THE 10 BEST SKATE- BOARDING GAMES EVER MADE

A plank of wood on wheels has inspired some true greats - and now the Tony Hawk 3+4 reboot has got us all nostalgic...

- Matt Tate

A quarter of a century ago, Neversoft and Activision unleashed Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on the original PlayStation.

It wasn't the first skateboarding game; that accolade appears to belong to Atari's 720, an '80s arcade machine. But with full respect to that title (and Sega's massively influential Top Skater machine), THPS was the big one.

It kicked off decades of fascination with the sport from both players and publishers. Not a bad effort for a young team whose previous effort had been a platform shooter called Apocalypse. No, me neither... apparently it had Bruce Willis in it.

Why do skateboarding and video games make such a natural pairing? Maybe it's something to do with how games let people live their extreme sports fantasies without risking a trip to A&E. It's also a lot easier to look cool on a screen than when you pitch up at your local skatepark and roll nervously onto the concrete.

Skateboarding games are also just stupidly good fun. And with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 having just landed - a full remake of the third and fourth entries - it feels like a good time to look back at the many ways the sport has been tackled in games both big and small.

10 The Ramp

Made by just one person, The Ramp is no Tony Hawk's in terms of content. But it does a remarkable job of recreating the flow all skateboarders are constantly chasing. There's no score system, and only a handful of levels, from a traditional half-pipe to an empty swimming pool. It's just you, the ramp, and a neat implementation of the 'pumping' technique that skateboarders use to build up speed. Released 2021

9 Session: Skate Sim

An heir to EA's Skate series but way more hardcore in its simulation,