It turns out that news can still be heartbreaking, even when it’s coming from skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was developed by Vicarious Visions, who also developed some of the previous Tony Hawk games. It’s a fantastic remake of two classic games and was lauded by many as a return to form after the Big Stinker that was Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5. After the release of these remakes, many were hungry for more. According to the man himself, more on the way.
In a Twitch stream with streamer AndyTHPS, Hawk reveals that remakes of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 were in the works as a bundle deal similar to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. You can check out the clip below.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 remasters were in the works but they were scrapped after Vicarious Visions was merged into Blizzard. 😔
Source: Tony Hawk.https://t.co/84rlYDgvUQ pic.twitter.com/oWR70xTOYv
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As Hawk explains, the next remake was in the works up until Vicarious Visions became a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard in early 2021, and its staff was assigned work on various Blizzard properties. Before the change, Vicarious Visions had been a subsidiary of Activision alone. According to Hawk, they ‘got absorbed’ in the deal, and the studio ‘disbanded’. Hawk then claimed that, in the wake of the merger, Activision Blizzard had reportedly gone to other studios seeking out developers that might have been interested in working on the remake.
He explains they ‘didn’t really trust anyone in the way that they trusted Vicarious’, so the publisher ‘took other pitches from other studios’, asking what they would do with the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. To conclude, Hawk says that the publisher ‘didn’t like anything they heard’, and ‘that was it’. So that’s it then. For now at least.
Considering the success of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, the fastest-selling game in the franchise, moving over one million copies within the first two weeks, it is absolutely bonkers that they would leave a potential remake of the third and fourth game to wither away. While Activision Blizzard may be wary of going to other developers after the poor reception around Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, it’s still a bummer to hear that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 fell through the cracks of a corporate reshuffle.
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