Soapbox: Tony Hawk’s Underground 2 was the basis of my taste in music


Tony hawk and bam margera
Image: Activision

It was 2005. iPods were all the rage, YouTube had just been launched, Twitter didn’t exist yet, and the words “podcast” and “social networks” had just been added to the dictionary. In short, it was a great time to be a kid, as well as the connecting point of many of our modern day experiences, like being able to listen to music wherever you are or watch videos of some guy at the zoo whenever you want. Elegant.

It was also the year I played a lot from Tony Hawk’s Underground 2. The game originally came out for the GameCube and Game Boy Advance (and other non-Nintendo platforms) in 2004, but the PSP version, the one my brother had and quickly claimed for my own version, came out following year on Universal Media Disc, a format that turned out not to be so “universal” after all.

Was it a good skate game? I really have no idea. Metacritic says yes, and as of this writing, Nintendo Life readers ranked it 8th on our list of the best Tony Hawk games of all time, but I played that game as a motion sim with a fantastic soundtrack. Sure, I would pull an ollie or a kickflip every now and then, and Really I enjoyed polishing at just about any 90 degree angle available to me, but I was at it for jams, and still am.




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