I've Fallen Off My Skateboard and I Can't Get Up

Well, the estimated time of arrival for my Sega Saturn is tomorrow. I am so ready to add that black box of late 1990s gaming goodness to my collection... I've just got to find an Action Replay Plus and hack it and I'll be set.

In the meantime, I can occupy myself with this copy of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 I picked up at a thrift store a few days ago. Playing the game has been a nostalgic experience... not for the warm fuzzy memories of a time long past, but for the reminder of just how lousy I used to be at this game when I was in my twenties. Playing Tony Hawk requires both a working knowledge of the game's trick system and the reflexes to key in your moves while you're still airborne. I didn't have that knowledge when the series first launched in 1999... nearly twenty years later, the knowledge is there, but the reflexes aren't. Oh, the curse of being a middle aged member of Generation X! What cruel fate it is to no longer have the skill for the extreme™, radical® diversions that defined your demographic!

Don't ship me off to the old folks' home just yet, though... I have a suspicion that my crummy reflexes aren't the only reason for my sluggish progress. Activision and Neversoft finally picked up the clue phone and included an arcade mode in Tony Hawk's Underground 2, after several installments without one. I was never fond of the decision to turn Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 into an adventure game, complete with annoying fetch quests, so the inclusion of a play mode similar to what was offered in the first three games is deeply appreciated. 

There's just one problem, though... this arcade mode demands a lot more of the player than the previous ones did. The letters spelling out S-K-A-T-E always seem to hang just out of reach, and there are new C-O-M-B-O letters which have to be collected while you're stringing together a series of tricks. Each level is double the size of the ones in Tony Hawk 2, and the designers have a habit of tucking items in the nooks and crannies, where you're not likely to find them. You can boost your stats by grabbing icons in each stage, but like everything else in the game, they're sadistically placed, so you'll have a hell of a time reaching them in the two minutes allotted. I don't need a crystal ball to see myself hunting down cheat codes for THUG2 in the immediate future...