We Probably Would Have Taken A New Skate Or Die Game In '02. But The Tony Hawk Games Were Still Fairly Good Back Then.

Crazy, right? According to an article in GamesTM magazine, Criterion were working on the sequel before they started work on Burnout 2. Apparently EA were impressed with the studio's work on the Dreamcast title Trickstyle, and challenged them to resurrect their classic skating franchise.

"In Tony Hawk you were always on the board and it was all about tricks and high scores, but I wanted to explore what it was like to just go out for a skate and have that feeling of just doing whatever you want", explains Criterion's Craig Sullivan. "There was that experience from when I went skating in real life that just wasn't captured in videogames. I wanted to be able to get off the board – this was way back in 2002."

Sadly, as you may have realised, the project didn't quite go smoothly. "We were told ‘you can't just make a Tony Hawk game – it's got to be like GTA,' and that was the first time we were like, ‘Really?' ‘It's got to be open world.' Well, what does that mean? Nobody really knew."

It's curious that EA finally got their open-world skateboarding title in the form of Skate a few years later. And while the relationship between EA and Criterion soured for a little while during the development of Skate Or Die; they're best buddies again now, working on a brand new Need For Speed title. All's well that ends well, right?

[Source GamesTM; via Kotaku]