tony made another game and decided not to use any of my ideas, that's fine. i 100%'d the first game over a couple days and it's fun to look back at how completely inept at it i was at the start. now with this one i'm going into it already knowing what a skateboard is. think it's funny that of all the game series i decide to start playing through sequentially on here, the one i follow through with is a largely iterative annual one. i'll play Zelda 2 or Final Fantasy 2 as soon as they add kickflips thank you very much

this PS1 character creator is kinda crazy. i thought this only became a thing in these games way later on damn. amazed at how in-depth the skill customization is too, i can buy new tricks for my guy whoaa. and it's with in-game money too before you get put off by the Activision logo. finally i can be my own pro skater, not Tony Hawk's nor anyone else's. it won't let me be a girl

ough i'm not that into a lot of the soundtrack on this one. didn't think it would get worse for me than "i am the ambassador of kick-your-ass-ador" but i still prefer my doofy punk rock over the my-body-is-healthy-my-rhymes-make-me-wealthy-type hip-hop. whatever i'm not a stickler for licensed game soundtracks anyway, people praise these games for the soundtracks but in the end it's just some guy's playlist. i can just play my own playlist over it. tracks 1 through 18 are Superman by Goldfinger and track 19 is the 2022 version of Superman by Goldfinger

i mentioned i never played any of the games with the 2-minute time limit, and here it feels a little overwhelming when paired with the bigger sprawling levels and double-sized list of objectives. my entire first session in a new stage is just going "Okay uhhh uhh where does this go oh okay one of the five things that i need for that is over there and, oh what's, that's for something else that i need five of alright, okay a full minute has passed and i've forgotten to do a single trick". also starting to think i maybe shoulda played the Dreamcast version for the better render distance, mighta helped alleviate some of the difficulty of building mental maps

the objectives are also weirdly esoteric? unless it's someting like "jump over 3 signs" i have to look up what most of them are even asking of me. they'll be like "do this specific trick on Greg's Hubris" and Greg's Hubris turns out to be the name of a random unremarkable ledge. i don't go to this school dude i don't know what all these places are called

average new york experience, i assume

it wasn't until after i'd completed the final level that i realized i could upgrade my board from its minimum stats....at least i think that's what i was doing. it looked like i was just unlocking new decals but each one i bought in succession increased my stats? i think? strange way of doing it if so. needed more money for this but according to a guide i was looking at there was one area filled with cash that i just couldn't find. i double-checked a few times to make sure i was even playing the right level and game. turns out i had to do this

i was putting all my money into stats first, then tricks in order of price. there's a whole heap of new tricks i'm able to buy but i didn't know if the maximum amount of cash i can earn would be enough to account for absolutely everything, and after 100%ing the game it turned out it wasn't. there are a few expensive special moves i now can never unlock, and it bothers me a nonzero amount. i'll never need them because i've 100%'d the game. but i bet i would've looked so so cool doing them

listen i'm currently facing the repercussions of wrecking my sleep schedule in order to play this. i was up way late trying to get that final competition medal once again, and then i was up even way later playing through the game again as Tony. the sun came up, in the middle of winter. it turns out this second-highest-rated game of all-time on metacritic is really fun you have to believe me. but look at what i've accomplished. spiderman has arrived

this is one of very few games i can 100% (except for the "gap checklist") and immediately be like, yeah i could do that again, right now i could get started on another 100% playthrough. but only my sane person version of 100%ing it, not this game's version which involves doing the exact same thing with all fifteen characters in order to unlock the secret characters and stages. come on dude this game's great but i'm not doing this. i'm not. okay i'm not. and i'm not repeating what i say just to convince myself. i'm not. i'm not repeating myself for that reason

think this is the biggest combo i've managed to pull off so far. i have a habit of going more for what feels cool instead of a lot of similar things in a row that are sure to rack up a lot of points, which i guess on some level speaks to how well this game plays. i never really thought of these as platformers but they absolutely are and have to be some of the most satisfying ones you can play on your video game system. oh mario can jump on his hat? please. watch this [i press square at the wrong time and break both my legs]

kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill kill

my justification for replaying the game was that Tony's unlockable board decals are all bird-themed, then i got back up to the last couple levels i had trouble with before and decided to call it. so that's Tony's Return to Skate Island done with! favorite soundtrack lyric award goes to "i don't give a kcuf like the f-word reversed"

that's this version of the game done with at least.... this time there are two more completely separate portable version for GBC and GBA. two more Pro Skater 2s can you believe this!! i was honestly gonna try out both of them until i took a look at the GBA version and, that is essentially the same game but with an isometric camera. i don't know how they did that. i actually don't feel the need to play it at all because of how good it looks

this one has more than 15 minutes of game! same general formula as the regular version this time too, with the objectives and the teaching Tony how to spell 'skate' etc.

game feels pretty good whenever there isn't a ramp involved, because i could not get a handle on these gameboy-physics. after much struggling with reaching midair collectibles i realized i just couldn't get to it because of my board's stats. after a level or two i could then afford the best board in the game, but now there were collectibles it seemed like i was too fast to be able to get

thought it was weird it was showing me a password whenever i exited out of career mode, because it would let me go right back in and continue my progress (obvious why in hindsight) and also why would an Activision game from 2000 still be using passwords for saves. anyway i opened it back up after a short break and realized, among other things, i didn't care enough to replay up to where i was at. plus i was worried i'd end up getting enough out of it to have to decide whether it should be its own journal. still a pretty impressive little boardgame