I had a go at Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 on the original Sony PlayStation. This one came out in 2002, by which point the PlayStation 2 had already been around for a couple of years. The poor old PlayStation was getting on a bit, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from this game!

The graphics were surprisingly fluid for such an ageing machine, and the soundtrack was pretty damn good too. I’ve always liked the music in the Tony Hawk games, even though I’m not a skateboarder myself. At least the PlayStation has that lovely CD audio to work with.

My favourite level was College. There was plenty of opportunity to jump off things, grind rails and perform all sorts of tricks I probably couldn’t name properly if you paid me. Kickflips, ollies and whatever else the cool skateboarders were doing back then!

The gameplay did get a little repetitive, but there were a surprising number of tricks to learn. The PlayStation controller has enough buttons to make things interesting, with L1, L2, R1 and R2 all getting in on the action. I wasn’t entirely convinced I knew what I was doing half the time, but it was good fun regardless.

So where did that leave us on the McRetro review scale? 7.8 units! Units of what, exactly? I hadn’t worked that out yet. Was it even a scale of one to ten? Time would tell!

Still, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 was definitely one of the better games I played for these little reviews. If you’re after some skateboarding on the original PlayStation, this one’s worth a go.

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