According to Tony Hawk, the legacy of "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," a billion-dollar, 20-game franchise, almost went unrealized.

In a recent podcast (opens in new tab), Hawk said that a few months before he received the call from Activision that led to the "Pro Skater" series, another company contacted him with an idea for a "technically more difficult" skating game. [They were really trying to emulate skating," Hawk said, "and I felt I could understand that approach, but at the same time, when we released this game, or were about to release it, skating was not that major.

A more shimmy approach to skateboarding is perhaps best embodied by "Session" today, although the PS1-era attempt may have been a bit rough around the edges.

Hawk said that when he tried Activision's prototype, it felt intuitive and "born right." Still, he says that if the company had contacted him "a month or two later," he might have signed a contract to make another game, and the "Pro Skater" series would never have materialized.

In the interview, Hawk also said that Activision tried to buy out his future royalties just before the launch of THPS; despite being offered $500,000, he turned it down, saying, "I was just too busy with the game to make it happen. It was a good decision.

If you don't follow Hawk on Twitter (opens in new tab), I highly recommend you do. It's all about stories of people not recognizing Hawk at the airport or asking him if he was named after a game. I wonder what the skateboarding game would be like today if he had followed the simulation path, and if I hadn't spent so many hours on the couch trying to score a perfect 900 and eating shit when I was a teenager?