Vicarious Visions had planned to make a modern version of the third and fourth Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles, but Activision Blizzard rejected the studio’s pitch in an almost unfathomably insensitive way…

It was this studio that created Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, which turned out to be excellent, and with it Vicarious Visions showed that skateboarding can still hold its own today and is not only supported by fans of the 90s and 2000s. It’s no wonder then that they began planning to modernize the third and fourth THPS games, and the team submitted a plan to Activision to do so (though all four Tony Hawk’s Pro Skaters were originally going to be included in the collection).

“We decided to add some controls from the later games to reflect the way people remembered the old Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games. The improvements from 3 seemed to bleed into people’s memories of the first 2. Eventually it became clear that we didn’t have time for more than 1 + 2, so the idea of continuing on and releasing 3+4 in some form was on the table,” you can hear it in a video by Liam Robertson, a ludologist (video game historian), embedded below.

The team couldn’t do all this because Activision was pushing Call of Duty! In fact, Activision wanted Vicarious Visions to work on Call of Duty and Diablo II: Resurrected (which was released in September 2021). Tony Hawk said in 2022 that the remakes were in the planning stages until Activision decided to fold Vicarious Visions into itself. The publisher couldn’t find another studio they trusted enough, so they canceled the whole project.

And now Activision Blizzard is under Microsoft, and if the Redmond-based company takes the situation a little more seriously, maybe they can get it back on track and it would be a great multiplatform title. After all, all four THPS were (also) on the first PlayStation…

Source: VGC