Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is missing 80% of the original soundtrack

In what will be some disappointing news for old-school skateboarding game fans, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is missing 80% of the soundtrack from the original games from back in 2001 and 2002.

Gosh, the mere mention of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater takes me back. Back to the days when X-Games was something us high schoolers used to love to watch. We were way too cool for the Olympics; it made us want to put aside our mountain bikes with multiple gears and buy branded BMXs with those things that would allow us to grind rails and whatnot. Does anyone else remember Dave Mirra BMX  or Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX? No? Well, I can tell you, the late 90s and early 2000s were a time of extreme sports, X-Games made stars, and the best of the best got their own licensed games.

To be honest with you, I was never a big fan of Tony Hawk. I recall watching him attempt his 900 over and over again, even after the competition ended. But what I cannot deny is how much fun his game was. In fact, there are stories about people just playing the demo of the first Tony Hawk game over and over again. But one thing that made those games special was the licensed soundtrack. Hence why this story is a bit interesting.

Extreme sports games were all the rage in the late 90s and early 2000’s but aside from the games themselves, the real appeal of them was the soundtrack. It was really cool, in the day, when licensed music in games was a new thing, to be playing along and hearing real music from actual bands, curated usually by the star of the show. So it’s a bit interesting, then, that it turns out Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 release contains less than 20% of the original game’s tracks.

This was called out by fans back in March, as Activision was releasing the titles of songs to be featured in the game, which resulted in a somewhat explanation by the man himself:

Commenting on Instagram, Tony Hawk claimed that he personally decided to introduce a mix of new and classic tracks for Pro Skater 3+4, stating that he hoped players would enjoy discovering new music, as with the original games.

“It was my choice to pick some different songs by the same artists featured in THPS3+4 OST,” he wrote. “I’m hoping that discovery is half the fun, and a big reason that these soundtracks resonated in the first place. So listen and enjoy the ride. More to come… both old and new.”

In fairness to Tony Hawk, musical taste changes with age. I wonder whether he just heard the tracks from the original 3+4 games a few too many times or whether they just decided that they liked other songs better. Maybe the licensing ran out… I don’t know, but either way I think that its a bit unfortunate to re-release games where the OG soundtrack was a such a bit part of the experience for nostalgia (which they are clearly aiming for otherwise there was no reason to release them again) and leave out 80% of the original soundtrack.

It’s also interesting that they chose different songs by some of the same bands… maybe they should have just popped in some Tears for Fears or some Duran instead? All I know is that I hear there is some disappointment, and it’s hard not to share it.