A little over 25 years ago, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater landed on the original PlayStation. It wasn’t the first skateboarding game; that accolade appears to belong to Atari’s 720, a late 1980s arcade machine. But with full respect to that game, THPS was the big one, kicking off several decades of fascination with the sport from both players and developers.
Why do skateboarding and video games make such a natural pairing? Maybe it’s something to do with how games let people live their extreme sports fantasies without risking a painful/embarrassing trip to A&E. It’s also a lot easier to look cool on a screen than when you pitch up at your local skatepark and roll nervously towards deep concrete bowl or perilous half-pipe.
Skateboarding games are also just stupidly good fun.
With Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, a ground-up remake of the third and fourth entries in the beloved series having just landed, it feels like a good time to look back at the many ways the sport has been tackled in games – both big and small. Here are the greatest skateboarding games of all time.
10. The Ramp (2021)
The Ramp is barely a game. It was made by just one person, who describes it as a “digital toy for skateboarding-loving people.” A Tech Deck inside a screen, if you will. But while The Ramp is no Tony Hawk’s in terms of content, it does a remarkable job of recreating the flow state that all skateboarders are constantly chasing.
There are just a handful of levels, from a traditional half-pipe to an empty swimming pool bowl, and there’s no score system or traditional progression. It’s just you, the ramp, and a smart implementation of the “pumping” technique that skateboarders use to build up speed. The Ramp might be small, but it does its thing so elegantly that it deserves a place on this list.
9. Session: Skate Sim (2022)
The first time I played Session: Skate Sim, I spent over an hour in the tutorial section, which tells you everything you need to know. An heir to EA’s Skate series (more on that in a bit), but far more hardcore in its approach to simulating real-life skateboarding, Session is far less interested in empowering you to pull off four-minute Tony Hawk’s-esque combos than it is in showing you how challenging it is to simply ollie up a curb.
The game revolves around a dual stick control system that maps each foot to a stick, so even getting the board off the ground is something you have to think about. There’s no scoring system, so instead you’re asked to think like a real skater and use the in-game video editor to create videos that prove you’re not lying about that cool trick you did. It’s pretty lightweight and unpolished compared to some of its rivals, but the commitment to ultra-realism is impressive.
8. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk (2023)
I should say right at the top that Bomb Rush Cyberfunk isn’t exclusively a skateboarding game, but it is one of the coolest games you will ever play with skateboarding in it. Heavily inspired by cult SEGA favourite Jet Set Radio, this ludicrously stylish indie gem sees you play as a kid in a youth gang who sets out to retrieve his recently decapitated head (it’s a whole thing) by challenging rival gangs, doing graffiti and ultimately taking control of the fictional city of New Amsterdam.
While Bomb Rush Cyberfunk’s cel-shaded graphics and affection for early 2000s street culture make it feel like a spiritual successor to Jet Set Radio, that was an inline skating-only game. Here the traversal options extend to BMXing and skateboarding too, and while the actual skating isn’t that deep, with a relatively limited tricks-set at your disposal, it’s all so much fun to look at that you won’t mind.
7. Skate City: New York (2025)
Indie developer Snowman has cultivated a well-earned reputation of being the master of 2D board sports games for mobile. It’s probably best known for the brilliant Alto’s series of snowboarding side-scrollers, but its two Skate City games are arguably even better. Clearly inspired by the likes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and the Skate games, Skate City puts an impressively wide variety of tricks quite literally at your fingertips, thanks to intuitive touch controls that are easy to grasp but satisfyingly tough to master.
Both games are worth a download, but the sequel adds more abilities and real-world skate spots in New York to cruise through. Whether you’re going for big-score combos or just vibing out in the leisurely Free Skate mode, this is as slick as virtual skateboarding on your phone gets.
6. Tony Hawk’s Underground (2003)
For some, the Tony Hawk’s series lost its way the moment it dropped the Pro Skater bit from the name, but if you were more sympathetic to the nonsense plots and creeping Jackass-ification of later entries, then they may well be your favourites. Tony Hawk’s Underground was the first in this new era for the series, so its new story mode, which involved you creating your own skater and travelling around North America and beyond in an attempt to earn the respect of the various real-life pros who appeared in the campaign, felt quite novel at the time.
THUG also enabled you to get off your board and climb for the first time, and it even had driving missions. While all this extra stuff undoubtedly meant the focus of the earlier games was lost, it was a fun evolution of the series at a time when the industry was becoming obsessed with GTA-style sandboxes.
5. Skate (2007)
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater will always be the household name of skateboarding games, so when EA’s Skate series first rolled onto the scene in 2007 it was less interested in snatching that title from the Birdman and co than it was in being the skateboarding game for skateboarders. Unlike your average THPS, in which combining three different grinds on the propeller of a helicopter before a landing in a nose manual is just another day at the office, Skate wanted to make it feel good just to successfully land a kickflip.
Moving the emphasis away from Tony Hawk’s face button controls and onto the analogue made it feel a lot closer a simulation of the real thing, which when combined with a deep understanding of authentic skate culture resulted in something totally fresh.
4. OlliOlli World (2022)
When I reviewed OlliOlli World back in 2022 I called it one of the best platformers I’d played in years, and that still stands in 2025. This endlessly playable 2D skateboarding game was (tragically no longer in existence) developer Roll7’s magnum opus, combining the ingenious analogue stick-focused control scheme it had been perfecting since the original BAFTA-winning OlliOlli, with an irresistible Saturday morning cartoon aesthetic.
OlliOlli World’s Radlandia setting might looking something that’s been ripped straight out of Nickelodeon, but make no mistake: while it might be more accessible than its predecessors, there’s a hardcore skateboarding game hiding under those pastel hues, and it would be a crying shame if it marked the end of the series.
3. Skate 2 (2009)
After firmly establishing itself as the skateboarding connoisseur’s alternative to Tony Hawk’s in the groundbreaking first entry, Skate 2 was the classic sequel that built on everything that made its predecessor great (presumably learning from longtime Tony Hawk’s developer Neversoft that changing things up too much risks the wrath of fans). The fantastic “Flickit” control scheme was left largely untouched, with the only significant addition being that you could now get off your board and move objects around in the world to set up tricks.
The fictional open world city of San Vanelona was once again the setting in Skate 2, but EA ensured it was bigger and more interesting to explore. It was never going to feel as exciting as the first game, but Skate 2’s beefed up campaign and series’ best physics systems means it was a superior one in pretty much every way.
2. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 (2020)
It’s easy to be cynical about remakes in the modern era of video games, but when executed as flawlessly as Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 it’s very hard not to fall head over heels in love. The first two THPS games established a gameplay loop that feels as good today as it did in the early 2000s, blending real skateboarding tricks with an unashamedly video game-y disregard for the laws of physics.
Vicarious Visions didn’t mess with any of that old-school arcade goodness, but smartly retrofitted mechanics like spine transfers and reverts from later entries to both games, while bringing what were two pre-HD classics into the modern era with a ground-up visual overhaul that gave levels like Venice Beach, School II and the iconic Warehouse from the first game a new lease of life. Probably the ultimate Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game. Well, almost.
1. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (2001)
Your pick for the best classic Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game will probably come down to which one you recall playing the most of after school or in your university halls, and for me the debate always comes back to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. It had some all-timer levels in the likes of Airport and Cruise Ship, a great soundtrack, and at the time was a real graphical showcase.
THPS3 is also a hugely significant entry in the series for what it added to gameplay, introducing reverts for the first time, which allowed you to link combos with manuals by tapping a button the moment you land a trick on a ramp. At this point we were about as far away from what is actually feasible in real skateboarding as you can get, but it further cemented the Pro Skater skater games as competitive multiplayer classics. Oh, and you could unlock Darth Maul and Wolverine as playable characters, so there was also that.
