When Activision first announced that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 was getting the full remake treatment, there was this quiet tension hanging in the air. Could they really pull it off again? After the wild success of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, fans were hungry for more but also wary. The third and fourth entries in the series hold a particular place in skateboarding game history. They’re where the series truly found its groove: tighter controls, more sprawling and complex levels, bigger trick lists, and the wild sense of freedom that later titles only tried to imitate.
Now that the demo for THPS 3+4 is out in the wild, and after spending time with it grinding rails, flipping decks, and basking in every pixel of nostalgia, not to mention bailing a bunch, it feels safe to say that the magic is back. Not just intact but refined, tightened, and respectfully evolved.
The demo drops players into Foundry, the industrial opening level from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, and within seconds, every muscle memory comes flooding back. The layout remains familiar with those sloping rails, the molten metal pools, the perfect combo lines waiting to be chained, but there’s a new layer of polish laid over it all. Visually, the game sings in a way these old levels never could.
Textures are crisp, lighting bounces naturally, and tiny environmental details like steam hissing from vents and dust particles drifting through shafts of light make Foundry feel more alive than ever before. It’s not simply a prettier skin thrown over the bones of an old game. This is a space rebuilt with care.
“The skating in 2025’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 feels tight and responsive.”
The skating in 2025’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 feels tight and responsive. It’s immediately clear that Iron Galaxy, the team behind this remake, understood what made these games tick. Tricks snap off the deck with satisfying weight. Manuals and reverts flow together without friction, letting you link combos with the same impossible grace that the original games encouraged.
There’s a smoothness here that makes the act of skating feel just as natural as it did when the series was at its peak, if not more so. The improved physics add subtle but welcome heft. Grinding a rail feels like sliding on steel rather than floating above it, and bailing carries a little more consequence as your skater flops down with proper ragdoll inertia.
The taste of Foundry is enough to stir that old sense of discovery. Every gap, secret tape, and hidden line from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is right where you left it, but there’s just enough freshness in the level’s remixed physics and animation to make them feel new again. It’s like bumping into an old friend and realizing they’ve grown up a little while you weren’t looking.
Of course, none of this would matter without the soundtrack. The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 demo doesn’t unleash the full playlist, but what’s here hits hard. Kittie’s Charlotte blasting through the speakers the moment you drop into the level makes it so hard not to just sit back with a giant grin. There’s something deeply right about landing a perfect trick as early 2000s metal and ska play. The sound design all around is sharp. Wheel clacks, board scrapes, grind sparks, it all sounds clean and satisfying, capturing the tactile joy of skating in these games.
What stands out most is the confidence in the way the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 demo feels. The Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 remake a few years ago was great, but it also felt like a test balloon. Careful, reverent, a little afraid to push too far. Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, at least judging by this demo, is bolder. The moves introduced in THPS 4, like spine transfers, skitching on cars, and flatland tricks, are baked right into the mechanics, and they flow with the old toolkit seamlessly. There’s a sense that this is the version of the game the developers always wanted to make, unshackled by hardware or design limits of the past.
Yet for all the new polish, this is still unmistakably Tony Hawk. The attitude is there. The weird blend of pro skater reverence and goofy arcade silliness remains untouched. Skaters toss off tricks with impossible physics and perfect landings. Secret gaps launch you across the map like you’ve been fired from a cannon. There’s no realism here, no attempt to slow things down or darken the vibe with modern skate-sim grittiness. This is pure, joyful, unfiltered THPS, the fantasy of skateboarding at its most fun and ridiculous.
“Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, at least judging by this demo, is bolder.”
If the rest of the game holds up to the standard set by this demo, fans are in for something special. There’s a clear love here for the source material, but also a willingness to make it sing on modern hardware. The crisp 4K visuals, the smooth frame rate, the improved handling, all of it builds toward a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 remake that feels more like a celebration than a cash grab. You can sense that the developers knew these games mattered to people, and they wanted to make sure they mattered again.
Coming away from this demo, the feeling is unmistakable. This could be the best version of THPS 3+4 we’ve ever had. Not just because it looks better or plays smoother, but because it understands why these games worked in the first place. The freedom. The flow. The simple joy of chaining together a perfect combo and hearing that score multiplier explode as the music blares in your ears.
It’s rare that a remake feels this respectful and this playful at the same time. And it makes the wait for the full game all the harder.
