If you try to find Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD on Steam today, you’re going to hit a brick wall. It’s gone. Deleted. Vanished into the digital ether back in 2017.
Honestly, for a lot of die-hard fans, that was probably a mercy killing.
When Robomodo first announced they were bringing back the "best of" the first two games in high definition, people lost their minds. This was 2012. The franchise was already on life support after the weird peripheral-based disasters like Tony Hawk: Ride. We just wanted the Warehouse. We wanted the Hangar. We wanted to feel 1999 again.
But what we got was... complicated. It wasn’t exactly the return to form everyone prayed for. It was more like a cover band that forgot the lyrics to the chorus but still had the right hair.
The Problem with the Unreal Engine Transition
Most people don't realize that the original Neversoft games were built on a heavily modified version of the Resident Evil engine. It was snappy. It was precise. When you pressed the jump button, you were in the air instantly.
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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD moved everything over to Unreal Engine 3. On paper, that sounds great. Better lighting, better textures, modern tech. In practice? It felt like skating through a vat of molasses.
The physics were just off.
One of the biggest complaints from the community—and you’ll see this in old 2012 reviews from outlets like Eurogamer—was the "jump delay." There was this tiny, almost imperceptible lag between pressing the button and your skater actually leaving the ground. In a game where timing is everything, that’s a death sentence for a high-score run.
Then there were the bails. Oh, the bails. Because the physics were rebuilt from scratch, the collision detection was unpredictable. Sometimes you’d clip a rail and your skater would go into a "super-bail," spinning like a Catherine wheel into the stratosphere. It was funny the first three times. It was infuriating by the tenth.
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What Was Actually in the Box?
Robomodo didn't just remake the first game. They cherry-picked seven levels from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and THPS2.
- Warehouse (The classic)
- School II
- The Hangar
- Mall
- Venice Beach
- Downhill Jam
- Marseille
Later on, they dropped a DLC pack that added levels from the third game, like the Airport, Canada, and Los Angeles. They even added the revert—a mechanic that literally changed the entire series—but only for those specific DLC levels or if you bought the pack.
Imagine playing a Tony Hawk game in 2012 and not being able to revert in the base game. It felt like a step backward.
The Soundtrack Struggle
Licensing music is a nightmare. Everyone knows it. While they managed to keep "Superman" by Goldfinger (thank god), a huge chunk of the original soundtrack was missing. They filled the gaps with new tracks that, while fine, didn't have that same nostalgic punch. It’s hard to get hyped for a 50-50 grind when you aren't hearing the specific punk riffs that defined your childhood.
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Why it Still Matters (In a Weird Way)
Even though Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater HD is widely considered the "inferior" remake compared to the 2020 THPS 1+2 release, it served a purpose. It proved to Activision that there was still a massive, hungry audience for classic arcade skating.
It was a rough draft.
Without the failures (and the modest financial success) of the HD remake, we might never have gotten the polished, perfect version from Vicarious Visions years later. It was a bridge between the old world and the new, even if that bridge was a little rickety and missing some planks.
Actionable Next Steps for Fans
If you’re still itching to play this specific version, you have limited options.
- Check Your Library: If you bought it on Steam or Xbox 360/PS3 before July 2017, you can still download and play it. It’s sitting there in your "Owned" list.
- Physical Copies: Since this was primarily a digital "Summer of Arcade" title, finding physical copies is basically impossible. Your best bet for a classic feel on modern hardware is sticking to the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2 remake.
- The THPSPro Mod: If you’re on PC, look into the fan-made mods for THPS 1+2. The community has been working to port levels from the 2012 HD version and the original THPS3 and THPS4 into the newer, better engine.
It’s a weird piece of gaming history. It’s a game that tried to capture lightning in a bottle but used a jar with a hole in the bottom. Still, for those few years it was available, it was the only way to see the Warehouse in high definition, and for some of us, that was enough.