Image via Complex Original
If you’ve owned a video game system over the last decade, there’s a good chance you’ve spent a significant amount of time playing at least one of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. Even if you have about as much balance and dexterity as a senior citizen with vertigo, the Pro Skater franchise allowed you to grab the sickest air and grind the longest rails with the best of them. We learned much more than how to pull off sick combos and the spelling of S-K-A-T-E from Tony Hawk. It turns out there were real life lessons being offered in between the gathering of spray paint cans and subway tokens.
Even though many of you have left behind Pro Skater for jobs, women, and the Call of Duty franchise, these games still hold a spot in many of our hearts. In many ways, these games made us who we are today. Let’s honor those hours spent on the virtual half-pipe with these Life Lessons We Learned from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
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Learn New Skills
Doing the same thing over and over is no good; even if it brings you success, it stifles your growth. The creators of Tony Hawk understood that learning new skills is just as important as mastering what's already familiar. Just like in real life, If you kept pulling the same stunts, you were met with diminishing returns. Anyone who has seen their career phased out in the real world knows the value of this lesson. It's better to learn it in a skateboarding video game than in the unemployment line.
Good Music Makes Everything Better
Prior to Pro Skater and Grand Theft Auto, the most recognizable video game soundtracks were the beep-boop of the Mario Brothers games and the primitive crowd noise of early sports franchises. By giving us a soundtrack featuring Rage Against the Machine, Naughty by Nature, and Mos Def, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater taught us that it is possible to enjoy listening to video games as well as seeing them. If you played Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, you learned early on that great music can be the difference between a lukewarm get together and a bona fide rager.
Any Environment Can Be Fun
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater taught us that any environment can be fun if you approach it the right way. Sure, school sucks if you're inside of it. But, what if you grinded cafeteria tables instead of sat at them during study hall? Riding the bus to work is boring, but ollieing a bus is dope. Pro Skater taught you that when life gives you lemons, you kickflip over those lemons.
You Can Find Treasure In Unexpected Places
Filthy things like hobos, toilets, and cow pies have always been the source of cash in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Who could forget the hilariously anti-climactic moment in the Bull Ring level of Pro Skater 2 when you have stacks of cash hidden in literal bullshit? The dirty scavenger hunts that cropped up between sick tricks taught us to look for treasure in unexpected places. It may have also prompted some kids to look for money buried in actual animal feces.
Look, the point is that one man's trash is another man's treasure, and buried deep within something that is definitely trash, you might find some spare cash.
You Never Know, If You Don't Try
From flat walls to rampaging bulls to helicopter blades, any surface can be home to a trick in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Maybe Pro Skater set unrealistic skateboarding expectations for our nation's youth, but these games re-enforced the principle that you don't know the limits of what you can do if you don't try. Even if you fall off of the helicopter blade, you can at least say you attempted the sickest trick, and that counts for something. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater taught us to try to grind the helicopter blades in our own lives, no matter how impossible it may seem to stick the landing.
Our Parents Aren't Very Creative
Playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater made you realize how truly lame your name was for the first time. Hanging out at school with guys named Josh or Tim may have made your name sound cool. But, compared to names like Rune Glifberg, Geoff Rowley, and Bucky Lasek, most names are going to sound weak. No wonder these guys became professional skateboarders. Cool names lead to cool jobs: that's a fact we learned courtesy of these games.
Cops Are People Too
Many young men grow up viewing the police as the enemy. To the teenage mind, cops exist only to kick you out of gas station parking lots and bust you for being out past curfew. Tony Hawk's Officer Dick introduced a generation of children to the idea that the police could be pretty dope under the right circumstances. Such flights of fancy might only exist in video games, but sometimes, life imitates art. Who knows? Maybe the next time the NYPD shoos protesters out of Zuccotti Park, they'll fly in on boards.
Substance Trumps Style
The most exhilarating part of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater was catching crazy air time off of the pipes. Unfortunately, that wouldn't always get you the most points. In video games and in life, the flashiest moves don't always get the best results. The truly successful man doesn't have to flash his cash. The guy with the most expensive clothes and fanciest car doesn't always get the girl. Keep your head down and keep linking your tricks with manuals and you'll end up on top.
Cash Is King
You can complete every goal set before you, but you are never truly finished with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater until you have collected all of that cold, hard cash. The importance that these games placed on the green set you up well for adulthood. Whether you need a sandwich from a bodega or a lap dance at the strip club, the finest things in life can't be had with credit. Credit can get you things you can't afford, but cash is king.
Practice Makes Perfect
The specialized tricks were by far the most annoying goals in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. "Bluntslide the Awning" and "Tailslide Venice Ledge" took some of us more man hours to complete than we spent on SAT prep. Even if you knew how to grind with the best of them, a new level could mean a slight variation and a new angle to master. You'll never get back those hours you spent perfecting your bluntslide, but in wasting all that time, you learned the principle that even masters need practice.
