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

This is truly a magical 73 minutes and worthy of the long wait, and anticipation I've had for it. I wasn't sure what to expect, structurally, going in, I just knew my love for the game and the role it played in my growing up. So it's important to understand the focus of the documentary.

This doc is about the influence and impact of skateboarding (and it's culture) on the game's creation, and the subsequent impact of the game on the future of skateboarding and culture. This is not just a documentary about the history of the franchise that charts the rise and fall, details of development programming, the Robomodo games etc... This is all glossed over, but this is much more about how skateboarding, and Tony Hawk influenced a game, and how that game changed several landscapes for skateboarding, culture, and games to come.

It fully captured some magic here that truly speaks to my personal feelings when I think about THPS and it's impact in my gaming life, and life outside of the game. Watching it gave me goosebumps in a way I can't explain fully... They have put into video form some of the most nostalgic feelings of my late teens, and made me feel an era of my life in a way I haven't felt before... Kind of like when you smell the air on a certain day and you remember a time or place from your past.

This doc is a personal masterpiece for me.

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.

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!

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.