Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5: 10 Extreme Sports Sequels We Actually Needed

9. Thrasher's Skate & Destroy

Before Rockstar would make their name with the genuinely world-changing GTA III, creative genius Sam Houser was over working with Z-Axis Ltd. to perfect the skating genre in his own way. Thrasher became a hidden gem of the most overlooked order thanks to it releasing just a month after the first Pro Skater, and the combination of a far more comprehensive control scheme with the fairly obscure 'Thrasher' branding made for something that the gaming populace en masse simply avoided. Those who did play and gave it the time of day and then some, being rewarded with an incredibly in-depth game that actually had a sense of completion and personal reward for pulling off its most complex tricks. Such an amount of code put into fleshing out your options on the board didn't allow for a whole lot in the graphics department - especially by comparison to Activision's hefty coffers, which powered THPS into new realms of city-building and perilous level design. This emphasis on ensuring you were lined up for grinds and having the reward then be something the player intrinsically feels is what Skate would later capitalise on thanks to releasing at a better time, but that only stands to point out how a more sim-like third-person skating game is still an awesome idea.