Every Single PS1 Skateboarding Game Reviewed!

Short version: This is a ranking of every PlayStation 1 game that’s about skateboarding, from worst to best, with a mini review of each one. Rocket Power is at the bottom, and nothing else even comes close. Grind Session, Thrasher: Skate and Destroy and the PS1 version of Tony Hawk 3 are all worth your time, and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 takes number 1.

One of the biggest goals of Rad Rat Video is to play and review every skateboarding game I can get my hands on. And for over 2 years, I’ve been doing just that, diving into everything from the Skate series to obscure stuff from the arcades. And I just recently finished playing every skateboarding game on the PlayStation 1. At least, every game that’s focused on skateboarding. Not snowboarding, hoverboarding, or anything else. There are a few, like Spyro or Stuart Little 2, that have some skateboarding in them, but these are all of the ones that are ABOUT skateboarding. So I wanted to rank them all in order and give a mini review of every one. For the most part, there are full reviews of all of these games already, except for a couple, and I’ve linked them as they come up.

13. Rocket Power: Team Rocket Rescue

The worst skateboarding game on the PS1. There’s really no comparison even. Rocket Power is horrible, and it was bad when it was new. It’s not that it didn’t age well, it was just garbage the day it was released.

This game allows you to ride snowboards, bikes and rollerblades in addition to skateboarding, which really doesn’t sound so bad. But none of it works. In the skateboarding mode, it’s almost impossible to land anything straight because the controls are so bad. There are more glitches than I’ve ever seen in any game I’ve played in my life. And the difficulty is stupid. I beat the BMX event first try, but even after exploiting a glitch in the skateboarding section, I still got barely a third of the score I needed. If you see this game, run away.

12. ESPN Extreme Games (1Xtreme)

ESPN Extreme Games was later rebranded as 1Xtreme. I didn’t play this one too much, but suffice it to say, it’s the worst in the series. And speaking of the series, let’s just jump to:

11. 2Xtreme

2Xtreme is a racing game where you can be a skateboarder, a BMXer, rollerblader or snowboarder. It was pretty cool back in the day, but these days, it’s basically worthless. The graphics are weird and only kind of 3D. All the characters are sprites instead of 3D models, which makes it hard to tell exactly where you are.

Another thing that really sucks is the courses. Since they aren’t real 3D either, the camera is kind of locked to the course, something that would have been familiar on the Sega Genesis or something. But it just makes it hard to be accurate, which is what the whole game is about. Skip this one.

10. Street Sk8er

Before there was Tony Hawk, Grind Session, or any of the other good games you’ll see later on the list, there was the Street Sk8er series. And I think those later games owe a lot to Street Sk8er, but it’s extremely dated. It doesn’t really know what it wants to be. It’s part racing game, and part trick-based skateboarding game. It does both badly.

The racing has no depth to it at all: no acceleration, braking and cornering mechanics. But the time isn’t all that important either. Just make sure you don’t run out of time while you’re doing tricks, and you’ll be okay. The game is unreasonably difficult though. It has a 90s arcade philosophy: don’t make a ton of content, just make it really annoyingly difficult so it takes a long time to get through it.

9. 3Xtreme

Barely edging out Street Sk8er is 3Xtreme. It’s a mild upgrade over 2Xtreme. I still wouldn’t bother to play this for any reason, but it helps sand off some of the rough edges of the second one. Still wildly out of date these days though.

8. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4

One of the worst Tony Hawk games for a long time. You won’t see one match this for a couple of generations.

As the series made it onto the PS2 and Xbox, they were adding in a lot more features, like reverts, spine transfers, and a timerless level layout. But the PlayStation 1 still had a huge install base, so they would try to port them down. And this time, it just didn’t work. They pushed the PlayStation well beyond its limits, and because of that, there are a lot of glitches and awkward gameplay.

The challenges are kind of loosely based on the real version of the game, but there’s so much missing that it’s impossible to even tell what’s going on. If you didn’t play the PS2 version, you’re just kind of collecting random things. And that’s harder because the draw distance is a lot worse, and things get lost in the pixelization.

One of the worst things about it though, is not being aimed in the right direction. Start an event, and you’ll end up pointed however you happened to be when you started the challenge. The C in COMBO might be behind you. Overall, there’s no reason to play this.

7. MTV Skateboarding

This game is kind of interesting, but only because it’s completely different from everything else. Later, every game was a Tony Hawk ripoff, just with bikes instead of skateboards or something. But in the early days, there were a lot of games that were all-new, made from scratch. Because of that, I have to give this game a lot of credit for existing.

I also give it credit for the trick selection. You can do stuff like casper flips, pressure flips, back foot flips, front foot impossibles, and underflips. And that’s pretty cool. Other games weren’t digging that deep in the trick library.

But I can’t say much else about it. The gameplay is really awkward and slow. When you ollie, there’s a huge delay before you actually get off the ground. You have to balance by hitting the spin buttons during your grinds. The game does a lot better with vert, but even that doesn’t quite feel right. There are some interesting ideas in the game, like these stunt course things that they have you do, but it just never really comes together.

6. Street Sk8er 2

This one is a big enough upgrade from Street Sk8er 1 that it jumped up a few spots on the list. But it’s still got that really dated racing system. Before Tony Hawk, nobody really knew how to frame a skateboarding game. It had to just be skateboarding put into another genre, instead of being about skateboarding itself.

But there are more characters and tricks here, and the skateboarding controls have gotten good enough that it’s actually somewhat enjoyable to play. If you already own the game and it’s been sitting on your shelf for 20 years, it might be worth popping it back in. But I wouldn’t go out of my way to play this one.

5. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

Tony Hawk 1 is surprisingly better than Tony Hawk 4 by quite a bit, but it’s still pretty difficult to go back to. Just like Street Sk8er, there’s still a little bit of confusion about what a skateboarding game should be like. That’s why you have some levels that are directional, and they’re treated like races. The downhill jam and the mall are like that. You have to just collect everything in order on your way down. I can’t stand these levels, although a lot of people disagree.

Aside from that, the game is really well done. It’s the first game that truly feels like you’re skateboarding. The tricks that you do actually matter, to a degree, since you have to plan them out. The score value for each trick goes down a lot the more you do them, and since there are no manuals, you can’t rely on your multiplier that much.

Yes, there are no manuals in this game. Playing it now, it feels really weird, and you’ll find yourself tapping up and down when you land the whole time, but it’s not that big of a problem. All of the levels and score totals were designed around you not being able to manual. But still, the games feel better later in the series.

Something else the game was the first to do was open up grinding. In earlier skateboarding games, you could grind rails, coping, or ledges. Stuff that was obviously made for grinding. But Pro Skater lets you grind on anything that has an edge. It’s hard to explain how big of an upgrade that was. But go back and play Street Sk8er and try to grind a planter or a fence. You really don’t know whether you’ll be allowed to grind it or not. Most of the time you just hit it and bail.

This is the first game so far that I would actually recommend for people in 2018 to consider going back and playing. Although, consider Tony Hawk 2X on the Xbox. It has all of the levels of Tony Hawk 1 and 2, along with a few exclusives. The career mode is a little easier because you can manual, but it looks and plays a lot better.

4. Grind Session

I really enjoy this game, and I think it’s tragic that it didn’t get a sequel. It seems like a Tony Hawk clone when you first start playing it, but it actually does a lot of interesting things.

For example, the grinds. If you hit down and grind, you’ll do a 5-0, but if you spin 90 degrees and hit down grind, you’ll do a tailslide. I don’t think a more realistic grind system was built until the Skate series came out.

Aside from that, it controls well and plays really well. You’ll find yourself going through a bunch of different levels collecting things and trying to hit gaps, which it calls technical lines. There are quite a few recognizable pros here, and a good trick selection too, even though it has really weird hardflips. There are hardflips, and frontside varial kickflips. And frontside flips that don’t flip. But that’s just how things were back then. I strongly recommend checking this one out if you haven’t already. I’m sure you’ll find a lot to like.

3. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3

Honestly, this game is probably the best skateboarding game in the whole PlayStation library, but it didn’t make it to number 1 because of the PS2 version. It’s hard to say that it’s truly better than that one, so it doesn’t feel right to put it above things developed solely for the PlayStation.

But that said, this version of the game is great. They take the original Tony Hawk 2 engine, put reverts in, and make a bunch of new levels inspired by the main version of the game. But they don’t just rip it off. They actually made new stuff. There are areas in levels, like Canada, where you can go new places and see new things. The controls are tight, the level design is great, and the challenges are good too. They don’t always mirror things from the other version.

For any fan of classic Tony Hawk games, this one is a must-play. It stands alone beside Tony Hawk 2 and the next-gen version of Tony Hawk 3 as its own accomplishment. And if you haven’t played it, you missed out on an awesome game.

2. Thrasher: Skate and Destroy

Thrasher honestly has a lot of rough edges, and it can be tough playing it for the first time these days and trying to overlook it all. But I have to give it a ton of credit for the innovation and the design of this game. Out of everything on this list, there are only 3 games that I regularly go back and play: Grind Session, Thrasher, and my number 1 game. They all offer something unique that was never topped.

Thrasher is all about realism, even more than the Skate series. Here’s how it works. In the career mode, you go to an area and you have to beat a high score. When time runs out, you’re chased by something: a cop, mugger, dog or crackhead. You have to make it to the exit without being tased, stabbed or bitten. There are no giant floating letters you’re trying to collect or anything. Just as realistic of a skateboard engine as you could make at the time, your imagination, and a score total. Plus encouragement to explore, since you get less points the longer you stay in one area. I can’t imagine a more authentic game, given the limitations of the PlayStation.

One of the innovations, and also probably the reason why the game failed, is the controls. In an attempt to add some difficulty to doing tricks, they made it pretty tough to do basic tricks. You had to hold a button, tap a direction, then let go, and your character would do the trick. But since you’re still rolling, that would make you turn, so you’d have to carefully plan how you’re going to approach a ledge or rail. If you played it in hard mode, you also have to hit the landing button so that you land cleanly, or else you’ll lose control for a little bit. All of this stuff makes the game less approachable for non-skating gamers, but for the rest of us, it’s something you really shouldn’t miss out on.

1. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2

Tony Hawk 2, unsurprisingly. This game is not only my favorite skateboarding game, it might just be my favorite video game of all time. There’s just so much good stuff to say about it.

The engine was almost perfected in this game. It has manuals, but no reverts and spine transfers and stuff. And to me, I really like the balance of it. The high scores are difficult, but you don’t find yourself doing a 3 minute long combo where you travel all over the level twice. It’s more reasonable, and I always liked the feeling of ending a combo with a big trick on a vert wall.

Aside from the feeling of the gameplay, this one also boasts the best level design in a Tony Hawk game. These levels have been classics since the day they were made, and Neversoft loved to reuse them in later games as unlockables. They never worked as well again though. They need the context of the PS1 engine for it to all come together. My favorite level is School 2, which I could probably draw from memory. It felt awesome to be able to ride around in a place that felt authentic, being able to grind rails and benches and stuff that you would see in skate videos at the time.

Speaking of skate videos, the ones that you unlock in this game are amazing, and they launched thousands of skateboard careers, like my own. I also have to bring up the soundtrack. I can’t play any of it because of copyright issues, but this game got a ton of praise for the music, and it’s easy to see why.

I don’t know how this game would play these days if you never tried it before, but it’s so important, it has such a legacy, that you owe it to yourself to get a copy. The PlayStation version has the most nostalgia for me, but you can also get it on PC, Dreamcast or Xbox. I’d avoid the N64 version though.