Like all decidedly sub-par games, the Powers That Be deigned to give us a sequel. Thankfully this sequel turned out pretty well, gaining reviews of 8 and other numbers such as “not quite 9,” and “better than 7.” IGN, of course, gave it an “8.372719 (not an average).” I was able to find the game cheap, decided “why not?” and bought it.

The story of Iridion II is one shared by the vast majority of shmups in that something bad is happening, and the only way to stop it is to fly in a straight line and shoot it a lot. You get anime style cutscenes every few levels to remind you that the bad things aren’t quite shot enough yet, and you get to select which location you will fly in a straight line at, which is just interactive enough to make you forget that none of it matters in the slightest.

The action is straightforward, with enemies of varying difficulty to shoot, walls to avoid, and powerups to collect. At the start of each level you’re allowed to choose which gun you want from a smorgasbord of weapons ranging from powerful, narrow beams of electric death to weak, heat-seeking pellets of probable annoyance. And if you tire of your selection mid level, you can use one of the weapon power-ups to “buy” a new gun on the fly. Literally! Sadly, no weapon or combination of weapons thus far has garnered me a rank higher than “C.” Not that the game keeps track anyway.

The game uses passwords instead of save files, which I find puzzling for a game that might attempt to possibly keep track of stats that I can only assume have some bearing on the various unlockables. I don’t know for sure since I’ve never had the foresight to be in a location with the GBA and a method for committing the passwords to something other than my memory, which is already full of penguins as it is.

Since I didn’t get into Tony Hawk until after it had been ported and subsequently discounted for everyone’s favorite thinking console, the next game in the series to be released was THPS3, which I bought for the Gamecube just after it launched (more on that later). I had completely skipped over what I at first thought was just another sequel. I have learned, thanks to the Xbox re-release, that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 is the defining game of the series.

Even with enhancements by the Xbox’s hardware, the first impression of the game is that it looks rather dated, especially compared to recent versions of the game. A lackluster character creator and rather unsightly and confusing menus don’t help to change this opinion. But even without the modern additions of the revert, spine transfer, wall plant, and things of that nature, the gameplay of Tony Hawk 2 is skating perfection.

THPS2 introduced the manual, of course, a handy flatland trick for linking street tricks together. THPS3 introduced the revert, a handy landing trick for linking vert tricks together with manuals and thus street tricks. And lo, the circle is complete. A master player could conceivably play an entire level with one mega-combo by linking reverts to manuals to vert tricks to grinds (to a myriad of other things). I am not this player. I do however, use the revert generously, and was initially at a loss without it in THPS2. Simply put, my scores were bad. Then I remembered an interview with a skater who thoroughly enjoyed Tony Hawk 3 because his virtual self in the game could do things that he couldn’t. Like the revert. And the key to THPS2 success hit me like a rail to the crotch.

Where newer THPSs have me doing a 540 Triple Impossible + Judo + Kickflip + SPeshul TrikK OMG!!1! and then reverting and doing it all again in fakie, the key to THPS2 is doing one really cool trick, nailing the landing, and moving on to a new trick, much like a real skater. The most points I could glean out of a series of three or four flip tricks (with a No Comply) was about seven or eight thousand. In comparison, using a No Comply and nothing but a 720 Judo I was able to rack up more than 80,000 points. A potential 80,000 at least, since I ended the trick with an FS Faceplant. My point still stands! Unfortunately, my skater did not.

I was supposed to be talking about THPS2x here, but this entry has become an epic Tony Hawk essay, so I might as well run with it by addressing one final issue. The Tony Hawk games have slowly but ever so surely become less and less about skating. Tony Hawk’s Underground at some points had me groaning due to its non-skate based goals. Why am I am piloting a blimp to knock people off of lights suspended several stories above an arena? Why in the name of all that is good and holy am I driving a car!? I want more of the skating goals laid down in the early games, and new ones like the deliciously challenging C-O-M-B-O and always exciting trick “Tetris.” Making me steal a golf cart to pick up girls for a party may be sophomorically amusing, but it’s not what I want to do when I play a game named after one of the greatest skaters alive. And that’s my rant.

Oh, concerning my purchase of THPS3 for the Gamecube:

As fate would have it, the act of buying the first game for the Dreamcast started a trend of not buying Tony Hawk games for the PlayStation. The console the game is designed for, and I haven’t played minute one on it, and I just feel bad about that. I may break this trend if Neversoft continues their trend of only adding online play to the PS2 versions of the game. Yes, I will buy THUG2 despite my annoyance at the direction the series is taking. The supposed addition of “classic” mode will satiate my hunger for skating action while I anxiously await the release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 5.

And how could it not? I mean, I play God! The power of the elements is at my fingertips (provided I have enough SP)! I command a mighty warrior with the strength of at least two or three really strong guys! And my holy messenger appears to be a cutesy cherub! Maybe I’m not painting the best word-picture here. Let’s rewind.

The main part of the game plays like an arcade version of Sim City. This isn’t some kick-back-and-watch sim game, oh no! Let your guard down and giant bats will kidnap your citizens, or blow their houses up! With people still inside, no less! You must send your cherub after the monsters with his mighty Arrows of Justice in order to rescue them. Thankfully, and very much unlike Sim City, the people are very self-sufficient once monsters are no longer murdering them. They invent bridges, windmills, and even music, which as God, makes me very proud.

The side-scrolling fighting levels, or Acts, aren’t as good as the sim portions, but are about what I’d expect from a first generation SNES game from a third party. They knew they had a lot more to work with than the NES, but didn’t quite know what to do with it all yet. Apparently there is a mode that will allow you to play all of the Acts in a row without the sim portions, but that seems like an incredible waste to me.

Lastly, graphics. Two words: Mode 7. Okay, that was a word and a number. Bear with me. It’s great being able to fly around the world, zooming in and out, in my giant flying castle. They could have easily just made a little menu or a static map to choose your location, but even ten years later, the overworld map impresses me– doubly so when I discovered that any changes made in the cities actually show up on the map! Here’s to Enix!

It was the spiffed up Windows version of the game, of course, with all sorts of fancy bells and whistles like “background music” and “color graphics.” But behind the repetitive and strangely catchy music was the same game from so long ago. You know the one.

It was computer lab time in elementary school. Everyone would run in and take a seat next to their friends at their favorite computer, despite the fact they were all identically terrible. Apple had seemingly offloaded dozens of their lowest end II models on the school system and they were bound and determined to use them until the CONTROL-OPEN APPLE-RESET sequence shook the computer so hard that it disintegrated.

Number Muncher, Word Blaster, and all the flavors of Carmen Sandiego shared a huge diskette folder in what amounted to bulk software piracy on the part of the school. There were a few other games in there, like Lemonade Stand or the text adventures and such that the stragglers got left with (oh, the text adventures I was missing!) but I always secured my copy of Oregon Trail.

Being a kid at the dawn of the personal computer age, I wasn’t too sure why sometimes my saved games wouldn’t appear when I started the game up. Was it because I was at a different computer? Did the disk have something to do with it? Maybe the teachers were playing a trick on us. Looking back, I now know it was because Apple II’s didn’t have hard drives, and I would have had to grab the same disk each time to pick up where I left off. As it was, I enjoyed the randomness of never knowing whether I would get to restore a saved game or start a new adventure. I was careful to name all my characters the same thing in each game, appropriately enough after the members of my family.

Every week I would embark on my quest to reach Oregon as those around me attempted in vain to catch Carmen Sandiego (something no one ever accomplished) or munched numbers that matched 6 x 3. Occasionally one of my various parallel families would reach their goal, but it would take months of going to the computer room and playing to achieve this.

Tonight I beat Oregon Trail in about ten minutes. Go figure. During the trip Obadiah (I used the default names) died of a mysterious fever almost immediately. Beth and Ezra suffered through the measles, dysentery, typhoid fever, exhaustion, and cholera… and made it through just fine! My main character never got sick, nor did my fifth. I never even knew his/her name! There was one point where an impassable trail cost us eight days, which was bookended by about a week of fog. I say, if you’re lost for two weeks straight just start a settlement where you are and hope the idea catches on. Then you can have a city named after you!