I am in a mood to Post and I'm thinking about Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and how I've played every single one1 and will post the one song I think is most iconic from each game. Not the best one. Just the ones that when I think the game, it's the first song that comes to mind.
I cannot stress do not go into the comments saying "but how could you pick X instead of Y I am not here to post definitives WHICH APPARENTLY I NEED TO SPELL OUT BECAUSE I JUST VOICED A THOUGHT ON TWITTER AND PEOPLE TOOK IT LIKE IT WAS A MANIFESTO OF SOME KIND. Anyways
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
Goldfinger - "Superman"
Duh.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
The High & Mighty ft. Mos Def & Mad Skillz - "B-Boy Document '99"
Honestly you could pick any track from THPS2 and you'd be some form of "correct" because this is unarguably objectively definitively an all-time top 5 Greatest Licensed Soundtracks of All Time. That said, to me this is the track that stands out because it's the first step to the series featuring a ton of hip-hop and I'd have never been exposed to this culture and music as early as I was had it not been for it.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
AFI - "The Boy Who Destroyed the World"
I can't hear this song without also hearing the sound of objectives being completed behind it. There's better songs on the soundtrack (which is saying a lot because this is maybe AFI's best) but this is THPS3 to me.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4
Delinquent Habits - "House of the Rising Drum"
THPS4 changed a lot of stuff mechanically and so did its soundtrack follow, including way more variety in genres and, honestly, budget. I'd have put AC/DC or the Sex Pistols but "House of the Rising Drum" is what I think about when I think about going from goal to goal, vibing with no timer on-screen.
Tony Hawk's Underground
NOFX - "The Separation of Church and Skate"
There are 72 songs on this soundtrack. Seventy. Two. To pick one most iconic is near-impossible. But this is the one, mostly because I was floored it took them five games to finally included NOFX on the soundtrack.
Tony Hawk's Underground 2
The Living End - "End of the World"
I remember being floored by this song when it played the first time and I kept it on repeat because I was so spiteful of the game itself that I was clutching onto anything I thought was good. This isn't the best song on the soundtrack (It's "Pain" by Jimmy Eat World) but it's the one I always think of first.
Tony Hawk's American Wasteland
Felix da Housecat - "Everyone is Someone in LA"
There's an interview somewhere with Tony Hawk where they ask him his favorite soundtracks in order and he lists THAW as his favorite because he had the money to get a bunch of his current favorite bands cover songs of his old favorite bands and I always thought that was really cool. It's a shame none of them were really all that spectacular because there were some other real powerhouse choices. Not since Midnight Club II, though, has games been as graced with as good a Felix da Housecat track.
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam
Shadows Fall - "In Effigy"
A terrible game populated by a mostly forgettable soundtrack that I remember this song sticking out like a sore thumb because I played a ton of the MX vs. ATV games at this point and that's where I was hearing this kinda thrash/metal stuff. And that's kinda where I wanted it! It's a weird vibe for a skateboarding game!
Tony Hawk's Project 8
Kool & The Gang - "Summer Madness"
This is the point where I remember just kinda letting the soundtrack wash over me and looking at it now I sure remember why. A lot of great bands on here but Joy Division? Kasabian? Gnarls Barkley? The soundtrack started feeling a lot less like a vibe and more like a real eclectic pick of stuff and while I don't think "Club Foot" is a bad song, I sure don't need it in Project 8. (Because I've heard it already in Midnight Club 3.)
Anyway, this Kool & The Gang song is also on the Vice City soundtrack for good reason. This is the game I remember it from, personally. It's a real standout in that ocean of... 'choices'.
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground
Reverend Horton Heat - "Baddest of the Bad"
Before the era of streaming where I could simply pull up any artist's full discography and give them a whopping $0.04 for listening to their collective works to date, I had no idea who Reverend Horton Heat were but I fucking loved "I Can't Surf" in THPS 3 and simply did not have the ability to find more of them at the time. The HMV didn't carry their stuff!
Seeing them come around on the soundtrack again after so long was an amazing feeling because, like Underground 2, I had to latch onto SOMETHING because the game itself... oof. Also since then I've listened to all their shit, Reverend Horton Heat kick ass check them out if you dig this.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD
Millencolin - "No Cigar"
Maybe the hardest I've ever had to "latch onto" something good. What a mess of a game. They managed to get a handful of songs from the original releases but couldn't manage more because of understandably difficult licensing stuff. The new songs they included were not that great. Millencolin gets its due here because I had since fallen in love with Millencolin's body of work and forgot about that until this game came around.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5
RATATAT - "CREAM ON CHROME"
Folks I'm not gonna lie to you: I forgot this game existed. It did have RATATAT on the soundtrack, though. You gotta hand it to em' for that because you sure can't hand it to em' for anything else.
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2
All Talk - "Let's Do It"
The special secret about this whole post is that I mostly wanted a reason to link to this track. We'll never have something like THPS 1+2 again. Vicarious worked real fucking hard on maybe the most successful execution of a remake I'll ever see in my lifetime and their reward was to get folded and squeezed into the Blizzard hell machine making bullshit garbage for the next four decades. It's infuriating. THPS 1+2 is successful on nearly every aspect of its existence. It's the game people who grew up with the series had been dying for since THUG 1--THPS 3 if you're being picky.
I love all the new music they brought into the game but "Let's Do It" really stuck out to me as a real left-field pick that's 100% just a pop song but the vibe is so right. The rest of the soundtrack's selection of punk, rock, hip-hop, and dance works so well with each other that an upbeat song you could easily mistake for a TV commercial anthem just slots right in.
Man, what a game.
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1 - I have obviously not included all the bad mobile games that I did not play or Tony Hawk's Ride or Shred or any of that shit I touched for 10 minutes and went "fuck this"
