There are a few things that almost every skater who grew up in the late 1990s or early 2000s has in common. They probably owned a pair of Vans. They definitely watched the X Games. And at some point, they sat in front of a TV with a PlayStation controller, grinding rails and chaining tricks together in a game that made skateboarding feel like the most exciting thing on the planet.
That game was Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. And it changed everything.
The Perfect Storm of 1999
A month before Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was released in August 1999, Tony Hawk had become the first skateboarder to land a 900, completing two-and-a-half mid-air revolutions on a skateboard.¹ It took him 11 attempts. When he finally landed it at the X Games, the crowd lost its mind, the cameras went everywhere, and suddenly a sport that had been living on the fringes of mainstream culture was front and centre.
Then the game dropped. The timing was not an accident. Skateboarding was already reaching new heights in popularity, and the original PlayStation was dominating the video game market.² Two massive waves met at exactly the right moment, and the result was something nobody in the industry had fully predicted.
A Game That Actually Felt Like Skating
Part of what made Tony Hawk's Pro Skater different from every skateboarding game before it was the obsessive attention to authenticity. The development team included actual skateboarders, and those who weren't went and built a backyard skatepark to learn. Hawk spent countless hours at the studio playing through builds and giving feedback, eventually selecting a group of professional skaters to include as playable characters, each receiving a cut of the royalties and the ability to choose their own attire and signature trick.²
The result was a game that skaters could respect and newcomers could love. Players could learn trick names as they appeared on screen, build combinations, and develop a genuine skating vocabulary without ever leaving their living room.³ Kids who had never set foot on a board were suddenly learning what a heelflip was, who Rodney Mullen was, and why the kickflip was the foundation of everything.
The Soundtrack Was Half the Magic
Ask anyone who played the original game what they remember most and there is a decent chance they mention the music before the tricks. The soundtrack pulled together punk, hip-hop, and ska in a way that felt completely native to skate culture. Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, Goldfinger, Speedealer. For a lot of kids it was their first real introduction to that entire world of music. Those songs became permanently wired to the feeling of skating, even for players who had never pushed off a curb. It was cultural immersion disguised as a video game.
A Billion Dollar Ripple Effect
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and its follow-up titles generated more than one billion dollars in sales, making the franchise one of the most successful video game series of all time.⁴ But the financial numbers are almost beside the point. The real impact showed up in skateparks.
Cities that had been resistant to building public skating facilities started seeing real demand from young people. Parents who had written off skateboarding as a reckless hobby started seeing it differently. The kid who spent all weekend playing THPS was the same kid asking for a board for Christmas. Research into the game's cultural impact found that it helped normalize skateboarding, transforming its image from countercultural pastime to mainstream activity, and that players who identified with skaters through the game were more likely to engage with real-world skating afterward.⁵
Why It Still Matters
More than 25 years later, the game's influence has not faded. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater is still regularly cited alongside a brother or a neighbour as one of the most common reasons people pick up a skateboard for the first time.⁶ It introduced a generation to the tricks, the skaters, the music, and the culture of skating before they had ever touched a board. For a lot of kids, it was the reason they ever wanted to try.
That is a remarkable thing for any piece of media to do. Most games entertain. This one genuinely changed what sport millions of kids wanted to play.
If your kid has been watching skating videos, gravitating toward skate culture, or already asking about getting a board, they are part of a long line of young people who caught the bug before they ever stepped on a deck. The next step is getting them out there for real.
At Evolve Camps, we run skateboarding programs across Toronto and the GTA for ages 6 to 14, with coaches who remember exactly what it felt like to fall in love with skating for the first time. Check out our summer sessions here https://evolvecamps.com/collections/summer
¹ Tony Hawk lands the 900 at the 1999 X Games — Britannica
² 20 Years Later: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater Revolutionized Gaming in 1999 — Goomba Stomp
³ Tony Hawk's Skateboarding Style and Legacy — MasterClass
⁵ The Impact of Tony Hawk Video Games on Skateboarding Culture and Youth Engagement — Academia
⁶ The Lasting Legacy of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater — Jenkem Magazine