As you throw down your book bag from a hard day at middle school, avoiding your chores and stupid English assignment of The Giver, you get a glass of Dr. Pepper and relish on the evenings festivities. Do you call that girl who’s number is the rejection hotline unbeknownst to you? Log on to runescape and pillage for gold or watch another episode of Degrassi and mope because your life wasn’t as glamorous as one of the greatest Canadian Teen Soap Operas of all time. Screw all that (and PC gaming all together) you own a Playstation 2 and just so happened to own a copy of Tony Hawk Underground. Granted you could go to the local skate park and learn to actually partake in one of the most self-expressive sports to grace the planet. Through it’s October and the year 2003, it’s too cold and you’re getting into your angsty “I hate the world” phase, plus the batteries in your Pansonic CD player are near dead. Also, do you really want to be made fun of for trying to skate in beat to shit sketchers and a mediocre birdhouse deck your mom bought you from Target?

As a youth, I’d always been attracted to the unpredictability of skateboarding. I remember at the time, fawning over the X-games, the secret tapes in THPS2 which contained little tidbits of skating, and it wasn’t until Tony Hawk’s Underground, that it would consume nearly every aspect of my teenage-young adult life. Magazines (the skateboard mag since 2005 yo!), DVD’s & Promo vids, later on actually going to skateparks and meeting people who actually knew how to skate was leaving me wanting more. But that’s all stories and self-indulgent expression for my personal blog, instead let’s talk about why exactly I decided to write about THUG as it approaches it’s 10 year anniversary since being released.

From the minute that intro screen kicked in, this dark, faded montage of skateboarders, most of whom I never heard of appeared almost in near perfect sequence with Jurassic 5’s “A Day at the Races” playing, I was hooked in from the jump.Just the sheer atmosphere the game created, with you as messy haired skate rat #345,212 living in New Jersey fixing your cruddy default deck; with the dreams of skating professionally. Who would think this would all entail hopping from roof top to roof top in your hometown, to Crashing Tanks in Moscow; Winning the Tampa AM and performing New York Nut Busters over speeding Taxi’s in Manhattan? Not to mention the breathtaking and ballsy McTwist over a helicopter in Hawaii. But while you were collecting band members misplaced instruments in San Diego or winning the Slam City Jam competitions in Vancouver, there was one factor that kept you pushing alongside the other skaters and no-complying until you fried your Xbox.The soundtrack.

At the time of this video game’s release, I wasn’t really into music if you will. I mean I did like what ever occasional glam rap or pop song was making the rounds on the radio at the time, but I wouldn’t be the aspiring music aficionado I clamor to be today. Of course I had heard of notable artist such as Nas, Kiss, NOFX and Queens of the Stone Age (to an extent) but who I would suddenly become familiar with the likes of Rise Against, The Herbaliser, MF Doom, Quasimoto, The Explosion, Hot Water Music, Busdriver and various miscellaneous artist and bands which grace the best soundtrack of any sports game at the time. Some of those names listed might cause you to smirk now, but back then, when your a self-appointed misfit who stays up late to watch softcore cable porn (HBO and Max After Dark..I was a classy lad) shouting “Hail Satan” and dashing down suburban streets like an idiot and hanging out at skateparks, does the soundtrack of my younger years need to strictly be Nelly, Evanscene, Coldplay, Linkin Park and Chingy? It can’t include In Flames, Transplants, Murs, Supernatural, and a little GBH? I needed something to tide me over until the next episode of As Told By Ginger came on.

It was with this installment of Tony Hawk’s series that changed my outlook on music all together as to what it could be. Back then it wasn’t for me to have this ego of knowing seemingly “obscure” bands and rappers at the time. It was just the sheer joy as I Airwalked over subway station stairs to Dropkick Murphy and Acid Drop from 40 story roof tops while bumping DJ Q-bert. There were times I’d just use the game as a personal CD and just hop around my room, face planting into walls without a care in the world. As the series itself continued onto greater things (I personally believe American Wasteland was better than Underground 2 and that the series lost it’s way with Project 8 but regained it a bit with Proving Ground)more exposure and colorful soundtracks, as well level designs; THUG’s soundtrack holds that special place in my heart, an innocent time when you didn’t realize Welcome To The Dollhouse is possibly the funniest movie ever created and staying up late meant punching out at 12:30 or 1 am. It was a time period when you wondered what the fuck the underground actually was and you sure as hell wanted to get there and away from your soon to be Emo/Midwestern Valley Girl peers. Tony Hawk’s Underground was the best thing for a eleven year old boy to experience, and to make it a bit of a personal reality makes it all the more satisfying.

#FREE LIAM LYNCH!