Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 Could Be Rolling Back In Soon!

The launch of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 in 2020 could not have come at a better time for a series that was essentially on life support after back-to-back Robomodo releases rated the lowest in the series history by critics. Now handled by Vicarious Visions, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 had much to prove to keep the franchise from completely flatlining, and they did just that. Not only were the graphics brought up to par with modern platforms through the power of Unreal Engine 4, but the basic combo feature set defined in Tony Hawk’s Underground was brought back along with split-screen multiplayer, Create-A-Skater, and Create-A-Park modes. Take all these features that were part of the series peak and pair it with classic levels and music and you would think we were well on our way to a continued flow of Tony Hawk remasters, well Activision had other thoughts.

Regardless of how highly rated Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 was by critics or becoming the fastest-selling in the franchise's history, Activision did not reward Vicarious Visions for a job well down. Instead, the studio was essentially shut down and merged into Blizzard Entertainment a year after release. Now, five years after the previous entry, rumors started swirling about a potential remaster of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 due to comments made by Pro Skater Tyshawn Jones after he briefly made claims that he was in talks with Activision to appear in a new Tony Hawk remaster. The rumors quickly picked up the pace after screenshots surfaced of the new Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 map Grind featuring a skateboarder logo with the numbers 03.04.25.

I don’t know about you, but it seems obvious what those numbers could represent for a skateboarding game from Activision. Around the same time as the new Call of Duty map release, the official TonyHawkTheGame website was updated with a countdown to that specific date, March 4th, 2025. Although we still don’t have confirmation of exactly what this new entry will be, the website may have leaked it to us. When the countdown was added to the Tony Hawk website, if you inspected the HTML, you would have noticed multiple references to the "thps-3-4-countdown". We all know what "thps" stands for, which is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, and I guess Activision noticed as well because the reference to "thps-3-4" was quickly removed. Of course, through the power of the Internet Archive, we can still see the original source code.

Now that we almost know for certain a Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 + 4 remaster is getting announced next month, the next big question is who’s developing it? According to the website, it looks like Iron Galaxy, who might be best known for PC port issues surrounding Batman Arkham Knight and The Last of Us Part 1, has taken over the series. Iron Galaxy has only a few original titles, some of which include Killer Instinct Season 2 and 3, Extinction, and most recently Rumbleverse in 2022. While that’s not a lot to go by, when it comes to support work and ports, you’ve most likely played a game they’ve worked on, likely without having any idea. Iron Galaxy has had a hand in some form with countless games including all the Batman Arkham games, the Crash Bandicoot and Spyro Trilogy remake ports on PC, along with support work for Metroid Prime Remastered on Nintendo Switch.

While time will tell if Iron Galaxy can continue what Vicarious Visions did so well, there is one big feature I would like to see in the upcoming remaster that didn’t make the cut in the previous entry. That feature is crossplay which allows PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, and PC gamers all to battle it out. That keeps online player counts high for years to come and decreases the odds of online matches drying up. Not only was crossplay not included in the last game, I don’t think it’s ever been done in the series 25+ year history. Regardless, I can’t wait to see how they bring Pro Skater 3 and 4 to modern platforms, along with how they tackle the open-world nature of Pro Skater 4.