I’ve always been something of a fair-weather fan when it comes to skateboarding culture. I played theTony Hawk’s Pro Skatergames growing up and watched stuff like Rocket Power, but if you asked me to name any actual professional besides Tony Hawk or Bam Margera, I’d have nothing for you.
However, somewhat paradoxically, that’s what kept me interested in the Pro Skater series, at least from 2 and onwards: because every Pro Skater game has cameos from both real-life celebrities and fictional characters.
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Even if I didn’t know 90% of the roster in any given Pro Skater game, the mere promise of getting one of my favorite celebs or ahilariously ill-fitting cartoon characteron a skateboard was enough to keep me hooked.
These cameos remain one of my most favorite aspects of the series, alongside sick tricks and cool locales. Pretty much all of them are great in their own right, but here are my personal favorites.
This is not a ranked list, and the following characters are presented in no particular order.
10Spider-Man
The First True Guest Character
The original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, while fun, missed one crucial factor: guest characters. There were unlockable skaters, but nobody particularly interesting.
After Pro Skater 2 came out, I assumed it was the same case, but then a friend of mine told me excitedly that he had unlocked, of all people, Spider-Man. I assumed he was full of beans, but he was not, in fact, full of beans.
Spider-Man is the first true guest character to appear in the Pro Skater series, making his debut in Pro Skater 2, and what a choice he was. His model was built off Activision’s PS1 Spider-Man game, which released the same year as Pro Skater 2, and also happens to beanother of my personal favorite games of that era.
While he’s unfortunately silent in this appearance, he’s got the skills to pay the bills. His three special moves, the Spidey Flip, the Spidey Grind, and the Does What a Spider Can, all involve him supporting himself and his board with webbing.
The Spidey Flip was actually the first special move I ever successfully landed, making it extra-special to me.
9Darth Maul
Come To The Dark Side, We Have Sick Flips
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 was released two years after the beginning of the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Even two years after the fact, though, the events of The Phantom Menace were still fresh in everyone’s minds, including the film’s one-off antagonist, the dual lightsaber-wielding Darth Maul.
I didn’t even like Phantom Menace, and I still thought Darth Maul was awesome, just as it was awesome to see him in Pro Skater 3.
Darth Maul is one of the game’s most difficult secret characters to unlock, requiring all stage goals to be completed and all gold medals in career mode. He’s worth it, though; not only does he always have his signature dual lightsaber out at all times, he’s got three unique specials.
The Dark Jedi Grind has him performing rapid butterfly kicks, the Sith Saber Spin has him rapidly spinning his lightsaber, and best of all, the Force Grab has him throw his board away, then draw it back with the Force.
Sometimes, when I was bored, I would just highlight Darth Maul on the character select screen and leave him there, letting him Force choke the shopkeeper in the background. Good times.
Do Swamps Have Half-Pipes?
Part of the appeal of the Shrek movies is their deliberately anachronistic humor. You wouldn’t expect an ogre in a medieval, fairy tale setting to be pile-driving punks in a wrestling ring, for example.
If we’re talking about anachronisms, it doesn’t get much better than putting that ogre on a skateboard made of driftwood, which is why I absolutely adored seeing Shrek in Tony Hawk’s Underground 2.
Shrek was added to Underground 2 to coincide with the release of Activision’s tie-in game to the second movie, which is, of course,the best Shrek movie. Activision already had a character model kicking around, so I guess they figured they’d just drop him in there for a chuckle.
Of course, that model is extremely disproportionate compared to the other characters, which just makes it even more amusingly bizarre.
More than a few of the regular tricks result in Shrek’s arms or legs clipping into his torso. About the only one that doesn’t is his unique special, wherein he yanks a lump of wax out of his ear and uses it to grind instead of his board. I feel like earwax wouldn’t work like that, but what do I know.
In His Pre-Slayer Days
In the early 2000s, PC still wasn’t quite a major mainstream gaming platform, at least compared to the popular consoles, so things like ports were often left on the table. Even so, some games managed to make the jump to home computers, and surprisingly, one of them was Pro Skater 3.
It even got an exclusive guest character to celebrate: the unofficial mascot of PC gaming, the Doom Guy.
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Unfortunately, unlike many of these other guest characters, the Doom Guy didn’t receive any unique special moves or visual gimmicks. Even so, the fact that he got to be in a Pro Skater game at all was pretty cool, celebrating both the increasing prominence of PC ports and the Doom franchise’s own popularity.
Additionally, it was this first cameo that set the stage for a future one. In the upcoming remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4,the Doom Guy will be a playable guest once again, this time decked out in his full Slayer regalia. They grow up so fast.
6Jack Black (As Officer Dick)
Old Character, New Face
I’ve always been a fan of Jack Black, even before heput on a blue shirt and said “chicken jockey.”I like his acting roles, I enjoy his music work with Kyle Gass in Tenacious D, and I just generally find him to be a likable and entertaining person.
Unlike the other celebs on this list, Jack Black has never appeared in a Pro Skater game ashimself. However, in the remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, he got to fill an established role.
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Do a kickflip!
Jack Black serves as the new face and voice of recurring Pro Skater character Officer Dick in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. Officer Dick made appearances in all three entries in the original Pro Skater trilogy, with his shtick being that he was a skating poser who became a cop to get back at everyone who made fun of him growing up.
Black’s portrayal of the character manifests as both a playable character and, somewhat more amusingly, a hazard on the School stage. He drives around in a golf cart, shouting taunts at you as he passes by, which feels kind of thematically appropriate for a Jack Black character.
5Billie Joe Armstrong
American Idiot In American Wasteland
Punk rock music has always gone hand-in-hand with skateboarding culture. After all, both punk rock and skateboarding were the prime ingredients of counter-culture movements in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s.
Now, much like skateboarding, I’m a fair-weather punk rock fan, but even I know one of the modern greats: Green Day frontman and my sister’s high school crush, Billie Joe Armstrong.
Billie Joe is an unlockable skater in Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland, sporting a fit reminiscent of Green Day’s classic track, “American Idiot.” He’s certainly an appropriate cameo, as both music from Green Day’s discography and that of his other band, The Network, are included in the game’s soundtrack.
Armstrong came with several wholly unique special tricks, including an air grab where he wails on a guitar, a manual where he pretends to stage dive on his stomach, and a grind where he pretends to barf his guts out. It’s a little microcosm of his on-stage persona, as any good celebrity Pro Skater appearance should be.
4Gene Simmons
With An Original Stage To Match
In addition to punk rock, heavy metal has always had its place alongside skateboarding culture. Like the rebellious boarders of yesteryear, heavy metal is loud, flashy, and in-your-face, perfect for an aggressive skating session.
If someone were to represent metal on a skateboard in a Pro Skater game, I’d be hard-pressed to think of someone better than legendary KISS bassist Gene Simmons.
Simmons appeared as an unlockable character in Tony Hawk’s Underground, received after completing the game’s main story. Not only do you get to play as him in all his face-painted, tongue-wagging glory, he even gets his own unique stage.
The stage, Hotter Than Hell, drops you in the middle of a KISS concert being held on an airstrip in the Australian Outback.
As for Simmons himself, he’s got unique specials inspired by his classic stage moves, including grabbing his board with his elongated tongue and breathing fire onto his board while grinding. Leave it to The Demon to be the hottest thing on four wheels.
3The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
The Most Thematically Appropriate Crossover
Obviously, the majority of these cameo characters have no particular association with skateboarding as a culture or pastime; that’s part of what makes their inclusion in Pro Skater games amusing.
That said, there is one character (or rather four) that’s probably the most thematically-appropriate inclusion you could possibly make for a skateboarding game: the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
All four members of the TMNT are playable characters in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5, added to the game via a post-launch patch. Whether you prefer Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, or Donatello, they’re all here, though they’re specifically inspired by their designs in the IDW comics, so they’re a little edgier than usual.
No matter which version of the Turtles it is, though, I love to see them, and especially see them doing something that they canonically enjoy doing very much. The only thing they like more is pizza, and you can have them do a trick where they hold their board out like freshly-delivered pie.
2Wolverine
He’s The Best At What He Does: Kickflips
There are plenty of fictional characters that I could conceivably see on a skateboard, even if they’ve never actually done it in their respective series.
Then, you have characters like Wolverine, whom I absolutely couldnotsee riding a skateboard, but that just makes the prospect of seeing him do it in Pro Skater 3 even better. You just know he hates this, but it ain’t up to him.
Wolverine succeeded Spider-Man as the Marvel representative in Pro Skater 3, claws deployed and face locked in a permanent grimace. While this game was released while the X-Men were in the midst of their black leather phase, he’s thankfully rocking his classic yellow and blue fit, as he should be in any just world.
He’s got three unique specials, all naturally involving his Adamantium claws: the Claw Punch, where he stabs right through the middle of his board, the Claw Drag, where he drags his claws along the ground for a manual, and the Berzerker, which involves a spinning front flip followed by a double slash.
I don’t know if that last one is a Marvel vs. Capcom reference, but I like to think it is.
1Eddie The Head
Metal Assumes Many Forms
Returning to the subject of metal, the metal band Iron Maiden has one of the coolest mascots to ever grace an album cover: Eddie the Head. This undead headbanger is Iron Maiden’s foremost ambassador in all other sectors; most recently, he served as inspiration forseveral Legendary skins in Dead By Daylight.
Well before that, though, all the way back in 2002, he was an unlockable skater in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4.
Eddie’s look is a little more toned-down in this game compared to some of his other appearances. He’s only sporting a torn-up pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. One look at his rictus grin, though, and you’re able to tell he’s the same metal-head he’s always been. Even an undead Iron Maiden fan’s got weekend hobbies.
Eddie’s unique specials include the Stage Dive grab, the Headbangers Unite grind, and my personal favorite, the Bloody Eddie grab, wherein he rips his entire stomach out and holds it above his head. At least I think it’s his stomach; I’m not sure what color a stomach is supposed to be.
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