Pretending I'm a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story

There is a try hard skater in the movie who whenever says something makes an annoying try hard comment, this for me nearly ruined the documentary, thankfully half way through I remembered I can fast forward past his try hard remarks towards literally everything.

There's not much to learn for someone who is already familiar with Tony Hawk Pro Skater but would be great for a young person who wants to know what his or her dad used to play.

Besides the hater/poser comments from the try hard I did actually enjoy this documentary and will look for a physical copy to gift to my nephew when he's old enough.

This documentary, seemingly released to coincide with the release of the remastered versions of "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 & 2", was advertised on Sky Documentaries last week - and being a fan of the game series, I downloaded it. Whilst it has some interesting moments, ultimately the story wasn't quite interesting enough to be worthy of the documentary.

Combining archive footage with recent interviews with various personalities, the documentary tracks the rise of Skateboarding from child's activity, to a rebellious outsider movement, to X-Games popularity. It's most high profile name, Tony Hawk, a lifelong gamer begins to discuss a video game with various parties, before settling in partnership with Neversoft/Activision and producing a series of hit games that both reflect and then influence the skating scene.

The skating side of the documentary is perhaps a bit more interesting than the gaming side. Plenty of interviews with a number of skating figures that take you though that history. There is some needle in there, towards Tony I felt - with him being a big shot and taking their world mainstream with the X-Games and the game itself. It's then really interesting out the other side, when you have skaters that were totally inspired by "Pro Skater" and even learning that some tricks that began in the game and were thought impossible, have become utilised in real life.

The actual game development though unfortunately isn't really that interesting. They had a game they thought was OK, but might not sell. It did catch on though, and sold more than they could have hoped, so they drove the franchise into the ground by releasing too many games too quickly and diluting the formula. There was a little talk about the much derided skateboard peripheral, that didn't really work, but that could have been delved into further. There was no talk about the "Jackass-ification" of the series towards the end there though. There was some discussion about the soundtrack, however, which was a key aspect for some bands to get their music heard by wider audiences.

I enjoyed the huge nostalgia buzz, don't get me wrong - but perhaps a wider target, such as action sports games in general or a wider look at the history of Neversoft, would have been more interesting.

A nice little documentary about the franchise. I would have loved it to be a little bit longer with some more footage. Seems like some things were slightly glossed over. That being said, I'm not being a hater. It's worth a watch and will definitely make you want to run out and buy the new remastered games for nostalgia!

The first half hour is a history about skateboarding. I already saw many more in depth videos about it on different documentaries so it was kinda boring to me i knew all this stuff and i assume many people watching this will know this too. Could be interesting for people new to this tho.

Then they speak a lot about 1 and 2 and briefly about 3-4 and THUG then they talk 1 minute about the failure of RIDE and nothing about THPS 5 which surprised me. They briefly mention SKATE and how it divided the player base but i would have liked if they talked about it more what they were thinking at the time about SKATE etc..

There was really nothing in depth about the production of the game it was more like how the game impacted the culture of skating and people involved in it. But i saw many youtube docs and other content that already explained this.

If you already know about skate history and lived through the THPS craze like me (i'm old) you will learn nothing new in this. But it's still entertaining and a good watch.

It's decent for what it is but the documentary lacked the deep dive into the actual games. It had a much greater focus on the influence of the game on the pro skaters that were involved in it, rather than the actual game/development.

It really does just focus on the succes. Not much else and it doesn't linger on any of the massive failures that came later and how it influenced the company/future. Like you don't hear about Neversoft becoming defunct and Robomodo taking over and how that process went.

The documentary also has a 20 minute section on the history of skating which I thought was a bit much. Especially this being a niche documentary about a very specific skateboarding game. I would expect the audience not to need a history lesson and it felt like wasted time.

So it lacks depth in the game development department which I was looking forward too. Therefore the lower rating.

If you want to hear some legendary skaters talk about how THPS elevated their lives then its great, otherwise not so much.