Submission #5316: Fog's N64 Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 in 05:01.43

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 features the series' trademark open-ended gameplay, in which the player (playing as a professional skateboarder) completes a number of tasks which result in cash rewards. With money gained, the player can then purchase skill improvements and better skateboards. THPS2 was also the first game in the series to introduce the manual, a skateboarding trick where the performer balances on two wheels. This enables players to string together trick combos. The game also introduced the Noseslide, Tailslide, Bluntslide, Nosebluntside, Feeble, and Overcrook grinds. It was also the first of the Pro Skater games to feature Create-a-Skater and Park Editor features, now staples in the series.

This run obsoletes the previous publication by 18 seconds in real time, and 19 seconds in game time, using a brand new route as well as incorporating some known tricks found since the original TAS was created. The huge difference in time comes from the route, which has radically changed compared to the previous TAS. The summary of the new route is completing different goals earlier on in the run (as well as collecting extra cash), losing time in the first few levels, before ultimately gaining more time later on. More details will be explained below

Compared to the original TAS, the choice of skater has changed from Tony Hawk to Jamie Thomas. Jamie has three special tricks, one grind, one manual, and one flip trick. Jamie's stats and trick set are better suited for lower air and faster points due to his Street based special tricks. Because of this, Jamie has been the real time runner's character of choice. Luckily for us, Jamie is on the immediate left of Tony in the character select screen, so only 25 frames is lost in order to pick Jamie over Tony.

Also different to the original TAS, we only upgrade the speed stat points. Upgrading spin was not really necessary as it doesn't provide any benefits. This saves most of the time that was lost by choosing Jamie over Tony.

The route is a bit different compared to the previous TAS, as it skips getting the Secret Tape and goes for SKATE instead. The reason for this is while doing SKATE, there are two $50 bills available to grab. Real time runners have been collecting SKATE for a while now, but skipping the three hangtime gaps goal. The real time runs prior to the new route being made actually beats the TAS time by a second. With this new route, we collect an extra $100, for a total of $1350, and lose three seconds.

This route is drastically different compared to the previous TAS. The main difference between this run and the previous TAS is that it replaces collecting the five hall passes with collecting the Secret Tape. By doing this, it also opens up another two set of $50 bills to be collected. The Secret Tape goal provides an extra $100 compared to collecting the hall passes ($500 vs $400). Even with the major route change, we only lose a second of in game time, while collecting an extra $200 for a total of $3400.

The first round starts off similarly to that of the previous TAS, but has a different purpose. The purpose of the first round is to collect the two visible cash bills ($50 and $100) while getting enough points to get in first place. Nothing really too special about this first run, but it was a very tight squeeze to pull out the 0:53 time. The second run is drastically different, as we go right instead of left! Using a recently discovered combo, it's possible to collect enough points to get the gold medal with only 3 seconds of in game time. Both runs cancel each other out in terms of time, so no time is lost in this level, and we collect an extra $100 for a total of $10,550.

This is where the biggest time saves are made. With all of the extra cash grabbed in the previous levels, we are now able to skip the long, tedious goal of collecting SKATE. The TAS is different from the previous real time route where it would collect the subway tokens, as the trick of clipping through the subway fence was not yet found (the clip has been used in real time runs for a while). Because we no longer need the tokens to open the subway gate, as well as no longer needing SKATE to have enough money, we can go directly to 50-50 Joey's Sculpture. It's actually possible (and faster) to grind the bottom portion of the sculpture, which is in contrast to the original TAS which grinds the top portion. Once the subway clip is done, the rest of the run is not much different compared to the older TAS, but we do collect an extra $50 bill. After that's all said and done, we save 18 seconds of in game time compared to the previous TAS, with a total of $17,050.

The route is not too different compared to the original TAS, but we do need to collect the three cash bills ($250 and 2 x $100) in order to collect enough cash to unlock Skatestreet. Because of this, there are some detours which need to be made to collect the extra cash bills which ultimately leads to a 1 second loss of time compared to the previous TAS.

Again, this route is not much different compared to the previous TAS, but there are some extra tricks thrown in order to collect enough points for the gold medal while saving a second of in game time.

This level's route is the most similar to the previous TAS, but there are some optimizations done in order to save a second of in game time.

Like Marseilles and Skatestreet, the combo has been improved in order to save two seconds of in game time per round compared to the original TAS.

This was my first time using TAStudio for a TAS, and it was very nice to use after getting the hang of it. However, it was not without issues. Perhaps the biggest issue was having the seeker jump to the beginning in certain situation, even if the changes were only a few frames behind the current progress.

Big thanks to guished for coming up with the new route, giving me the motivation to update the TAS for THPS2. Also a huge shout out to 111gamerguy for getting the real time world record using the new route. Finally, shout outs to the rest of the THPS speedrun community.

Noxxa: Judging.

Noxxa: Solid improvement. Accepting as an improvement to the published movie.

Spikestuff: Oh yeah, uh... Publishing.