Activision Reveals Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5

I have a disproportionate fondness for the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games, namely because Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 was one of the first games I ever played on my Nintendo 64 ages and ages ago. Since then, however, the series has been on downward slope in terms of quality, and with the Skating Genre mostly dead it’s about time that downward slope curve back up into the ramp we were all hoping it’d become.

Fortunately, that may be coming soon; as a recent preview of the next Game Informer magazine has revealed that Activision has been working on Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5!

While this initial reveal wasn’t too… revealing (they have to keep some secrets for the actual magazine, I imagine) it is telling enough that I can report on it, given my history with the franchise. Activision promises to take the series back to it’s classical roots with this game, and here’s what we can say for sure about the current product, not having read the full reveal; it’s coming out later this year for current-gen systems, a well as last-gen systems soon after the fact. Tony Hawk will be playable (duh), as well as the following names I’m supposed to recognize: Nyjah Huston, Aaron Homoki, Ishod Wair, Riley Hawk, Lizzie Armanto, Chris Cole, David Gonzalez, Leticia Bufoni, and Andrew Reynolds. There will be a robust multiplayer mode for both competitive and co-operative play. The park editor is back, to little surprise, and your creations can be shared with the world as well. They also say the online play is “seamless”, but I’m not 100% certain what they mean by that.

Most interesting, however, is this… and I’m just gonna make this a direct quote, “The game weds the series' finely tuned gameplay with new additions such as power-ups and the ability to shoot projectiles for specific missions.”

...so Mario Kart. They’re putting Mario Kart in Tony Hawk Pro Skater 5. Alright, I can dig it.

Either way, we won’t know much more until next month’s Game Informer comes out, so we’ll just have to speculate until then.