You don’t have to be a skateboarding fan to know who Tony Hawk is. In fact you probably aren’t, and you almost certainly do – the man is a cultural icon who has transcended his trade like few others. Similarly, you don’t have to be a skateboarding fan to have played one of his seminal Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater videogame titles. At the turn of the millennium his eponymous videogame series was a must buy for the original PlayStation, as well as the PlayStation 2 later on. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is widely regarded as one of the best titles Sony’s original console ever spawned, and rightly so – it was the perfect mix of challenging, competitive gameplay, insanely smooth and addictive mechanics, and a wonderfully memorable soundtrack.
15 years on and sadly the franchise isn’t quite in the shape it once was. There hasn’t been an original, non peripheral-based Tony Hawk’s home console release since 2007’s Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, which underwhelmed critics and consumers alike.
After a faithful, if fairly unintuitive, port of Pro Skater 2 to iOS 2010, it seems that the series is once again to take a crack at the mobile platform. We were first teased with the title a couple of months ago, but now it finally has a name – Tony Hawk’s Shred Session.
We also know that in addition to being mobile exclusive it will also be free to play. For better or worse that’s how it’s set to ship out, and whilst we don’t know much about the mechanics of how it’ll work we can at least check out a good six minutes of gameplay courtesy of the man himself.
Watch Tony Hawk swipe away, and try to gauge whether or not this game will turn out to be complete rubbish, at the top of the page.