being forced to churn out a game annually, it inevitably ran into a lot of the feature creep stuff COD and Assassin's Creed are experiencing right now. I enjoyed Underground 2/Project 8/American Wasteland/Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD/etc, but obviously, the first 5 games (namely, THPS 1-3 and Underground) were special. Secret characters (Officer Dick, Ollie the Magic Bum, Darth Maul, Spiderman, etc), secret stages (there was a Kiss world in one of the underground games, I think, and I remember the hidden cave on Marseille in THPS2), etc. Just an incredible series that I've spent a lot of time with. The gameplay meta of THPS is my favorite in the history of video games. Everything Chris described in the interview, they executed on. The balance, individuality and variety, along with the endless replayability the series is known for. Also loved hearing him talk about the Skate series which offered fundamentally different but also extremely fun elements to skateboarding games. Hope to see the genre make a comeback. Both for the arcade and simulation styles.
thanks so much for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Great to hear your thoughts and insight :)
Thank you so much for making this video, very insightful
thanks for the kind words! I appreciate it, feel free to give it a share if you want others to check it out :)
Awesome video. THPS2 changed my life
butters226 Hangar/School II/Marseille/etc. One of the best direct sequels of all time.
butters226 PRO 2 WAS THA SHIT 🔥🐐💯
Thankyou Chris for making my childhood far better than it would have been without these games 🙏 they were and in sorts still are my life 👏
HEY guys look up Project session.. its a new skateboarding game coming out in the summer of this year. they did very well with the kickstarter they had.
It isn't coming out this summer, the beta or Game Preview for Xbox One & Steam is coming out this May. - A fellow backer
"Guerrilla Radio" and "Blood Brothers" are 2 songs that are engraved in my brain because of the second game, great memories staying up all night at friends houses playing them.
Imagine feeling that THUG was the moment the game started going downhill since childhood and then hearing the lead developer say the same thing when you are an adult.
Closure is real guys.
Watching this in 2023. Great interview I like how the footage matched the topics. I’m 30 years old so all this stuff was happening at its peak when I was a young teenager. Great times.
To help out with the skate conversation.
Skate 3 was rushed because black box was getting hit hard by the recession back in 2010, so rather than not putting out anything, they put out what they had. Then black box gradually went under and ea bought them as ea was only the publisher out of a contract where black box would make ea titles like need for speed underground and ea would make black box titles if they wanted to make their own. Then when they went under, they got bought by ea as to be used as mobile game devision, but ea got hit by the recession and let go of all their employees while keeping the game rights. Black box had massive plans for skate, like a map editor that was gonna be 1000% better than what we got, and a better hardcore mode that had a balance meter type system. Black box did fix the game a bunch, but it was with the dlc that not many people bought. Black box did hint a bunch as to what was going on though, especially how this was gonna be the unofficial last game, the biggest one was the "jumping the shark" reference right at the start of the game.
One of my friends worked for black box, his brother is a pro snowboarder that went to the first two Olympics and started at my home hill (wont give personal info other than that). Black box was not a bunch of programmers that got contracted to make the game, skate was made by the developers who skated on their spare time as smaller game based around the game of s.k.a.t.e, but the majority of black box was made up of skaters or people who had similar interests, including the people in charge. Skate worked because it was the made by skaters and understood the skater impute more. This is why the game felt more natural to skating, where thps felt like a mortal kombat as that was the trend when thps1 came out.
I wish myspace saved all my messages with my friend back when skate 1 came out. :(
Holy shit to think the original designer of THPS games works at Nicalis, I love their games & port of Cave Story. Feels good to know that.
Great Video! But i wonder why no one ever talks about Project 8 and Proving Grounds. I mean it were decent games at last, and by far better than shred and THPS 5. But i feel like the world never took notice that these two games even exist which is sad, if you ask me.
And American wasteland I really liked that one too don’t know about the rest of the community
This is so insightful. Great interview man!
Glad you liked it, thanks so much for watching!
The Tony Hawk series holds a special place in my heart. I loved exploring every area, looking for things to grind and kickflip off of. The music and atmosphere were so perfect. I would love to see a fantastic reboot of the series. Great video man!
damn, neversoft origins, i miss the old days
I loved Project 8 and kind of Proving Ground. I would’ve liked to hear them included.
Matthew Jurado heard both those were ass
He didnt work on those...
Broken Wave he talked bout ride & shred but didnt work on those either. would have been interesting to just hear a quick opinion
I love thp8. Thpg is also very good
@@playstationskate345 Those games didn't fit his narrative 🤣
Excellent interview - really appreciate it as a megafan back in the day, its fun to get nerdy on the history of this stuff - thanks !
Thanks so much for the kind words mate! Really happy to see people enjoy it, take care!
That was a fantastic and very in-depth interview. Amazing quality, very professional and interesting, and i learned pretty much everything i wanted to know about the development of the TH series! And I love how Chris gave his opinion on the newer games including Skate. Inspirational! I only wished he mentioned something about the soundtracks of the series, the songs in those games are what I feel really made the unique game even more unique !
This video will blow up, get this on Reddit or whatever, I want to see this video at 100k by the end of the month
This is one of the best interviews I’ve ever heard. Fascinating stuff the whole way through
that's such a huge compliment mate, thank you! Your support means a lot, thanks for watching!
Such a cool interview. Thanks. Loved the exact titles Chris commented. Hawk series up to THAW is one of my most favorite.
the rise of these tony hawk/skate games youtube videos make me hopeful for the future of skating video games. thanks game brain we always need more publicity for these games
thanks for watching! the support means the world mate.
Love the insight into how pro skater came about and evolved. Great interview!
thanks for the kind words, glad you enjoyed it:)
I've been on UA-cam since '05, these videos are what it's all about..awesome!
Your support means the world, thanks so much for watching!
It's insane how many people started skateboarding because of this game. Before this there was a game called Street Sk8r on PS1, it had a good soundtrack just like THPS but it was very similar to Top Skater. THPS raised the bar just like EA Skate did after THPS. The creative aspect of it is what made the game so much fun in my opinion. I used to be pretty active on the THPS official forum back in the day on Delphi, some of the devs would post on there as well. It was a great community. I skipped school when the THPS2 demo came out just to play it, that's how much this game meant to me and a lot of other people at the time
this was an awesome new way to hear about a game that has so much content out about it. great work!
Thanks a million my friend! Appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts. Stay tuned for a big documentary I've got cooking atm.
@@GameBrainOfficial my attention has been grabbed! excited to see what's in store.
Thanks for the upload, really enjoyed the interview.
Very enjoyable interview. This brings me back to Pro Skater 3, the one that shaped my early gaming days. It's always interesting to hear other people talk about the Tony Hawk game that meant the most to them. I regret not looking into the other ones simply because 3 felt like the definitive one to me.
this was a very interesting interview, I was actually quite pleased to learn a fair bit about what happened behind-the-scenes on some of these games, as I still play a handful of these today and I still love them greatly, but it also gave great insight to how things are where they are now. I'm just sad that Neversoft is gone, since they made some of my absolute favorite games, like Spider-Man for the PlayStation 1, or even Gun on PlayStation 2/PC, I will forever cherish these games for the great passion and well thought out design they had in the early years.
This is NPR grade journalism at it's best. I had such a great time watching this.
Thanks so much, I take that as a massive compliment. Stay tuned for more content of even better quality coming very soon!
Great interview. Provides a great perspective. Thank you for doing this, and thank you to Chris for doing this interview.
Stumbled across your channel/video. Thanks for the nostalgia. Great video and he seems like a stand up guy.
This was great. Thank you for this!
This was fantastic! Really love and appreciate original content like this. Please make more like this.
Thanks so much for the kind words! I appreciated all the support, feel free to give the video a share if you want to :)
Loved this video. Session and Skater XL are coming out soon, and they both look really good. The future is bright!
Great interview and i love the answers he gave to all of you questions. Hope fmto see more stuff from you this year
Incredible interview. Thanks for this!
no thank you for watching! i appreciate the support :)
Incredible video and interview. One of my favorite developers interview so far. I hope we get more like this. :)
Thanks so much for watching! Really appreciate the support.
I was a teenager and skating right when the first game came out. It hit home for not only skaters, but also people that had never been on a skateboard because it was just fun to play and had great mechanics. Before that, there were only the game "Street Sk8er" on the PS1, which was really just a copy of the Top Skater arcade game and played similar. You just raced checkpoints and had no control over the moves. It was fun at the time, but left a lot to be desired. When Pro Skater came out it just made Street Sk8er competely irrelevant with how the moves worked and how it was an open world environment you could skate around in. It was just what you wanted out of a skateboarding game.
I still have my Jampack disc with the first demo! It ruled at the time, no audio control, heard that song in the demo 6,000,000 times
Fascinating interview. Great job with the video, buddy. Going to go check out your other Tony Hawk video now.
Very humbling man! thanks for checking out the video :)
playing 2 + 3 as a 7 year old was influential, played it with my twin brother and he would always say he wanted to be a skater, i thought he was crazy. soon enough we got skateboards and skated for years as did many of our friends and family. spectating my friends play thug2 was fun because of how cinematic and over the top it is. in retrospect the dev effort could have been better spent but it left a big impression on me as a 10 year old. the soundtrack for all of these games stuck with me and playing the remaster a couple years ago was a lot of fun.
THUGPRO and THUG+ are the next fan made mods to continue the legacy. go download it
ngmaze I love thugpro
which one shall i get? either way, i need to pick up an old windows cd rom yeah?
pro
Thug pro is so fun
skate 2 is one of the best games of all time.
Oh yeah, no doubt.
Skate 3 is WAY better once you get the dlc and access to merge glitch parks. Skate 2 is for cavemen as that's what the characters look like. Skate 3 has the best of it all, just shit vanilla map.
@@Red1676 the map in skate 3 is literally garbage the only redeeming quality of skate 3 is the refined control and interface improvements
@@Red1676 the map is such a huge part of the game though. The dlc is bomb though
I think that closing dialogue from Chris basically sums it up no just for skating games, but for recent gaming in general, its not that no one wants to play these games anymore, we just want better ones...
This was awesome. I never owned these games but my friend had an xbox and we would play then sometimes. They blew me away cause I never had a home console until later when I got a ps2.
I could listen to this guy talk for hours
Thanks for the video, THPS games always have been close to my heart!
Great guest and very clean editing. Props to you~
Very interesting interview and awesome that you put the time in to match the video to the interview.
Subscribed!
Thanks so much for checking out the video, welcome to the channel!
To this day I think if they just kept upping the graphics, move sets, Easter eggs/special tricks/levels, but kept the game play, experience, and format generally the same, the games would still be popular. They could have just come out with a new one every 3 years or so.
Great vid and interview. Watching this now that THPS1+2 remake will be coming out
Thanks for taking a look friend. Seems like I should get a bunch of THPS developers together to discuss their work on the first two games?
I played THPS 1-4, then AMPED 1-2, then SKATE 1-3. Once they start making your board glitter and have way too many outrageous components, it just kills the organic feel and spirit of skateboarding and snowboarding in the games.
It's hard for developers to create motivational objectives in games with that perfect balance of realism while still escaping it. It's what we play them for. They did an amazing job in these titles with that.
I loved being able to dress my characters in actual clothing that I owned as a teenager... so with games like SS Tricky (although still pretty fun), it was just so unrealistic and outrageous with tricks and characters to the point that I couldn't relate to it. I'm also not a fan of anime-type characters, so I'm a little biased.
Thanks for watching mate! Great to hear your thoughts and insight. Take care!
Great to hear from the game designers! More videos like this 🔥🔥
Excellent video, and excellent song choice at the end.
For those wondering: Books of war - RZA and MF DOOM
Thanks so much for the support, thanks for watching!
Ffs thank you
Great interview. THPS still remains one of my favorite games of all time.
thanks for the kind words, appreciate it!
I played the July 1999 OPM demo for thps1 so much the disc stopped working. Got that game the following Christmas and played the hell out of it.
As for Ride I recall seeing those games (and decks) in the Amazon facility I use to work in as late as 2019. Probably still in there.
Thanks make this video about Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Series I’m fan of series as young teen
Watching the THPS footage almost made me dizzy, and reminded me that I don't miss THPS' "go up the halfpipe, do forty kickflips and a 900, grind along a powerline, backflip off and land a 100m drop to a perfect manual".
That Skate footage was a breath of fresh air. I loved the frustration of spending an hour trying to nail a line where I manualed on a flat, grinded (ground?) a planter, then manualed back out, because when I did, it was an achievement.
Session is looking amazing, and will be much more difficult than Skate, especially now that they're adding in a catch mechanic where you have to push a button to catch a kickflip.
This is such an amazing video good job! I was absolutely shocked when I saw you only have 8k subscribers. Your channel is very underrated. I hope that changes you deserve so much more. Such a professional, interesting, educational, & unique video! Absolutely perfect!
Oh boy, that video me realize again that I would really love a good new Tony Hawk like game. Great interview, Chris seems like a cool guy.
thanks heaps for watching! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Great video! Very excited to hear these games are coming back soon, and that the original code (probably Chris's!) is being used to make sure the remaster feels right
Thanks for watching Jake, I hadn't seen that they were using the original code, but that's an interesting tidbit I hope makes the remake better.
Quality.
Another phenomenal piece of delicious journalistic goodness, Mr Game Brain. It's both fascinating and depressing to hear a first-hand account of all the corporate fuckery that goes into killing a beloved franchise. This channel deserves so much more than 5.4k subscribers! I hope UA-cam eventually recognises you and gives you some more consistent exposure. :)
wow man, thanks SO much for the support, it really means the world. Thanks for watching :)
very cool interview!
thank you!
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground was the last great Tony Hawk game. It's a shame the series has gone downhill so much. Hell, my copies of the the Tony Hawk games from childhood on are so scratched up from playing them, they just don't work anymore. I've hard to replace copies and I'm still looking for some of the games to replace when I get the money. But the Skate games really do scratch the itch, and I'm grateful for that. Skate 1 and 2 are pretty damn good. Skate 3 wasn't the best, but it sufficed and slightly improved upon the formula that was already in place. I don't know, though. It would be cool to see a good Tony Hawk game again.
Proving Ground had a good idea but horrible execution with physics.
The physics were a step up from what they were in Project 8. Glad they took out the ragdoll physics when you bail. I do wish they would have kept the option to roll out of a bail, though. Never seen that mechanic used in any other game. I thought the physics in THPG were on par with that of older games, though. Plus with the "Sim Mode", it made for slightly more "realistic" skating, but I do have to admit that could have been done much better. Much too slow in Sim Mode, and the gravity was downplayed a little too much.
I heard proving ground was trash like project 8 , if it's good like y'all said it is
I might get that .
Project 8 was good for what it was, being on new consoles and everything. Proving Ground just took everything P8 did and expanded on it, made it better. It's extremely overlooked because most people prefer Skate. And while Skate does deserve the praise it gets, Proving Ground is still worth playing at least a couple times.
The Mad Hattress eh just seems like a huge downgrade after wasteland .
I first played THPS on the Jampack Summer '99 Demo Disc. So when the game came out I rented it I was amazed at how much better it looked from the early demo. More detailed characters, standing up animation, and BLOOD which was not in the old demo. It felt like I was playing a sequel altogether.
Man, this was a great listen, it confirmed a lot of the more subliminal feelings i had for thps 3 and 4, and thug1 and 2. Thps2 was my first heavily played thps, but i played or owned them all through to american wasteland, and you can really feel that thps1 and 2 was somehow more focused and passionate and less rushed and demanded than 3, with the crew expanding five fold. Also the story behind thug 2 really rings true, it seems really over the top in a lot of the ways i remember that game. Of course thps is the more over the top and arcade-y franchise in hindsight with titles like skate, and now session, but yeah, even at the time i remember feeling like thug2 kinda went a bit too heavily into that sugar fuelled short attention span explosions and yeah fucken rocket powered segways or whatever, it just was a bit surreal, even for the tony hawk games. Rest in peace to the franchise, damn sure didnt play any of the games with the peripheral frisbee or anything, it's a sad way to go, for such a legendary franchise that really did have a lot of heart and innovation and simply, invention in it. Thanks for the vid and thank you to the best of these games for the countless hours well spent, for introducing me to so so much great music, and for tony hawk for changing the world. I wouldnt have started skateboarding without these games, and to this day skateboarding is still the extreme sport that turns up in ads for smartphones and shit. It's inherent beauty in fluidity has permeated culture like nothing else. I love you skateboarding 🙏
So glad you enjoyed it friend, thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts! I agree with your thoughts on THUG 2, I think Pro Skater will always live and die by its skateboarding alone. Everything else is ancillary.
Just found this channel and I love the way you do these interviews, I'm surprised you don't have more subs. Awesome videos man, keep it up! It's awesome to hear these stories and answers from actual developers of my favorite games.
Bought that jampack for $5 from the real canadian super store back in the day! I used to load it up after the game was actually released to see the differences
TIL: Chris is the reason why THPS1 / 4 & THUG Is so fuckin great
You forgot that budget remake of THPS2 from around 2012 - it’s actually pretty good.
I even forgot that Shred existed 'till I saw this video. Lol.
Fantastic interview.
thank you! thanks for watching :)
This guy is crazy, THUG1 & 2 were the best games in the entire franchise, for me that was peak popularity and what I dumped the most hours into. THUG 2 was so much fun
What a good interview. I'm glad reddit showed me this. Your content seems amazing man keep it up
thanks so much for checking it out! I really appreciate the support :)
Very very interesting interview ! iGlad to see Chris Rausch still being stoked about skate games, and actually it's pretty cool that he loved the Ea skate games. Very interesting for skate video games culture ! thanks :D
Maybe one day he'll be interested on working a new skate game. Who knows
thanks for watching! great to hear your thoughts :)
Wow that was a great interview. I miss tony hawk games
Listening to this while playing tony hawk pro skater 4.
Great interview. I love hearing behind the scenes stuff like this. And he’s right there’s still a huge demand for skate games. I work retail near a school, and swear kids still come to me in 2018 asking for Skate 3.
JoJos GameShow Probably because it's backwards compatible on Xbox One (and got an emulator side 4K update for the Xbox One X). Great to hear though. There's a democracy and community to skateboarding games that's just special.
thanks for the kind words, and thanks for watching!
This was great, thank you. I adored THPS despite never picking up a skateboard in my life and was sad to see the franchise as well as Skate die a really untimely death. *_cue Superman by Goldfinger_*
Thanks so much for watching! Very humbled by the support.
Knowing the guy that helped make games that formed my childhood, helped make a game that has shaped my adult life (BOI:AB)
I always play Tony Hawk video games changed my life for the better even in my childhood while growing up playing all of them.
I remember going to get pro skater as a kid and I had never been more excited to play a game ever
And now we have the remaster ;)
Would love to see an updated video with the recent remasters
Great point, things turned around a lot since this video was made! So much has been learned about how not to 'bring back' old franchises. The sad reality is returning to what made them good is a great fix for a few remasters, but moving forward how series like THPS progress is pretty hard to see.
awesome video. thanks for that
you're most welcome, thanks for the support!
I played this for the first time on the pizza hut demo disk at a friend's house.