Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 Review

Neversoft's second lap is where the series stops being a good arcade game and becomes a language. The manual is the whole invention: two flicks of the stick hold a balance between tricks, so a line that used to die at the lip of a quarter pipe now runs the length of a park and cashes out in six figures. Everything else exists to feed it. Create a skater and the money system give the two minute run a reason to repeat, the Hangar and Venice Beach are built as loops rather than playgrounds, and the licensed soundtrack does more character work than most narrative games manage.

The trick vocabulary is deep enough that expert players are still finding fresh routes a quarter century on. It shows its age in places. The camera fights you inside tight bowls, the original PlayStation build runs at a frame rate that makes precise landings a gamble, and the goal list is functionally identical in every park, so the late levels ask for the same nine tasks in a harder shape. None of that touches the core. This is the arcade sports game other arcade sports games get measured against.