Tony Hawk's Underground / YMMV

Aluminum Christmas Trees: The final level of Underground 2's story mode is "Skatopia", a large sloped area in the middle of a forest that has been converted into a massive, anarchistic skate park. Ridiculous, right? Well, believe it or not, this level is based on an actual park, located in Rutland, Ohio, that is still in operation as of 2023.
Awesome Music: A lot of it. There's a reason Nintendo Power called its annual Best Licensed Soundtrack award "The Tony Hawk Award".
Badass Decay:
- In the original game, Eric was a good enough skater to perform well in pro competitions. In THUG 2, he's a Butt-Monkey who is a huge liability to whatever team he's on.
- Bob Burnquist. One of the best pro skaters in the series, he's the first player to be eliminated in the World Destruction Tour in 2.
Best Level Ever:
- The remake of the Warehouse, New Orleans, and Australia in THUG2, and New Jersey, Tampa, Slam City Jam, and especially Hawaii in 1.
- Manhattan from 1 has a genuine case for being the best level in the entire franchise; it's far and away the most popular level to play online in THUG Pro.
Catharsis Factor: The alternate ending to the first game’s story mode on repeat playthroughs, in which the player character interrupts Eric’s challenge to win back the stolen footage by simply elbowing him in the face.
Contested Sequel:
- The games themselves are this to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series: some see the two THUG games as the point where the Tony Hawk series began its downward slide, while others see them as being flawed but ultimately enjoyable.
- The second game is either considered better than the first due to its suite of gameplay improvements or worse due to its less complex story that boils down to "Jackass: The Game" and the sidelining of mainstay pro skaters like Kareem Campbell and Elissa Steamer in favor of joke characters like a Ben Franklin impersonator and a shrimp vendor. Not to mention the cartoonish style of Underground 2 in contrast to the realistic style of the other games was highly debated and off-putting to some players.
Esoteric Happy Ending: How some feel about the original. Sure, you finally defeat Eric (or just punch him in the face) and recover your awesome footage from Hawaii... However, at the end of the day, he's still a now-wealthy pro (unlike you) despite everything he's done to you (especially in Russia). Hence the most-likely reason for Eric's Take That, Scrappy! treatment in the sequel: an Author's Saving Throw to placate said displeased fans.
Game-Breaker:
- In THUG, certain hidden double-tap grinds like darkslides reset your balance to the center. In certain levels, like Moscow, you can keep grinding circles around the level forever.
- Walking. If your balance was weakening or you feared that you were going to bail at a fall, you can simply get off your board to avoid a bail. No matter how high the skater is or where the skater stands, his or her legs will be perfectly fine.
- Sticker Slap, introduced in Underground 2, lets you have an unlimited combo if the line has a wall at either end. In levels such as the remake of THPS3's "Los Angeles" in THUG2 and the remake of THPS1's "Chicago" in THAW, you can therefore easily get the sick score and high combo by simply repeating this again and again.
Good Bad Bugs:
- THUG1 and THUG2 have CATBAG, short for "Create-A-Trick, Broken-Ass Game" (explained more in-depth here), a trick used in speedruns of the former game. Using the Create-A-Trick mechanic, runners give their skaters several tricks with very short animations and the same names as non-custom tricks. The game, when asking you to do certain tricks, only checks that you've done ones with the name of what's requested, so this allows runners to use their quick and easy tricks in place of the intended ones. In addition to this shortening several Goals (including all the ones that require a Special Trick), this also makes almost every trick in Goals where you have to do tricks called out by people be the same trick.
- THUG2 has a brilliant one in the Los Angeles level in Classic Mode. The level was a remake of the one from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and is built around the same code, being virtually identical. Because of the additions since its original release - getting off your board and skitching) it is possible to jump onto an area of highway you were originally not supposed to go to. There, you can skitch on one of the cars and this will enable you to enter the background, underneath the level. The ground around is solid and you can walk around for quite a while.
Harsher in Hindsight:
- THUG1's depiction of Russia as an authoritarian dystopia may have been Two Decades Behind for the early 2000s, but it feels oddly prescient of what Russia would become under Vladimir Putin.
- In the opening cinematic for the Tampa level in THUG, your player character is laying on the road with a cop pressing his boot on his neck. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin and the riots that ensued, this scene becomes very uncomfortable (especially if the PC is black).
- In the New Orleans level of THUG2, you can trigger an event that trashes the whole area, with all the people turned into walking corpses (the news report at the end reveals that they're just sickly drunkards). The game was released less than a year before Hurricane Katrina hit.
- Bam Margera's Comedic Sociopathy in the second game hits a very sour note in light of the meteoric decline in his mental health several years later. The line "my life finally has a purpose" during the final cutscene only twists the knife even further.
- The end credits for Underground 2 lists an entry called "Viva Neversoft, 10 Years Hard", as 2004 was the 10th year anniversary for the company. In a cruel twist of fate, Neversoft would merge with Infinity Ward a decade later and ultimately cease to exist.
Heartwarming Moments: During the story mode in Underground 1, you meet some pro skaters who help the player significantly.
- Chad Muska was having a demo in your town, and after seeing you skate, offers his compliments. After Chad sees the player's skateboard in very poor condition, he recalls how he was in a very similar situation and gives some advice to the player on how and what to do in his skateboard career. He even gives the player his skateboard to replace your old one before driving off.
- After Eric screws the player out of participating in the skate tournament, they find Tony Hawk skating somewhere and the two of them begin skating with each other. After a while, Tony compliments the player's skills, they begin lamenting how they couldn't enter the tournament and after getting sponsored by Stacy Peralta, which catches Tony's attention since he was his mentor. This was enough to convince Tony that the player is actually serious and talks to the Tournament committee to put you in the tournament.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Shrek being a hidden character in Underground 2 is amusing on its own, but it's even better with how his stats are all perfect by default. Considering the Memetic Badass reputation the green ogre got from internet phenomena like "Shrek Is Love, Shrek Is Life", it almost feels like a prediction of what was to come.
- Mayor Jed's "Jed!" campaign sings in Underground 1's Tampa level parodied Jeb Bush's "Jeb!" logo when he ran for Florida state governor. At the time this was a Genius Bonus... and then Jeb used the same logo for his disastrous 2016 Presidential campaign.
Just Here for Godzilla: Shrek is a Secret Character in Underground 2, to the delight of many brogres.
Les Yay: In THUG, if you select a girl character, the dialog in story mode doesn't change. This leads to some interesting dialog involving your love of Russian women and a woman who wants to "show you a few tricks". Weirdly, 2 games later in American Wasteland, you can't play Story Mode as a woman because your character has a female love interest.
Love to Hate: Many players find Eric Sparrow to be incredibly loathsome and easy to hate for betraying the protagonist not once, not twice, but THREE times (with each time being more severe than the last), which is often compounded by his obnoxious demeanor in general. It's because of this that he's often considered one of gaming's most memorable villains. It helps that he's voiced by the same actor as Haida.
Narm: The cutscenes in the Story Modes for both games can become utterly hilarious depending on how your character is customized. Good luck taking the idea of Eric stealing your footage and passing himself off as you seriously when you're a green-skinned woman or a skeleton.
Polished Port: The PSP version of 2, subtitled Remix, has some expected compromises - worse graphics and framerate, no online, and no mid-level voice acting - but balances it out by adding three new levels, and the game is otherwise translated across perfectly. Not bad for a launch title.
Retroactive Recognition: Back in 2003, Iron Man was still considered a B-tier Marvel Comics character, rather than a pop culture icon, so his appearance as a Secret Character in the first game can come off as this. (To put this in perspective, he appeared after both Spider-Man and Wolverine had appeared in earlier Pro Skater titles.)
- Eric Sparrow's voice actor, Ben Diskin, was known for a few roles in cartoons (primarily Codename: Kids Next Door) during the game's release, but his popularity would truly explode more than a decade and a half later from his roles as Haida, Shirou and Joseph Joestar.
Scrappy Mechanic: The vehicles in the first had awful controls and practically no use unless a goal required it.
Signature Scene: Doing a McTwist over a helicopter in Hawaii is the most remembered scene from the first game due to the sheer awesomeness involved.
Take That, Scrappy!: Seemingly aware of how much the player would loathe Eric Sparrow, THUG delivers an alternate ending when you've beaten the game a second time. Instead of accepting Eric's challenge to win back the skating footage he stole, the Player Character simply takes the tape off him and slams an elbow into his smug face. All in one beautiful motion. In THUG 2 he basically becomes the Butt-Monkey for the team and even after trying to cheat you out of your place eventually gets caught out and booted off the tour. And you'll love every second of his torment.
Tear Jerker: The first Underground game has this in the Moscow section of the plot, when even after Eric's bullshit, it seems you've proven yourself a pro and are the biggest up and rising star and even got Eric to apologize. Then he gets you arrested for his stupid drunken tank stunt, runs your name through the mud, gets you kicked off of the team as they leave you to rot in Moscow, and does his damnedest to try to get all of your friends and fellow skaters to abandon you because Evil Is Petty. It's not just the fact that your character got screwed over so hard that they lost just about everything, but also Eric's descent from being a guy that wants to go skate with you, to letting his newfound fame and glory (acquired from your hard work) get to his head and start spitting on the legacy of skateboarding in the name of profit.
That One Level:
- THUG:
  - Chapter 8 on Sick. The Wallplant Combo Goal is basically impossible in your current state, leaving you needing to do the other four. Party Boat Skate Tricks is fine, but Beat Andrew's Best Combos is a hassle because you need to do all three combos without missing a beat (and, annoyingly, there's a gap right in front of you in the first one that might cause an immediate failure). Bowl Grind is a huge hassle because your combo can't contain manuals or walking, only grinds, and the getting the second jump like that is almost frame-perfect, while Prove Yourself tells you to do two separate 720 spins off simple quarter pipes, which is extremely difficult – though perfectly possible if you get 6/10 spin before then^hint – until you realize that you can run out of the building you start in, climb onto the roof of the other one, and spine transfer off the ramp at the edge so you stay in the air long enough to get the spin done with ease. Don't forget to Revert. And then you have to climb the building AGAIN and repeat it, this time breaking into a manual when you hit the ground after your revert. Hope you didn't waste too much time.
  - The Kill Wallows mission of Chapter 15 is also a pain because of how much of a drag it is to actually hit all the spots it wants you to.
  - Chapter 22 is where the game decides it hates you again, giving you the Hangover Cure goal that you can't pass by because suddenly you have to do all three Goals. Kalo, an NPC possibly met two chapters earlier in the lip trick goal who promised he'd do a favor for you later, tells you to collect a bunch of random ingredients for a cure to his hangover. While tolerable if still difficult in Normal mode, on Sick mode it turns into a disgustingly long chain of grinds interspersed with jumps of varying tightness, ending in the “No. F&%king. Way!” sequence of three tight sidejump gaps over a big drop, which has to be executed with reasonably few errors or you won't have the time to get through it, period. Anonymous Caller and Party Favors are thankfully a breeze, only requiring you to visit a cluster of Non Player Characters and do up to 20 360 Spine Drops over a radio for Anonymous Caller (with a 720 spin counting as two 360 spins), and use a car to find a bunch of NPCs with a reasonably wide time margin respectively. The final Goal, Straight Outta Moscow, is stupid, making you navigate instant failure spots and giving you a night vision filter for basically no reason, but overall not as much of a complete pain as Hangover Cure.
- THUG2:
  - Skatopia, the final level, has TWO Story Mode missions where you must keep balance for a long distance – one manual and one grind, both basically from top to bottom of Skatopia down a pretty long route – plus some other hard combo missions.
  - Berlin's goals in classic mode cannot possibly all be completed in two minutes due to how far apart they are from each other. The SKATE letters are spread far apart and not in a straight line. The four Acid Drops are all hidden in high up locations. The Secret Tape, however, takes the cake - you have to spine transfer into a cathedral from the side - trick up a ramp, grab a ladder, walk around and perform a few platforming sections to reach it. To make matters worse, one of the Acid Drops is near it so you pretty much have to set restart there.
  - Boston, as portrayed in THUG2 Remix, has a very difficult goal in "Backflip Down The Stairs" due to the game barely letting you get enough air to revert into the halfpipe directly in front of them (usually you'll just crash into them) and not letting you get off your board to land the trick in time.
  - Coming back from the original THPS, Downhill Jam is a nightmare. The level has next to no vert pipes, which forces the player to rely on balance combos to reach the high scores. Not to mention that the Secret Tape is in a very annoying location.
  - Also coming back (from THPS2, in this case), Philadelphia is just as hard to score on as Downhill Jam. The only good place to perform vert tricks is the secret area, and most of its rails aren't as good for combos as Downhill Jam's.
  - While the level itself is not as hard as it seems, The Triangle's Collect C-O-M-B-O laps around the entire stage.
  - Atlanta from THUG2 Remix is somewhat similar to Philadelphia (though larger) in that it's lacking in particularly long lines. The best way to score high is to go on the roof of a building and grind things on the way down.
Unexpected Character: In addition to the various guest skaters you can find and unlock throughout the two games, Ben Franklin^noteor at least an impersonator of him is included amongst them in Underground 2. Yeah, can't say any of us saw that coming.
Unintentional Period Piece: For the first game, the sign at the Tampa AM competition confirmed the game was set in 2004. Chad Muska boasted that his car's fitted with a DVD player with seven screens among its customizations. Also, there hadn't been a Slam City Jam competition in Vancouver since 2006. Finally, there's the hidden VHS tapes the player can collect.

YMMV / Tony Hawk's Underground

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