Tony Hawk Admits Pro Skater 1 & 2 Remaster Is "Way Better Than I Ever Imagined"

Activision announced Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 earlier today - a remaster of the first two games in the iconic skateboarding series for Xbox One, coming on September 4th. As part of the Summer Game Fest reveal, both Tony Hawk and Vicarious Visions Studio Head Jen Oneal talked more about the process of making the game, with Hawk admitting that the final product is "way better than I ever imagined."

"I was talking to Activision about some other stuff - about some charity events - and the idea was like, why don't we remaster this? And when it came from them I said, "you don't understand how many people have asked me that." And I tried to explain to them that I don't have a team of coders behind me that I can just go make this happen. And they said yeah, let's get on it, and they immediately tapped Vicarious Visions and off we went. And I mean, honestly, the end product is way better than I ever imagined."

This isn't the first time Vicarious Visions (Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy) has developed a Tony Hawk title - the company previously worked on various games in the series for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. Additionally, Studio Head Jen Oneal revealed that multiple members of the team have been involved for the lifetime of the series, with some having previously joined from original Tony Hawk developer Neversoft. Oneal herself was producer on three of the games.

In terms of how the development team tackled the project, Oneal revealed that the biggest focus was to get the iconic Tony Hawk style of gameplay right, ensuring that it "feels like you remember it":

"In approaching this, the number one thing for us was to get it to feel right. It's got to be a high quality game that feels like you remember it. So, we started with the Neversoft engine, looking at the Neversoft codebase for the handling, brought that over. [We] also looked at the level layouts and bringing over the geometry as a starting point, and then you upgrade everything from there, from the animations to those high-res graphics, to those quality of life improvements that modern gamers expect."

If you want to get your hands on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 for Xbox One, digital pre-orders are available now on the Microsoft Store for £39.99/$39.99. Everyone who pre-orders digitally will get free access to a Warehouse Demo at some point prior to launch, and there's also a Deluxe Edition featuring retro content and ‘The Ripper’ character from Powell-Peralta.

Will you be picking up Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2 later this year? Let us know in the comments.

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[source youtube.com]