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Tony Hawk's Underground

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Tony Hawk's Underground
Tony Hawk's Underground cover (PlayStation 2)
Tony Hawk's Underground cover (PlayStation 2)
Developer(s)Neversoft, (PC version,Beenox)
Publisher(s)Activision
EngineRenderWare
Platform(s)Xbox, GameCube, PS2, PC (Australia and Download only), Game Boy Advance, Mobile Phone
ReleaseOctober 27, 2003
Genre(s)Extreme sports
Mode(s)Single player, multiplayer

Tony Hawk's Underground, also called THUG and loosely referred to as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, is a skateboarding video game available for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Game Boy Advance and Xbox platforms released in 2003. A PC version was released exclusively in Australia as a budget release in 2005. This version was ported by Beenox. It is the fifth game in the Tony Hawk's series. It features the ability to create a custom character, and supports face mapping and online play on the PS2 and PC versions. Unlike its predecessors, Underground focuses heavily on its story mode, and to this extent includes a large number of in-game cut scenes. THUG is also the first game in the series to introduce the ability to travel around levels on foot. This game is rated "T" for teen because of the strong language, mild violence, blood and suggestive themes.

Game Mechanics

File:Grind over McDonalds.jpg
Getting some air

For the first time in the series, the player can get off the board in order to walk, run and/or climb around as an alternate to skating. This is necessary to reach some locations and challenges. The player is now able to leave the skateboard in the middle of a combo of tricks and continue the combo elsewhere, as long as he or she continues within a time limit. This time limit is another skill that can be improved. Added to the moves in THUG is the wall push, the wall plant, hip transfer, and acid drops. In each level of the game (usually by beating a challenge that requires it), the player also has an opportunity to use vehicles throughout the level. Encountering the professional boarders in each level features them trying to teach the player a new trick to add to their slots (although these goals are not necessary for progression in the game).

The Story

The story follows the trials and tribulations of two at-first unknown skaters, you (the game's Custom Skater), and your friend Eric Sparrow. The story begins in their hometown in New Jersey, with you and Eric exploring the area and helping prepare for Chad Muska's skate demo. After the demo, you perform for Chad as he explores the greater New Jersey area to grab his attention. Once accomplished, he suggests you earn a sponsorship from the local skateshop, and gives you his skateboard out of respect. After impressing the local sponsored skaters, one of your friends, Shawn, says that the local drug dealers have stolen a skateboard from Peralta's shop. You go on a dangerous odyssey to retrieve it, after which Eric proceeds to light the drug dealer's SUV on fire, as "revenge" for stealing his skateboard earlier in the game. You then meet up with Stacy Peralta, and ask for a sponsorship from his skate shop. He makes it a deal, as long as you show him something original, and don't film in any local spots. When you tell Eric the good news, he says that the drug dealers have been following him, angry that he destroyed their car. In an effort to help Eric, you hurry to leave town with him to Manhattan, New York.

Once you have arrived in Manhattan, you decide to make a skate video hitting famous lines and tricks in well-known areas of Manhattan, and complete the sponsorship video by performing various tricks over a burning taxi. Once completed, you talk to Stacy who tells you to join the Tampa AM skate event in Florida. You arrive in Tampa in trouble with the police for driving a shoddy vehicle (an old hippie bus lent by Stacy) with a police-offensive bumper sticker. Eric gets arrested for mouthing off to the officer, meaning You must first do favors for the local police force to bail out Eric and proceed through to your Tampa experience. By the time the event starts, you get into an argument with Eric when he "forgets" to sign you up. After impressing local pros, and doing some doubles with Tony Hawk himself, you are allowed into the event.

Once you dominate the event, you join the sponsor of your choice (choosing from Birdhouse, Element, Flip, Girl, or Zero), which sends you to San Diego to do a demo. Eric is soon joined to the team, introduced to you during your party-induced hangover. When you and Eric impress your team manager Todd with your performance at the demo, you are sent to Hawaii to film for a team video. In Hawaii, you search for a spot that has been untouched by skaters. You eventually find the rooftop of a tall hotel, and call Eric to film you skating on (and off of) it. When a police helicopter arrives, Eric insists that you leave, but you want to seize the moment of a challenge, and perform a McTwist off of the hotel's roof, over the helicopter, and onto the rooftop of the neighboring building, with Eric capturing it on film. Your team then travels to Vancouver.

In Vancouver, after doing some local favors, you go to Slam City and view your team's video premiere, after hurriedly finishing parts for it. To your surprise, Eric had edited your filming of the rooftop jump to his benefit. Todd immediately makes Eric a Pro, and presents him his own pro-model board. After confronting Eric, who couldn't care less about your plight, you enter the Slam City Jam contest, and (despite still being an Amateur) lie that you are a Pro and take on a series of Pro competitions. The competition resolves into a one-on-one between you and Eric. You win, and are declared a Pro by Todd. After designing your own deck and gaining a shoe sponsor, the team decides to go to an international Pro skateboard demo in Moscow. While practicing for the demo, you are reconciled with Eric, and the both of you perform a double performance together.

In Moscow, you follow a drunk Eric when he steals the keys to a Russian tank, and he takes it on a ride through town. After attempting to stop it, you lose control, and crash into a building, and become trapped in the tank under a pile of rubble. Eric runs off, leaving you to get sent to jail. The team sacks you, and leaves you stranded in Moscow. The American Embassy bails you out, but you must get home by doing favors for locals.

When you get back home, you find that Eric has changed. He now has many sponsors, has a record label in the making, and now only skates for money. Eric reveals that he has been plotting to bring you down from the very beginning, and that the money is all that matters in professional skateboarding. You resolve to show Eric how wrong he is by making a "soul skating" video; a collection of pure skating exhibitions featuring a team of the best pros selected by yourself and Peralta. This is very successful, and provokes Eric into challenging you to a last skateboarding line in return for the Hawaii tape he refused to let air at the Slam City Jam. After you win, you take the tape and walk away from Eric, who curses as you leave.

On a second run-through of the game, there is an alternate ending. Instead of you following Eric's line again, a cut scene shows him flashing the tape at you, but in a final frustrated move, the player elbows Eric in the jaw, grabs the tape, and walks away as Eric faints onto his car. If all of the challenges are completed in Normal mode first, the player is rewarded with a collection of game cheats, presumptively done to assist the player in a replay under Hard mode. The game's producers admitted that by virtue of the difficulty of Eric's line (even in Normal mode), both the alternate ending, as well as the cheats, were added on following playthroughs to spare the player that frustration.

Skaters

The game's default in story mode is the Custom Skater. By playing the levels and challenges, the player can pre-emptively access the professional playable characters in Free Skate modes, as well as unlock secret and bonus characters through Story mode.

Pro Skaters

Secret Characters

  • Marvel Comics' Iron Man under Easy difficulty
  • KISS bass player Gene Simmons under Normal difficulty
  • T.H.U.D., a C.H.U.D.-like creature, under Sick difficulty

Bonus Characters

If all the game's Gaps are collected, one can also unlock the "Pedestrian" skater, with the following in-game characters (including the other three KISS members) as skins:

File:THUG hotter than hell.jpg
Iron Man on stage as Kiss play in the 'Hotter Than Hell' level

Levels

The Levels featured in the game are:

The Secrets

Unlockable levels

There are three unlockable levels hidden as "tokens" in game. The tokens are found in New Jersey (behind the train station), Hawaii (inside the wooden tiki statue below the suspended freeway), and Moscow (inside one of the ground level windows of the large red building opposite of the fountain) and unlock School II, Venice Beach and Hangar respectively. These levels are ports from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Also, as a homage to the Pro Skater 2 title, completing goals from their respective games will unlock secret areas too, e.g. grinding the helicopter in the 'Hangar' level, or grinding one of the 'Roll Call' rails at a certain time in the 'School II' level.

Upon completion of any story mode, one can unlock Hotter than Hell, a level that features a Kiss concert in Australia. This level is named after the Kiss album (and song) "Hotter Than Hell". Collecting each of the KISS letters the very first time will unlock the "KISS Concert" gap and a video of the band performing "God of Thunder". Any other time the letters are collected will cause the lights of the level to change, and Kiss will appear on the stage and play "Rock and Roll All Nite", "Lick It Up" or "God of Thunder".

Vehicles

The vehicles in the game are as follows:

  • New Jersey: The Street Warriors' Import Tuner
  • Manhattan: A dilapidated lemon
  • Tampa: A police cruiser
  • San Diego: A gardener's cart and a security cart (only for the security cart challenge; the gardener's cart is always accessible)
  • Hawaii: An El Camino-type vehicle
  • Vancouver: A limousine and a leaf blower cart
  • Slam City Jam: The Nokia blimp (only for the Blimp challenge)
  • Moscow: A Russian compact
  • Hotter Than Hell: Dune Buggy
  • Create-A-Park: When creating a goal in create-a-park mode you can access the dune buggy from the 'Hotter than Hell' level or a non-accessible blue muscle car from the Tampa level. All of the above vehicles are also available for use in create-a-goal mode when in their specific level.

Soundtrack

There is a total of 77 songs in the game. They are listed below, alphabetically by Artist and with the track names and the groups into which the tracks are sorted; Punk, Hip-Hop and Rock/Other. [citation needed]

Awards

Trivia

  • Upon completion of the game (after the main character retrieves the tape), the character's Hawaii footage is shown as intended, undoctored by Eric. Moments after, Eric records some bikini girls as Todd prepares to flirt with them, unsuccessfully. The camcorder goes dark as Todd is heard being slapped by the girls.
  • The name "Eric Sparrow" is a play on Tony Hawk's name, for the character has a four-letter bisyllabic first name accompanied with the last name of a bird.
  • The default name for the player's character is "Steve", although the character is not referred to directly by name in story mode (the player can choose whatever name they wish).
  • The player has the option of selecting any one of 20 pre-made skins (14 male and 6 female) to play as. They are featured in this order: Steve, Becky, Mike, Jim, Chad, Joey, Sheena, Josh, Andy, Liz, Jack, Tera, Chen, Daisy, Rasta Papalis, The Suit, Tiger Swallow, Big Lion, Green Chick, and "Big Pimpin" Eddie V.
  • Daisy, the super-secret character from Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4, is available in the aforementioned list of character skins. She is slightly less buxom, and is now skating in flip-flops rather than barefoot. Her "Awww Yeahhh!" manual is available for assignment, but her "Hula Hoopin'" grind, "Sunbathing" air and "Banana Board Splits" manual were not included in this game.
  • Daisy's poster can be seen on the wall of the Custom Skater's room.
  • Most of the gaps in the Tampa level are named after food dishes, such as the "Pecan Waffle", the "Cheesesteak Omelet", and the "Chopsteak Dinner".
  • The swan flowerpots in front of Jason Turbo's home (New Jersey level) quack as the player walks or rides over them.
  • At the Brooklyn Banks in the Manhattan level, there is a drawing of the Leeds United F.C. logo on the wall to the left of the police cars.
  • It is rumored that the sound of water in the waterway area of the Tampa level is actually the sound of Bam Margera peeing in a urinal in the Neversoft building.
  • After earning Peralta's sponsorship, the main character will have earned a "Peralta's Skate Team" t-shirt to wear. In addition to this, the character will earn a t-shirt representing their choice of the five deck companies after the Tampa Am, and will have a jacket upon arriving to Moscow. However, only male characters have the varying clothes in the story; female characters will keep the attire they're assigned.
  • The Neversoft logo screen shows the game's antagonist Eric Sparrow skating down an alley at night. Stopping in front of a manhole, one of the game's secret characters (and the Neversoft mascot), T.H.U.D., bursts from the manhole frightening Eric off his board. T.H.U.D. then drags Eric into the manhole, and Eric's bones fly out moments after. The Neversoft logo then appears as Eric's eyeball bounces out and gets impaled by a tiny spear (the "O" in the Neversoft logo is an eyeball impaled by a small harpoon).
  • T.H.U.D. stands for "Tony Hawk's Underground Dweller". This is inspired by the film C.H.U.D., standing for Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers, which the character resembles in terms of behavior, and is similar in appearance to the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
  • A new two-player game called "Firefight" is added to Underground. The goal of this game is to use the skateboard to shoot fireballs at each other until one skater's health drops from 100 to 0.
  • As is the custom of previous Tony Hawk games, many of the goal-bearing characters are repeated in numerous levels. For example, one of the drug dealers in New Jersey is also used as "The Boss" Aleksandr in Moscow, and the businessman in Manhattan is also the Private Eye in Tampa. Also, some characters are not used consistently in the story, as is the case in New Jersey, for a different "Shawn"/"Shaun" character is used between the first tour of New Jersey and the return to Jersey from Moscow.
  • There are two special gaps inside the game. The first is the "Car Hop", locatable anywhere except the Slam City Jam, in which the player simply ollies over any vehicle, in motion or still. The second is hidden in Moscow. In between the Communication building and the Government building stands a snowman. If the player (on-board or off) manages to knock the head off of the snowman while leaving the rest of it intact, blood and snow ruptures from the middle section of the snowman, and the player earns 50 points for finding the "Fatality!" gap. Neither gap is necessary for unlocking all the gaps in the game.
  • Surprisingly, after unlocking the Pedestrian skater whom is supposed to feature several skins from in-game characters, there are no skins featured for any of the San Diego or Hawaiian characters. Only characters from New Jersey, Manhattan, Tampa, Vancouver/Slam City Jam, Moscow, and the other KISS members in Hotter Than Hell are available for the Pedestrian skater's use.
  • One of Gene Simmons' special moves, "Lick It Up", features Gene latching onto his board with his tongue. This is one of many classic exaggerations of the length of Gene's tongue.
  • In the level Hotter Than Hell, whether playing as Gene or one of the skins of Peter, Paul or Ace as the Pedestrian skater, collecting the KISS letters and activating the KISS concert will still feature all members of KISS (despite playing the level as one of them) performing on stage, meaning that there will be either two Genes, two Peters, two Pauls or two Aces.
  • This was the last Tony Hawk game to have Zero Skateboards featured in it due to contract issues.
  • There are a few glitches throughout the game, namely in Manhattan and Vancouver. In Manhattan, in between some buildings is a small brown fence. If the player uses Moon Gravity to climb up the taller building and get behind the fence, the player will be in a strange glitch area. In Vancouver, if the player climbs the building in the center, it is possible to fall through onto an invisible platform. After the player falls off the platform, they will be beneath the building, and if they walk around, their body will jut out from the floor. However, a more major glitch in Vancouver is one where after the player climbs a glass building right next to the edge of the level, they can fall down behind the actual border, and can run around within a limited space where no other player can reach.
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