Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 is a skateboarding sports game played from a third-person view across a set of urban environments. Players control professional or fictional skaters and chain together tricks such as grinds, grabs, flips, and lip tricks, using manuals to link combos into longer scoring runs. The career mode tasks players with completing level objectives and competitions to earn cash, which is used to unlock new levels and characters and to improve a skater's stats and equipment. It also includes free…
Two minutes, one more run, forever: the purest arcade sports game ever made.Kit · Sadkitty Games
Loved
- Manuals turn every level into one giant combo
- Brilliantly designed levels packed with gaps
- Killer punk, metal and hip-hop soundtrack
Not so much
- Later goals can feel grindy
- The park editor is fiddly with a gamepad
Play it if anyone who loves chasing high scores and mastering tight controls.
Skip it if players who want a realistic skating sim.
No cheat codes
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 doesn't have cheat codes. The tips and secrets below are the next best thing.
Play it better
- Link tricks with manuals (tap Up then Down quickly, or Down then Up for a nose manual) to keep combos going across flat ground.
- Spend cash on stat points first: higher Spin, Air and Balance make every goal easier.
- Find each level's secret tape early; it's usually hidden somewhere high or behind a tricky gap.
- Ride walls by jumping into them and pressing the grind button; it keeps a combo moving where no rail exists.
- Land tricks to fill the special meter, then pull your skater's special tricks for big points.
- Collect every SKATE letter in one run by planning a route before you start the timer.
Hidden in plain sight
Tap a secret to reveal it.
Trivia
- It opens with Rage Against the Machine's 'Guerrilla Radio', a track many players still link to the game.
- Manuals were new to the series here and transformed how combos worked.
- It sits near the top of Metacritic's list of the highest-rated games ever.
- A remake of the first two games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, came out in 2020.
