Skateboarding legend Tony Hawk has confirmed that there were plans to follow up the remakes of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and its sequel with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remastered was released back in 2020, reworking the classic games with completely overhauled visuals, an enhanced soundtrack, online play, and so much more. It was an absolutely phenomenal return to form for the franchise, and the hope was that Activision would follow it up with further remakes.
Check out our review of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 Remastered below!
Unfortunately, it seems that any plans that may have been in motion were killed when Activision made the baffling decision to merge developer Vicarious Visions into Blizzard. Good one, Activision.
Hawk revealed the decision to abandon Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 Remastered during a recent Twitch livestream with Andy Gentile, a former Neversoft designer who also worked on the 2020 remake.
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“That was the plan; even up until the release day of [Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2], we were going 3 + 4,” Hawk explained. “And then Vicarious got kind of absorbed, and then they were looking for other developers, and then it was over.”
Hawk added that Activision apparently didn't trust any other developer to handle further Tony Hawk remasters/remakes in the same way that Vicarious Visions pulled it off. Quite why the publisher thought it'd be a good idea to merge them into a different studio is unclear.
Hawk said: “The truth of it is that [Activision] were trying to find somebody to do 3 + 4 but they just didn’t really trust anyone the way they did Vicarious, so they took other pitches from other studios. Like, ‘What would you do with the THPS title?’ And they didn’t like anything they heard, and then that was it.
“I wish there was some way to bring it back. I mean, who knows? Maybe when all the dust settles, we’ll figure it out. You never know. I would never have imagined we were going to do 1 + 2 20 years later.”
Topics: Tony Hawks Pro Skater, Activision