When it first launched back in 1999, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater inspired a generation of wannabe skaters with its sense of cool action and its iconic soundtrack. We even ranked it as one of the absolute best game of the 1990s, calling it “a remnant of an era when the millennium was young, life was rad, the future was irrelevant, and goofing off was life.”
To celebrate the game’s 20th anniversary, Tony Hawk himself has recently revisited it and shared some details about its creation. Perhaps the most surprising tidbit he shared was the revelation that the development team actually used motion capture to attempt to recreate his signature skating tricks.
As can be seen in the Twitter video, Hawk was geared up in a full motion capture suit while performing some of his showiest moves. Unfortunately, he says that none of this actually made it into the final product, due to time constrictions near the end of development.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater released twenty years ago for the original PlayStation, where it quickly became a cultural phenomenon. To understand just how big of a deal it was (and still is), check out our retrospective piece.
