After the success of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 remake, more classic games in the beloved franchise are set to get revamped with the impending release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. At IGN Live, the game’s director, Kurt Tillmanns, was on hand to talk about what this collection has to offer in terms of mixing new and old elements – including one bright green new inclusion in the form of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's resident party dude, Michaelangelo.
Said Tillmans, about including such an offbeat and notable new skater on the roster, “It was awesome working with Nickelodeon on getting Mikey in here. We were super passionate. Everyone who gets an opportunity to be part of a Tony Hawk game is just incredibly gracious and excited to be a part of it. They're wonderful collaborators. You know, we took great pride in building him for the game. He's also got three turtle-themed special tricks in the game that you can get when you unlock him, and you can equip those onto any other skater in the game. So, that's a ton of fun by itself!”
When it came to adding a two-minute timer element to this version of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Tillmans remarked, “We’re rebuilding two of the best games of all time from the ground up. And we wanted this to be one game. It's got the concept from two awesome games, but it really is one game. So that means that Tony Hawk 3 is going to get some features and things that Tony Hawk 4 had and Tony Hawk 4, along with the classic goals that you remember, is going to be able to be played with a two-minute timer. That timer can actually be extended up to an hour for people who want to play more at their own pace. We've also got all of the classic game modes returning, so you can skate around in the four parks and free skate single session or speed run and continue to do things at your own pace in those modes.”
Tillmans said he was excited by the online play aspect of the game because he felt, for Iron Galaxy, “That is the heritage of our studio. So, we are extremely excited to be bringing this game to seven platforms. We’ve got both PlayStations, both Xboxes, both Switches, and three PC stores. And not only that, we are going to feature cross-play across every single platform. So that's huge. This game is coming to the widest audience, to the widest player base that any Tony Hawk game has ever had."
Asked about developing the Switch 2 version of the game, Tillmans laughed, “I mean, honestly, what's one other platform when we’re already doing six, right? As soon as we knew that we were going to be in the window and it was going to be possible for us to be able to support it, we just jumped at the opportunity.” As for the performance of the game on the new console, he noted, “We're going to run at 60 FPS on Switch 2 on every park, so it's going to be amazing performance.”
The soundtracks have always been a big part of the Tony Hawk games, and Tillmans said that for the remake of Pro Skater 3 + 4, “We have a ton of people who are just super passionate about the soundtrack. Obviously, when you start making a Tony Hawk game, that's one of the things that people are most excited about. We take it very seriously. Tony Hawk himself has a lot of opinions about the soundtrack and he probably knows more about the music that skaters are listening to than anyone else in the world, so we obviously hold his opinion in high esteem."
As for what it was like working with Hawk himself, Tillmans said, “He’s an awesome collaborator. He's great to work with. He takes this being kind of the lexicon for skating very seriously. He plays the game frequently and he will often tell us, ‘Hey, think this trick name is now called something else. Let me check with some people.’ And he will make sure that the trick list, which has been updated from 1 + 2, represents the language and the verbiage that skaters are using today."
Regarding the new skate parks the game includes, Tillmans said, “It’s a huge honor for us to be able to add, for the first time in over 10 years, three brand new parks into a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game. The game is going to feature the water park, the movie studio, and the pinball park. And the pinball park is super exciting. It fits in with that kind of park, like Roswell or Area 51 and Skater Heaven, where only Tony Hawk games could really take the skater into these fantastical places..”
As Tillmans explained, “When we come up with ideas for these parks, we think about the types of things that might be a forbidden place for a skater to go and skate, like a shut down water park that really fulfills that skater fantasy. And also those fantastic places, like a pinball park where the skater is actually like the size of a pinball in the machine skating around. The ball will ping pong around everywhere and wipe you out. And if you look up, there's actually a giant Tony Hawk playing the pinball machine that you're in. Then he'll react when you bail and cover his eyes. It's great."
So, now that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1-4 have gotten the remake treatment, should we expect the fifth game, Tony Hawk’s Underground, next? When asked that question, Tillmans remained mostly tightlipped, but he let it be known the interest is certainly there, replying “We’re focused on shipping [3 + 4]. I'm getting text messages right now from people working on the game. So we want to ship this game. We can't wait to get 3 + 4 out to the audience. Beyond that, we would absolutely love to keep working on this.”
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 will be released on July 11, 2025, and you can check our first impressions of the remake right here.
"Remakes and remasters are very much an 'in' thing at the moment, and while it's no surprise that we would eventually see what are arguably two of the best entries in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series make their way to modern platforms, I definitely didn't expect this package to be as robust of a remake as it's shaping up to be," Our previewer, Nick Maillet said.
