Tony Hawk once modded his friend’s PlayStation 1 in order to get feedback on early builds of the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. This is according to the Birdman himself, who told the story during a panel at iicon (a new conference for video game industry professionals) about the lasting legacy of the THPS series.
Back in 1998, Hawk was working with Neversoft on early versions of the soon-to-be legendary skateboarding game, which at the time was borne out of a modified version of the failed Bruce Willis-branded game Apocalypse.
“Every week they would burn a CD for me, and I played it on my modified PlayStation 1,” Hawk said. “I would make comments, and then the next week I would get a disc in the mail with all the updates.”
“I was really excited about it, but I was also kind of isolated in my excitement because I was the only real skater working on it, and so – I hope I don’t get in trouble for this, 20 plus years later – but I started making copies of the burns and sending them to skaters that I knew were hardcore gamers.”
Hawk said at one point he modified his friend Atiba’s PS1 – presumably referring to skater and photographer Atiba Jefferson, who later appeared in THPS 4 – to be able to play the burnt game discs in order to give him feedback.
“He really did have valuable feedback, and he started letting people come over to play the game. I mean, we were going rogue,” Hawk said.
But at one point, Hawk started hearing rumors within the hardcore skate community, with comments like “have you guys played ‘the game?’” starting to circulate.
“That’s when I knew we did something right, and that the skateboarders were going to enjoy this,” Hawk said. “And to me, that was the mark of success. I had no idea that it would ever transcend just the skateboard world, but the fact that they just referred to it as ‘the game’ gave me a sense of pride.”
Elsewhere in the panel, Hawk commented that, if they get to make another one, Tony Hawk’s Underground is the next game he’d like to see remastered.
“What’s next, that’s always the conversation. Because we are now making our way through the series as remasters and remakes, and to be honest, the most noise that I hear about remastering the game, is for Underground, and has been for the last few years. I don’t know who I’m pitching this to, but that’s the one, if we get to do it.”
However, the development team behind the recent THPS 3+4 remaster, Iron Galaxy, faced another round of layoffs earlier this month which follows a significant round of layoffs from 2025.
For more from iicon, check out our writeup of Take Two CEO Strauss Zelnick’s comments about the much-debated price point of GTA 6.
Bo Moore is IGN’s Senior Manager of Tech. You can find him online @usebomswisely.