I was a skateboarder for ten years, but made the mistake of taking it up at age 18, rather than the much earlier that's really needed to get beyond the "ollie up a curb" stage. (On "ollie" is where you kick the back of the board down so hard it bounces the entire skateboard into the air, without you putting your feet on the ground. It's also the basis for 95% of all tricks.) I only gave up because my deck was stolen, and not replaced as I was in the process of moving countries.

I am still a fan of skateboarding, far more than inline or BMX, and when I stumbled across Tony Hawk's pro Skater 2 for the PC I was instantly hooked. The game had all the elements for addictive game play, and a learning curve that was just right.

I came to the series late, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 was released shortly afterwards on PS2, followed by the PC version. The anticipation generated by this outing was very high, but the game itself overall failed to satisfy as much as THPS2 had done.

Now, the fourth is the series has been released on most formats.

Tony Hawk's pro Skater 4 continues the tradition built up in the previous games, and whilst it adds a number of new moves, including some sorely-missed flatland tricks, on the whole the game doesn't really bring anything astoundingly new to the series.