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I am Tony Hawk. Well, it sure feels like it after playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater anyway. Every aspect of Pro Skater is so solid that it's able to give me the complete feel of skateboarding like a pro, without all that incessant falling.

Just like in real life, learning how to pull of tricks in Pro Skater takes practice. The Warehouse level is the only level open in the beginning of the game and is a good place to start learning the controls. Here players can test out all the different tricks in Pro Skater by jumping off ramps and railings. Tricks can be done by pushing any of the eight directions on the d-pad or analog pad and pushing one of the buttons.

Doing the actual trick isn't hard at all. It's landing that's the problem. Trying to spin as many times as you can in the air and landing face forward is a little tough to get used to. I found myself landing on Tony Hawk's face many times. But the control is tight so it only takes a few practice sessions to get to the where to the real action of the game is.

The levels in Pro Skater are great. The closed-in warehouse gives little hint to the player that the upcoming levels contain a good variety of open environments. It also helps that the game engine is smooth and pretty capable of handling big environments on the ageing PSX. One of my favorites is skating through a shopping mall after-hours and being able to make huge jumps off the second stories. Skating in downtown Minneapolis is a little more hazardous though - you can be hit head-on by fast moving vehicles. The best part is that after they hit you, the driver yells at you for getting in the way.

A special mention must be given to the sound in Pro Skater. The beating of your skateboard wheels on different types of surfaces are accurately portrayed, as are the sounds of whatever your skater falls into, be it the tumbling of boxes, the clank of smacking into a rail, or the sound of crashing through a mall directory. Okay so I don't know what that sounds like exactly, but I can imagine it sounds close to what it sounds like in the game.

The two player games only add to an already terrific one player mode. There are three types of games in the two player mode: Graffiti, Trick Attack, and HORSE. In Graffiti, once each player pulls a trick off a ramp, the ramp is tagged with a blue or red color. The player who marks the most ramps in the time allotted wins, but each player can pull a trick off an already marked ramp, and mark it in their color instead. This mode can get massively aggressive as each player struggles to keep all their marked zones while trying to steal some in the process. The players in Trick Attack have to get the most trick points to win, and HORSE has each player trying to best the other in points. If you don't pull off one trick that's worth more than your opponent, you get one letter closer to becoming Mr. Ed. The split screen in the two player mode is also one of the best that I've played, with little sacrificing in the graphics, and a solid frame rate.

Skateboarding is fun, but skateboarding and pulling off dozens of insanely difficult combos and tricks with simple button pushes is even more fun. Tony Hawk definitely contributed all of what he knows that makes skating fun and incorporated it into a game that lets anybody feel like a professional skater. Neversoft also did an outstanding job on the graphics engine and animations for all the slick tricks you can pull off. Great graphics, great gameplay, great game.