'Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2' Tips And Tricks For Beginners

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 is hot off the presses, and fans who have been in love with the series for two decades are already kickflipping and bluntsiding their way to millions of points, lighting up the online leaderboards. But what if you're new to the series? What if this is your first time on a virtual board and you don't know your ollies from your nollies?

Well fear not, because we've put together a quick crash course (hopefully no pun intended) in some basic little tricks that will have you feeling more confident on the deck in no time.

Vert combo tricks

When you drop into a quarter pipe, or half pipe, or really anywhere that sends you straight up and back down again, it's an opportunity to rack up some quick and easy points. Obviously you can spam simple grabs and flip tricks and hope you land them for a 4- or 5-times multiplier, but there is another way. As you approach the lip of the ramp, quickly press up or up, up before you ollie, to perform a no comply or boneless respectively, giving you some extra height. This also adds towards your combo counter for any tricks performed afterward.

If you've worked up your special meter, hit a big trick to immediately get double points. On your way back down, hit a revert to triple the multiplier and continue your combo. If you've mastered all this and landed the right way up, you can try throwing a manual into the mix to make it really look like you know what you're doing.

Activision, Vicarious Visions

Manual combos

You don't need ramps, drops or rails in order to accumulate points in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2. Manuals can be your friends, too. While useful when used to link together lines, manuals can also be super powerful if you just want to freeform it.

Pressing up, down (or down, up) will put you into a manual, but you can increase your score multiplier by double tapping your flip, grab or grind buttons as many times as you like in order to initiate some stylish moves that would make even the master of manuals himself Rodney Mullen blush. Just make sure you keep an eye on your balance meter though, or you could end up embarrassing yourself sooner rather than later. As an extra slice of gold, this also works with lip tricks and grinds.

Activision, Vicarious Visions

Know when to end a combo

This seems like a simple one, but it's so, so easy to blow a huge combo because you're too busy spaffing buttons and panicking. It's much better to deliberately hit the tricks you want, straighten out your angle or balance and come out the other side safe and sound. Learn where each trick is on your controller, remap them so your favourites fall easily under your fingers if you need to, and enter those combos with confidence.

Learn the ropes in free skate mode

Skate Tours is where most skaters will head when they load up the game, to tackle the myriad different challenges that await. Collecting the letter of S.K.A.T.E., finding gaps and performing certain tricks on them or finding the hidden tapes are all great fun, but can be frustrating if you're not familiar with the level layouts. This is where free skate mode comes into play.

Heading into the levels without the stress of trying to destroy those challenges will give you a much better idea of how to make the most of your limited time in each run, and you'll begin to recognise routes between collectibles so that when you do eventually take the plunge into Skate Tours, you'll feel every part the prioritising pro.

Change your stats up

Using Create-A-Skater is great. You can either make your own likeness, or try and create some wild and wacky custom characters. But you can also allocate the stat points you accumulate throughout the games as you see fit, including being able to re-allocate them if and when you need to.

If you're having trouble nailing a manual or lip trick challenge, don't be afraid to dump some points from your ollie or hangtime abilities into those categories in order to give yourself the upper hand. You can also do this with the pro skaters you've collected skill points with, but bear in mind you can only move them around as low as their default stats.

Switch stance

Last but not least, did you know that skating and doing tricks in your switch stance will give you extra points? A skater's switch stance is simply the opposite of how they would normally skate. So for example, a skater who skates with their right foot forward would consider their switch stance as leading with their left. In Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2, hitting the revert button while skating around or coming out of a trick will toggle your normal and switch stances. It's important to know that tricks will be ever so slightly harder to pull off while in switch, but the payoff will help eek out every last point from those combos. There's also a 'Switch' category in each skater's stats that, once maxed out, will make them trick as well switched as normal.