One of the more truly
oddball game releases, Tony Hawk 3 just sort of "happened" on the N64.
Brought out six months after what was thought to be the final N64 game (Power Puff
Girls), this is an adequate, yet toned down port. This is not the version of the game
to play by any means, but if it's all that's available, it serves whatever purpose it was
supposed to. The graphics are the most legitimate complaint. It may not have looked so dreadful had the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube versions been released at the same time. Fog obscures the stages, hiding necessary information on the other end of the large levels (trimmed to match those in the Playstation version). It makes the game overly difficult, though it does maintain a steady frame rate. Expansion pack support is available, but any differences are negligible.
Gameplay is the core of the series though, and there's not much difference here. Moves have been cut, the more complicated and likely harder to animate ones (handstands are most notable). It makes it difficult to discern this one from Tony Hawk 2, except for the revert which radically changes the combo system. The trick system is hard to adjust to on the N64, assuming you started on the PS One. It's obvious this was a series not created with the console's controller in mind.
Create-a-skater has been toned down too, though it's still decent
enough to make a reasonable facsimile of someone. The career mode is a copy of the
disc-based versions, offering a wild variety of mission objectives that begin to show
where the series was headed. This is made easier due to the lack of movement in the
stages, missing any pedestrians. It's one less hazard to concern yourself with, and this
may actually be preferable to some. That's about it for this final N64 version of Tony Hawk, and the final game period. It's a Tony Hawk game stuck in a generation previous. It doesn't serve any purpose given the hardware, but it's playable if this is your only choice.
