10 Video Game Crazes You Forgot Were A Thing

With the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater in 1999, video games had made their first successful foray into the extreme sports market. The THPS series became an annualised giant, and at least for the first few years, new titles were met with both critical and commercial acclaim. Skateboarding as a sport even received a boost in popularity from the franchise, and Tony Hawk became embedded in popular culture as the personification of skating.

With the unprecedented success of the THPS series, developers began looking for another extreme sport that could be brought to home consoles, with titles based on surfing, snowboarding, wakeboarding and BMX released in the years that followed, with none managing to replicate the masterstroke of Neversoft's series.

Despite being seemingly untouchable at the top of the extreme sports gaming pile, THPS would eventually be dethroned by EA Black Box's Skate series, which removed the arcadey style gameplay in favour of a more realistic approach. However, the Skate's reign as the leader of the genre would be relatively short-lived with no signs of a sequel despite a decade having passed since the release of Skate 3.