Tony Hawk Shares Motion Capture Footage from Original Pro Skater Game

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater turned 20 just recently, a skating game that was a standard part of any PlayStation owner's collection when it was released at the end of August two decades ago. Kicking off a series of games led by Activision, pro skater Tony Hawk himself, and developer Neversoft who created many of the games, the series continued for years after the first game released. In honor of that game's anniversary, Hawk shared some behind-the-scenes footage that showed a motion capture session that never made its way into the final game.

Hawk shared several mentions of the game's 20th anniversary on Twitter on and around August 31st when it officially turned 20, and one of those tweets gave fans a look at the motion capture efforts that went into the making of the game. The pro skater said none of the data acquired through the motion capture session actually made it into the game because of time constraints, but he at least got to pull off some tricks while wearing one of the motion capture suits.

In keeping with the THPS 20th anniversary, here is our motion capture session from 1999. We didn’t end up using any of this data because there wasn’t enough time to program it into the final game, but at least I got to do a bunch of hard tricks while wearing an embarrassing suit. pic.twitter.com/pHw09SX3tg

— Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) September 3, 2019

Another tweet showed that, 20 years later, Hawk is still enjoying his series of skating games that were highlights of the first PlayStation console for many who played them years ago.

THPS was released 20 years ago today. It was an unexpected phenomenon and brought a new audience to the skateboarding world. My friends at @THPSfilm are finishing a documentary about the series https://t.co/zpUC6WSQGr
Meanwhile, here I am this morning skating the warehouse ➡️➡️⭕️ pic.twitter.com/9eCEvgxzod

— Tony Hawk (@tonyhawk) August 31, 2019

Skating aside, one of the parts of the original Pro Skater game that's praised most often is the game's soundtrack. It's no wonder then that Hawk ranked that game at the one with the best music with American Wasteland following just behind it.

Hawk said last year that he was no longer working with Activision on the games in a response to Pro Skater fans who were asking about the possibility of remastering old games and maintaining servers. A new Tony Hawk game called Skate Jam released last year for mobile devices that's seen in the trailer at the top, a game that followed the release of 2015's Pro Skater 5.