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> Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
REVIEW - It was actually quite a while ago when I first saw a screenshot of this game. I think it was actually back before it was even released in Japan in March, but that's besides the point. A long while back, pocket.ign.com released one screenshot of the game that was sent to them. It showed a slightly polygonal character grinding the edge of a halfpipe. Although looking a bit dark and out of proportion, everyone was immediately surprised by the game's appearance. Message boards all over were full to the brim of discussion whether this was really a GBA game or the screenshot of a new Playstation version of the game.
 Not long after this screenshot was eyed by the public, Activison released more screens and announced that it was, indeed, a Game Boy Advance game. Now these screenshots were much lighter in contrast, and didn't look so out of proportion. The game was extremely close to it's final stages, and it was looking just incredible. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. That's a name that almost any gamer knows. It's a skateboarding game where you choose one of 13 different pros and rip it up in one of 6 (plus one secret) parks. There are three modes, Career Mode, Free Skate and Single Session. Career Mode is where you choose a certain character and travel through parks with them, collecting more money which helps to unlock more parks and competitions. You gain money to build up your character's stats, which include Ollie, Air, Hangtime, Rail Balance, Lip Balance, Manual and many more. In Career Mode, there are 10 different things to complete in each level. Every level has a High Score, Pro Score, and Sick Score. They are in that very order, and the Sick Score in some levels can be up to 250,000 points! That's quite a bit, and it takes a while to complete. Other things in levels are collecting the letters "S-K-A-T-E", breaking a certain amount of crates or barrels in a level, and collecting a secret tape. Free Skate is a mode where your score is automatically erased after landing a combo. Free Skate never ends, so it's a good place to try out new cheats, specials, learn new things and just to have fun. Single Session is like a mix of Career Mode and Free Skate, you have 2 minutes to skate, and the point is to try and get as many points as possible in that two minutes. To get points, you have to complete tons of different combos (multiple moves connected to eachother). There's lots of fun tricks you can do, which all have to do with many different things. Pressing the B button will make your character do an ollie (a jump). To make this much more effective, just hold B, and your character will crouch, gaining more speed. This not only helps you to get around, but when you take your finger off the A button when crouching, your character will ollie much higher because of the speed. There are different variations of the ollie, which are done by the D-Pad and the L button. First is the Nollie. This is pretty easy to do, just press L while on riding normally on the ground and you will be switched to Nollie mode, so the next time you ollie, you perform a Nollie and land normal again. Another way is that if you are riding Switch (opposite foot), and you press L, you will now be in Fakie mode. Press B to perform a Fakie Ollie. These are just two different ways of ollying to help you get more points. Now, there are two more ollie variations, which are the easiest ones, and probably the ones you'll be using most. These are especially best for reaching higher spots. Press up on the D-Pad the same time you ollie to do a No Comply. This is pretty easy to do, and helps make your ollie a bit higher. Next is the Boneless, which is almost as easy to perform. Just double tap up on the D-Pad the same time you ollie. Now that we have the ollie variations down-pat, there are a few more things you should learn about. When you are on a rail, the side of a halfpipe, top of a wall, or pretty much anything else grindable, press A while you have a certain direction selected on the D-Pad to perform a grind. Different D-Pad directions will do different grinds, some of which are easy to balance but give a crappy amount of points, and some that are harder to balance but give more points. Next is the flip tricks and grabs. Pressing L and a certain direction while in the air will perform a certain flip trick. The trick depends completely on which way you direct the D-Pad. The same goes with grabs, while holding the R button and a certain direction, you can do a different trick. To make your grabs and flip tricks (especially grabs) more effective, while you are in the air, if you do a grab, don't let go of the D-Pad, rather slide your thumb to the closest/most comfortable diagonal spot on the pad. This will make your character spin while doing their tricks. This really helps rack up the points, trust me, you won't get nearly as far, high, or as many points if you don't learn how to effectively spin your grabs. Not necessarily one of the most important parts, but definately one of the coolest parts of this game are the Special tricks. Whichever character you have chosen to play the game with, is not that important when it comes to specials. Sure, every character begins with 3 specials, which are usually unique to your character's actual real life skating style, and these can't be deleted, but once you have more money, you can easily buy up to 3 more specials. Having 6 cool specials is great, especially considering the Playstation version only allowed you 5. Sure, it's only one more, but you want as many specials as you can get in these games, they're all really cool, and some are even innovative, like the Casper to 360 Flip and the Muska Nose Manual. All of these moves are done by certain combinations, which are harder to complete then normal tricks. Say a Varial Kickflip is L + Up + Left. This can be pulled off by holding Up and Left at the same time, in a diagonal fashion. But if, say, a Nollieflip Underflip was L + Up + Left, you have to hit Up, and then hit Left as soon as possible, without any dragging on the D-Pad at all. Once you get used to doing specials like this, and you know the correct combinations for the specials you have, you'll actually find it pretty easy to pull them off. Try to play with many different characters. Some of them have moves which can not be bought with others, like Tony Hawk's 900, which is amazingly cool looking, but only Tony Hawk can buy it. Just thinking about it, I realized I haven't said a single thing about the graphics yet! So... they're amazing! The graphics are so crisp and clear, that sometimes I think they are just as good as Playstation. Alot of people think this opinion is pretty cool, but if you think about it, other than when it zooms up on a special, everything is so small (but still very clear) that there are no pixels. The backgrounds may not be polygons, but they are still very crisp with not a pixel on them. This makes the game that much more of a pleasure to play. I think that in the car or anywhere else but home, this is actually more preferable to me than the Playstation version. It's nice, portable, and practically the same game, so it's not like you're missing out on much. I'll admit it, it takes a while to get used to. But once you have the controls mastered, and the you know the view (if you're a fan of the PSX versions, it doesn't take long), then you'll most likely like it just as much. Vicarious Visions sure knew what they were doing when they made this game. When you go behind something, like a helicopter in the Hangar, or a portable at the School, the object goes slightly transparent so that you can see your character behind it. This is actually a very good idea, it doesn't get in the way of you playing, and doesn't do something stupid like make the object disappear (which would probably look very pixelly). The last thing I'd like to say about the graphics is that the framerate is amazing. It's much better than the Playstation version, in which the character makes very poor movements. The frame rate seems much more perfected in this game, especially because it isn't so close up, so the company could project this much easier. All in all, the graphics are simply the best so far on the GBA, and Vicarious Visions and Activison have proudly announced that this is just "scratching the surface" of the GBA's polygonal quality. Awesome! I admit it, I hate the music in Tony Hawk 2. At first, I loved it. But after a while, it just gets sickening. The same beats over and over and the missing void that actually makes those beats the punk and rock music from the original. Sure, Majesco tried hard, and did make very good songs, but after a while they just get boring, they're just not as fitting to the game as they probably could be. Songs like this work with Iridion 3D, but for some reason, I just don't find it clicks. Sorry, I'm kind of rambling on here, I'm just trying to explain my weird point of view, especially since most people adore the tunes in that game. Atleast you can change the volume and choose your track, etc. I like that, and there is one track I like. For some reason I really like playing the game to Track 4, but even that gets boring if you play it over and over... With lots of different things to do, and collecting everything can take a while, especially the tape in New York City. Fortunately, collecting everything isn't a hassle or chore, it's very fun and gives you something to do. I actually found the game just as fun with every character I played it through with (which is everyone). It's alot of fun to collect all the cheats, and there is quite a few to collect. Pretty much all the cheats are just extra fun things. The cheats are as follows:
Those aren't the only cheats/secrets in the game. There are actually two secret characters and a secret level. The secret characters happen to be Spiderman and Mindy. Spiderman was a secret character in the original Tony Hawk 2 for the PSX/DC, and he's back in this version with the same moves. You can unlock Spidey by getting all the gaps in the game and getting 100% with every character. You can unlock Mindy by getting all the gaps up to the secret level, Boston Rooftops. To get Boston, it's actually alot easier than most of the things in this game, but that's a-okay, considering the level is probably the worst thing you can make. It seems like Vicarious Visions tossed this in just screwing around and making a piece of crap level that doesn't make much sense. But that's okay. Anyways, if you still want to get it, just get a gold in both competitions (Marsielle and Skatestreet) with every character. Alot easier than getting 100% with every guy, that's for sure. Altogether, I'd say this was one of the best launch games. If you're a PSX man, love skateboarding or you just love the Tony Hawk series, you'll most definately love this game (or atleast I'd hope so). The graphics are amazing for such a small system, they're clear and crisp, and the framerate and animation are as smooth as slime on a road. The game play and level layouts may take a while to get used to, but after time (it only took me about a half hour to get used to it), you'll be just as good as you are in the PSX/DC version, and you'll probably like it just as much. It's a great trip game, and I'll bring it with me on any vacation I take. I definately suggest you buy or atleast rent or try a friend's copy of this game, it's well worth the time.
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