Seeing the sole of the shoe while standing is not easy, but neither is it impossible. You better have a mirror underneath, be a contortionist or, as was my case, make a bad jump by doing skate and break your ankle to leave the sole of the foot watching if a shooting star passes.
Like the one who changes football by yelling at the referee from the sofa with a beer resting on his belly, that meant for me the end of my clumsy intention to imitate my skate idols. Now it was time to follow the hobby in VHS, magazines and, of course, devouring Tony Hawks ’Pro Skater 2 not even leaving the remains.
The great invention of Gaps
Having smashed the first installment for months, mastering the second was as simple as getting the hang of the introduction of the Handbook in the combos, so once you have learned the maps from cover to cover you can imagine that overcoming the campaign did not last long.
However it is a game that, to coincide with my injury and the monkey for climbing a board, ended up lasting much longer than that. Thanks for that, I should not only give it to the possibility of trying to play it realistically to try to do the tricks I could never do on the street again, but also to the designer who decided to include one of the most addictive challenges I have found in a video game: the gaps.
For those who did not experience that, the Gaps were special actions added to the combo to multiply your score. If, for example, you jumped from one table to another in the school phase, a Gap with a more or less referential name appeared on the screen.
From the menu you could review all the ones you had found so far and, if you managed to overcome those related to the normal phases – there was a good handful of secret phases-, you unlocked an additional skater for your collection.
Worlds Second Most Obvious Gap
This, which on paper may seem relatively easy, was actually a major challenge in which in the end you end up running out of ideas. At that time, internet access was not as common as now and access to guides or tutorials was limited to what was in the magazines of the time.
The only way out was to play until exhaustion and, dictionary in hand, try to guess what the hell you should do in that Gap that you couldn't find. Even the smallest levels had an overwhelming amount of Gaps – the video above is the proof – but the total amounted to 367 Gaps spread over 10 levels.
Needless to say, despite being my only hobby for weeks, I did not find them all, but far from being a frustrating experience, that became a salvation for me. Exceeding my own records in each level would have had a beginning and an end, but facing a challenge as great as that one invited me to keep playing tirelessly to see if, at least by chance, the flute finally sounded.
And so, looping through the video of Rodney Mullen, trying to imitate what I saw in them, creating increasingly crazy lines of tricks and trying to discover that gap that choked me or inventing mine, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 it went on to become not only one of my favorite games. Also in one of the memories that I keep with more affection from that time.