A few months back, I thought it would be good stream content to go through the songs in Tony Hawk games and toss my favorite 25 into a list, maybe piss one or two people off by saying the Goldfinger songs suck ass, we all move on. But here’s the thing: my brain doesn’t work that way. Instead, I tormented myself with the whole thing. I thought it would be a breezy couple hours, but after only getting up to THPS3 after an entire stream and already having a list that well exceeded 25, I knew I was in too deep. So I changed the goal from Top 25 to Top 34, as if nine extra spaces would make much of a difference, because 34 is kind of like 3+4, the game that was at the time just officially announced. I did this for a few more streams and then finally gave up entirely, because it was too intimidating, 34 was too hard of a constraint, and god fucking damn there’s a lot of songs in Tony Hawk games.

But so this whole thing wasn’t a total waste of time, I will simply present it as it exists, in its pre-release form. Before I talk a little bit about the rationale behind my choices, let me explain some details. For the sake of my sanity I only considered choices from what I will call mainline Tony Hawk games. So that means the THPS games, THUG 1&2, THAW, Project 8, and then the additional songs in the THPS 1+2 remake. There are in fact quite a few good songs in games like Downhill Jam but it’s not a real Tony Hawk game so I didn’t care. And you know what, I actually totally forgot to get to Proving Ground. Well fuck. There’s some good ones in there. But I had to abandon this whole thing so please understand. I don’t have a single bit of nostalgia for that game anyway. Did you know they removed the ability to make a female skater in that one? What was up with that? I also obviously didn’t include THPS 3+4, because it didn’t exist then. Now it does. It seems pretty good.

Onto the selections: my criteria were some kind of hybrid of “how much I think the song fits” and “how much I actually like it”, weighted more toward the latter. I did not consider things like “what people consider iconic” (see: Goldfinger, who are bad). But the surprising thing to me as I was accumulating the picks is how heavy it was on the rap/hip-hop tracks. I recognize the Tony Hawk games as having pretty good hip-hop soundtracks but as a teen there were only a select few here and there I’d have ever considered favorites. And yet for some of these games, I’d go through the soundtracks and struggle to find a single rock song worthy of the list and having several handfuls of rap songs. I guess I should expect my tastes to be different now than when I was like 15, but still.

I also tried to avoid picking the same artist more than once, though there’s definitely a lot of overlap in the hip-hop songs. Whatever.

And so, here it is. I did one final passthrough and culled quite a few so the list isn’t 100 long anymore. Did I take out a bunch I will later regret and leave on a bunch I end up not that enthusiastic about? Certainly. Did my initial process miss out on some of the best shit? Also certainly. Sometimes, however, you just gotta say “Who care”, so: who care?

Oh and if I were hard pressed to pick on singular favorite? Let’s go with “Bloodstains (Darkness version)”.

THPS1

  • Dead Kennedys - “Police Truck”
  • Unsane - “Committed”

THPS2

  • Bad Religion - “You”
  • Fu Manchu - “Evil Eye”
  • Dub Pistols - “Cyclone”
  • Styles of Beyond - “Subculture”

THPS3

  • Adolescents - “Amoeba”
  • CKY - “96 Quite Bitter Beings” (sorry it kinda sucks but the riff is good!!)
  • Del the Funky Homosapien - “If You Must”
  • (honorable mention) Motörhead - “Ace of Spades (N64 version)”
  • Xzibit - “Paparazzi”

THPS4

  • Aesop Rock - “Labor”
  • Agent Orange - “Bloodstains (Darkness version)”
  • Flogging Molly - “Drunken Lullabies”
  • Hot Water Music - “Freightliner”
  • Iron Maiden - “The Number of the Beast”
  • JFA - “Beach Blanket Bongout”
  • Lootpack - Whenimondamic
  • N.W.A. - “Express Yourself”
  • Public Enemy - “By the Time I Get to Arizona”
  • Rocket From the Crypt - “Savoir Faire”
  • Zeke - “Death Alley”

THUG1

  • Cannibal Ox - “Iron Galaxy”
  • Dan the Automator - “A Better Tomorrow”
  • The Hellacopters - “(Gotta Get Some Action) Now!”
  • The Herbaliser - “It Ain’t Nuttin’ “
  • High on Fire - “Hung, Drawn and Quartered”
  • Jurassic 5 - “A Day at the Races”
  • Mr. Lif - “Phantom”
  • Nas - “The World is Yours”
  • Q.O.T.S.A. - “You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar…”

THUG2

  • Dead Boys - “Sonic Reducer”
  • Fear - “I Love Livin’ in the City”
  • Frank Sinatra - “That’s Life”
  • Grand Puba - “I Like It (I Wanna Be Where You Are)”
  • Handsome Boy Modeling School - “Holy Calamity”
  • The Stooges - “1970”
  • Joy Division - “Warsaw”
  • Melvins - “Sweet Willy Rollbar”
  • Metallica - “Whiplash”
  • The Sugarhill Gang - “Rapper’s Delight”
  • Violent Femmes - “Add It Up”
  • X - “Los Angeles”

THAW

  • Black Flag - “Rise Above”
  • D.R.I. - “Couch Slouch”
  • Mast of Don - “Iron Tusk”
  • Pig Destroyer - “Gravedancer”
  • Ungh! - “Skate Afrikaana”
  • USSR - “Live Near Death”
  • Venom - “Black Metal”

THP8

  • Cryptic Slaughter - “Lowlife”
  • The Cure - “Plastic Passion”
  • The Dead Milkmen - “Punk Rock Girl”
  • Jaylib - “The Red”
  • Hieroglyphics - “At the Helm”
  • Kool & The Gang - “Summer Madness”
  • Liquid Liquid - “Optimo”
  • Living Legends - “Moving at the Speed of Life”
  • Mogwai - “Glasgow Mega-Snake”
  • Oh No - “Chump”
  • Ramones - “I Wanna Live”
  • Slayer - “Angel of Death”
  • Sonic Youth - “Nic Fit”

THPS5

  • Cloud Nothings - “I’m Not Part of Me”
  • Death - “Keep on Knocking”

THPS1+2

  • A Tribe Called Quest - “Can I Kick It?”
  • FIDLAR - “West Coast”

There you go. There’s the fucking list. If you like it, I don’t have a lot of money and really what to play THPS 3+4… :) :)

Ko-fi

just kidding don’t do that. but also…

EDIT: I made it into a Youtube playlist. Listen to it if you want.