25 years of "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater": boards that mean the world

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It was exactly 25 years ago that "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" rolled into the stores: First on September 29, 1999 in the USA, then about a month later here (under the name "Tony Hawk's Skateboarding"). This was by no means the first skateboarding game: the history of this very special genre goes back to 1986. This was when Atari Games released a machine called "720°", which brought the isometric scrolling madness to the arcades. A gigantic success that ensured that skateboarding games sprang up like mushrooms the very next year, with names such as "Skate Boardin'", "Skate or Die!" or "California Games" (in which skating in the half-pipe was one of six disciplines) as representative examples.

The mid-80s to early 90s was the heyday of skateboarding's media presence. The sport remained popular, but the games by and large disappeared. Then, in 1997, Sega released a machine called "Top Skater", which caused a sensation in the arcades with its 3D graphics and cool skateboard controller. Activision saw this and the popularity of the extreme sports event "X-Games", put two and two together and decided that the time was ripe for a cool skater game for the home. But who was going to develop it for them?

Neversoft, please?

Neversoft, founded in July 1994 in Woodland Hills, California, was hardly on anyone's radar at the time. Nobody was interested in their first game, the 1996 sidescroller "Skeleton Warriors", and the 1997 PlayStation port of the shiny shooter "MDK" was of significantly lower quality than the PC original. But then came 1998, and with it "Apocalypse": a not even bad shooter on the PlayStation, which had the special feature of Bruce Willis, who gave the hero a face and voice.

It was quite a success for publisher Activision, which put Neversoft straight onto the next contract – the 3D skateboarding game. Neversoft had never made a sports game before, let alone a skateboarding game, but the company had a very solid 3D engine and at least some of the employees were interested skaters themselves. Work on the game, which was initially just called "The Skateboarding Game", began in the late summer of 1998, and it quickly became clear that this title would not work. The game needed a catchy name. And in the skateboarding scene of the 80s and 90s, there was no name with more appeal than Tony Hawk.

The rise of the Birdman

Anthony Frank "Tony" Hawk, born in 1968, started skateboarding at a very early age, mainly to have an outlet for his hyperactivity. He quickly turned out to be the talent of the century on the wheels, winning one competition after another and creating a number of iconic tricks. He finally cemented his reputation as the best skater of all time in June 1999, when he became the first skater in the world to safely land the infamous 900 at the fifth X Games: a complicated, two-and-a-half-turn around its own axis, which to this day only the best of the best skaters can pull off – Even Tony took eleven attempts at the X Games before he was able to land the trick. The perfect candidate for the game.

Activision originally wanted to buy the rights to his name and likeness for the game from Tony for a fixed sum of 500,000 US dollars. But according to Tony himself, he was so convinced of the game that he preferred a royalty model, meaning he would earn money from every copy sold. This was actually a risky deal, as nobody knew at the time whether the game would be a success. It was a good decision.