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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 is brilliant on the board and messier off it

May 29, 2026·7 min read

About the Author

Dylan Turck

Staff Writer

Dylan Turck is the driving force behind Zero1Gaming's newsroom, writing about what’s new, what’s worth playing, and what’s changing across the industry. From reviewing new releases to game updates, and studio developments. Dylan focuses on the stories gamers actually care about. He also keeps an eye on the competitive side, attending e-sport tournaments, and keeping an eye out for the updates that flip the meta overnight.

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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 gets the most important thing right. The skating still feels incredible. The board snaps under me, manuals stretch combos past the point of good sense, reverts keep runs alive, and every level slowly turns from a place into a route. When I am deep in a run, chasing one more grind before the timer dies, this is still one of the cleanest arcade sports games ever made.

The problem is not the feel. It is the package around it. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 fits beautifully into this remake, while Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 has been bent into a structure that does not always suit it. I had a great time across both halves, but this is not the same kind of preservation as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. It is a great skating game, and a more complicated remake.

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The skating still carries everything

The reason this collection works is simple: skating feels right. A good run has a rhythm that few games can match. I start with a ramp, catch a grind, land into a manual, revert out of a quarter pipe, and suddenly I am trying to keep a combo alive with no real plan beyond refusing to let it die. It is twitchy, readable, and constantly tempting me into one more bad decision.

That flow has aged better than almost anything around it. The controls are quick enough for new players to feel immediate, but still deep enough for score-chasers to spend hours shaving mistakes out of a route. The game teaches through repetition rather than lectures. I learned levels by failing runs, spotting better lines, and slowly realizing that a rail I ignored ten attempts ago was the key to doubling a score.

The remake also understands the physical comedy of Tony Hawk. It is not a skateboarding sim, and it should never try to be one. The joy comes from turning airports, foundries, campuses, cruise ships, and city streets into impossible playgrounds. The world is not realistic. It is built around momentum, and that is exactly why it still feels so good.

Pro Skater 3 gets the cleaner revival

The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 half is the easiest part to recommend. Its levels were already made for timed arcade runs, so the remake’s structure suits them naturally. Foundry, Canada, Airport, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and the rest still have that classic mix of obvious lines and hidden depth.

Airport remains one of the best examples of forward motion in the series. It pulls me downhill through rails, ramps, baggage areas, and escalators without ever making the route feel forced. Canada has a looser, more open feel that makes it a strong warm-up level. Tokyo throws more visual noise at me, but it still has enough shape to reward players who learn where the real lines are.

The goals also fit the pace. Score targets, combo challenges, hidden tapes, stat points, and S-K-A-T-E letters all work within the two-minute pressure. Some objectives are annoying, but they are annoying in the way old Tony Hawk objectives often are. I failed, restarted, muttered at myself, and tried again almost immediately. That loop still has bite.

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Pro Skater 4 feels squeezed into the wrong shape

The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 side is where the remake becomes harder to judge. The original moved away from strict two-minute career runs and let players skate around levels more freely, picking up goals from characters as they explored. That change gave it a different personality. It felt less like a race against the clock and more like a skatepark full of challenges waiting to be found.

This remake folds much of that into the classic timed format. I understand why. It makes the package cleaner, keeps both games consistent, and gives the full collection a shared rhythm. It also means players who prefer the older arcade structure can move through both halves without adjusting to a different career style.

But Pro Skater 4 loses something in that trade. Some levels still skate well, and the goals themselves can still be fun, but the original sense of wandering from challenge to challenge is reduced. The fourth game was not just more Pro Skater 3. It was a step toward a different style of Tony Hawk game. Here, it feels like that identity has been pulled backward to fit the collection.

The new levels understand the series

The new parks are a pleasant surprise. They do not feel like empty bonus material added to make the box look fuller. They have the right kind of exaggerated logic: readable routes, strong visual hooks, obvious beginner lines, and better paths that only start to appear once I understand the space.

That is important because a Tony Hawk level can fail even if it looks good. It needs flow. It needs rails, ramps, gaps, transfers, and vertical spaces that talk to each other. The new levels mostly understand that. They fit beside the returning stages without feeling like tribute acts.

The visual upgrade also lands well across the collection. These levels look cleaner and brighter, but they do not lose the arcade personality. The remake does not chase realism too hard, which is the right call. Tony Hawk works best when a location feels like the real world has been quietly redesigned by someone obsessed with combos.

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The soundtrack is strong, but nostalgia takes a hit

The soundtrack is a big part of the series’ identity, and this collection has the right energy even when it cannot fully recreate the old playlists. The new tracks fit the pace, and plenty of the music keeps runs moving with the right mix of speed, noise, and attitude.

Still, missing classics are hard to ignore if those songs are tied to your memory of the originals. Music in Tony Hawk is not just background. It becomes part of how levels feel. A song can drag me straight back into an older version of the game faster than any texture or menu sound.

I do not think the new soundtrack fails. It does its job, and it often does it well. But this is one of the places where the remake reminds me that it is not simply preserving a moment in time. It is rebuilding one, and the replacement pieces do not always carry the same weight.

The extras make the package feel alive

The roster is strong, mixing returning legends with newer skaters in a way that helps the game avoid feeling trapped in the past. That balance matters. A remake like this needs nostalgia, but it also needs to make room for the sport and culture beyond the era it is revisiting.

Create-a-skater, Create-a-Park, secret skaters, challenges, and multiplayer all give the package more life beyond clearing goals. Multiplayer is not the main reason I kept playing, but it adds a useful social layer. The new HAWK mode is a smart fit for quick sessions, and the broader online offering helps the remake feel less static than a simple nostalgia release.

The best long-term draw is still personal improvement. I did not need a huge reward to replay a level. I wanted a cleaner run, a bigger combo, a better route, or one less stupid bail near the end. That is the old magic, and it remains the strongest reason to keep loading the game.

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Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 is great, but uneven

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 is easy to recommend as an arcade skating game. It feels fantastic, looks sharp, includes some excellent levels, and still has the kind of replay value that comes from pure mechanics rather than padding. When I am skating, the collection is often brilliant.

As a remake, it is more uneven. Pro Skater 3 comes through cleanly, while Pro Skater 4 feels compromised by a structure that does not fully belong to it. I would still recommend it to fans and newcomers who want fast, stylish, score-chasing skating. I just would not call it the definitive return of both games. It is a superb revival of the feel, a strong remake of Pro Skater 3, and a fun but imperfect version of Pro Skater 4.