During our hands-on with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 in Los Angeles this week, we were afforded the opportunity to sit down with Mike Rossi, the man heading up all things design at Iron Galaxy. 6w1lf
We had a chat about what goes into rebuilding iconic video games, the challenges that came with reframing Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4’s career mode, and breaking bones for the love of the game.
You can find our chat below.
So I’m Mike Rossi, I’m Design Director at Iron Galaxy. My role is overseeing the design team, I like to say I try to move barriers out of the way and allow the design team to be able to accomplish what they need to accomplish. Put them in touch with the researchers they need, or communicate with the other directors on the project.
Also, as we’re an external partner with Activision, part of my role is to work with Activision and folks on our side, and communicate anything they’re hoping for or answer any questions they have.
So, with 3+4, we actually were able to use the 1+2 work, so we had that basis to work off of there. In that case, we were able to start from that awesome foundation established in 1+2.
That’s how that works, but it differs for other projects.
Yeah, this was the stuff we worked on. As I said, we were able to use the 1+2 stuff that was there, but everything that you see in the game has Iron Galaxy’s hands on it.
Difficult feels strong, because again, it’s all kind of how you look at it. In some cases, you know, it was very obvious. I know one of the things we definitely had to talk about was that some of these maps are huge.
For instance, I know one thing we iterated on a lot was the S-K-A-T-E line in Alcatraz. Does it feel natural with the player getting to where we want to start the line, and does it feel natural within the level? There’s no reference point for that. And there was a lot of stuff we had to iterate on, test, and tweak.
A lot of it came down to: “How do we place this?”
Because we’re not interacting with NPCs, you’re starting in one place and then having to navigate around to where the different goals are in the level.
No, it was much more the latter. We know going into it that it was going to be tough and that people were going to be looking at it.
But we felt this was the right way to approach it, and it made it a more cohesive package. We had already been thinking, you know, we’ve got the mods, which, in our eyes, is another way of putting accessibility things in.
And a lot of the we were getting internally, plus we’d see online, was that people didn’t always love the two-minute timer. You know, they’d want just a little bit more time. “Oh, I was just about to figure that out, or finish this thing.”
“If only I had one more minute.”
And so why not give them that extra minute, or whatever extra time they want? It doesn’t feel like that impacts the overall goal that we’re trying to accomplish; it doesn’t impact progression. So we just threw that in, it’s a nice coincidence, and now, hopefully, we can point to that as a solution for those people who are looking for more time in those levels.
So, it’s one of those cases where you’re looking at the old and the new, and you’re like: “Well, this is definitely a lot more improved.”
I think the evergreen aspect of it is what 1+2 did with the feel, or as we refer to it internally, the ‘Tony feel’. That was one of those things where we said, “Don’t touch that.”
The other aspect was, when bringing it up to a modern visual standard, how does that end up impacting gameplay? How does that impact the feel? If we add these new lights, or add this new detail to this area, does that change how the player reads a certain line, or how they navigate the world?
And so that was the thing that we needed to keep in mind as we tried to pack as much visual excitement and content into the levels.
I think it was always on the table early on. I think it was part of our pitch. It felt like the next thing. Where do we go beyond what Pro Skater 1+2 did, and so I think that had always been a part of the plan.
I think the biggest Easter Egg I, unfortunately, can’t talk about. There’s a hint about another level that we haven’t talked about.
Hopefully, the players will figure that out once it comes out.
I’m always looking for fun exercise things to do, and one of those was picking up skateboarding. I’ve also got two littles, so it seemed like a fun thing that I could do with them. I was working on my balance one day, my weight got too far back on the board, and it flew out from under me.
I fell back, landed on my arm, and with the momentum, my arm twisted, and it broke my arm. It stinks, but I got back up. I’ve been getting back on the board, but I broke my rib about a month ago [laughs].
No, no! I just keep saying that it’s me trying to show Activision how dedicated we are to the franchise.
The cheapest copy of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 is $74 with free shipping on Amazon.