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

This certainly cranks up the nostalgia. If you grew up playing the Tony Hawk games, or skateboarding, then you will probably enjoy this.

As great as the subject matter is, it's a rather bland documentary. Just a lot of talking heads, a lot of patting eachother on the back, and a quick overview of the series itself.

The documentary is best when talking about the first two iconic games; in particular their development. The impact the games had on not just the skating world, but the bands who featured on the soundtracks was interesting too.

This makes me want to listen to the music featured on the Tony Hawk games even more than it does play the games themselves. You're probably not going to learn anything new here. The sheer volume of quick interviews is enough to make you more dizzy than the gameplay angles.

But for all its documentary shortfalls, it's still a nice enough trip down memory lane.

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.

I had heard about the Tony hawk video games though I did not know much about them.

I liked the interviews with pro skateboards and people involved with the video games.

I found it interesting to learn about some of the skateboarding video games that came out before the Tony Hawk video games. I suppose I thought that Tony Hawks games were the first skateboarding video games.

I just saw the movie in Google Play Movies (Youtube Movies). Gave it 9/10, because, while it is a good movie, I really want to see more of what Neversoft guys have to say about the story. In short - the movie is otherwise good. Not as good as Stacy Peralta's documentaries on skateboarding, but still good. I enjoyed seeing it. I am one of these people, which this video game inspired to get into skateboarding, even late as now I am 44 years old. and I know I am not the only one. In the past I started with THPS2 and since then, every new game for me and my brother was like a holiday - we played for countless hours. So for sure, there was a need for this movie to be made and I am glad it is a reality now. Good thing about the movie is, that there are interviews not just with the skaters and few Neversoft guys, but also some of the musicians from the soundtrack and some of the influenced kids.

Basically, the movie represents more of Tony Hawk's point of view on the story and it is a good one. We see of course interviews also with the other core game skaters, such as Rodney Mullen, Steve Cabalero and more. I was looking to see Elissa Steamer, but she was not featured in the movie. Still, the presented material was interesting. There were stories, Tony tells what other options he had, the development around the game, which is the X-Games competition and the legendary 900 and many other things. Just as in the game, the movie features cool soundtrack.

Fun fact: Rodney Mullen wears a Debian linux logo t-shirt. I am curious why - is he a linux guy too? Won't be surprised, but need to ask. Asked him on his Facebook and Instagram, so let's see what he will reply.

The movie duration is like 1:11hrs and the rental price on Google was like 4$, so it was affordable and fun to watch.

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!