PSX GAME RECOMMENDATIONS |

[#] Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 (Activision, PlayStation, 2002)

A long-forgotten swan song to one of the PS1's greatest series.

Frankly, it's impressive this port even exists. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for the PS1 was a pretty simple level swap in the same engine, understandable, but the fourth entry brought the series open world, free roaming levels and goals given by pedestrians. How can you bring that to the PS1 without by? Surprisingly capably! Who would want to play such a port? Only me! But that's okay. This probably stretches the Apocalypse engine to its absolute limits in terms of technology and good taste, and you will get a workout from the increased difficulty playing it, but for the morbidly curious hardcore Tony Hawk fanatics, the dozens of us, it's a cool way to round out the series on PS1.

Each locale brings your skater a set of about thirty goals towards going pro (even though they're already pros, but stay with me here). A lot of the goals are your classic score goals. Sometimes, you gotta grab all the letters without breaking your combo (fuck those ones). Each stage now has its own competition goal. Remember Horse in the earlier games' multiplayer modes? Goal here too. All credit to Vicarious Visions, it's familiar without ever being transparently repetitive. This game does something really nice in sharing all goal progress and stat boosts across skaters--that's right, the days of doing the campaign fourteen times are done. Beat it once, do each pro's unique goal (2-3 per stage), and you've completed the game.

Alongside the timerless free roam between goals, THPS4 for PS1 includes all the spine transfers, hidden tricks, and grind extensions from the next-gen versions (skitching is obviously not included). I've heard people online complain about reverts into manuals not registering, but they not only felt the same as THPS3 on PS1, but I didn't have much issue with them. The only real trouble with this game is the sometimes sadistic difficulty, especially in the pro-specific goals. We're talking "wheelie down three ramps and around a corner and not bail" type stupidity. The market for this port is no doubt exceedingly small, but those in that group will find this a fun and fascinating final entry.

Recommended for... the hardest skaters (ew).

Reviewed	Supports analog controls?	My favorite part
July 25, 2025	Yes	Scoring 600,000 points in a single combo

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