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(serene accordion music)

- Do people say you know, was this your dream

when you set out to do a game?

This is way beyond any dream that existed then.

I mean, you couldn't have dreamt this back then.

It, we're creating the dream, we created the dream.

And I feel like THPS was a huge part

of why skateboarding is here to stay.

Why it's in the Olympics.

Why it's, what kids gravitate to,

more so than team sports now.

A big reason that I'm still here,

that I'm still even relevant in this world

is because of that series.

I mean for sure it's the reason I'm standing

on this million dollar ramp that I get to skate everyday.

(skateboard wheels rumble)

(people cheer)

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Tell us where you're from ♪

♪ What you want to become ♪

♪ And we'll say if you're OK ♪

♪ Where did you go to school ♪

♪ Right answer and you're cool ♪

♪ Yeah you're the kid the whole day ♪

♪ You get a sticker in your face ♪

♪ Information about the case ♪

♪ So you know your potential ♪

♪ Don't think you can extend ♪

♪ Don't think you can extend ♪

♪ Just comprehend ♪

♪ But I don't wanna hear it ♪

♪ No it's more than I accept ♪

♪ Cause I don't care where I belong no more ♪

♪ What we share or not I will ignore ♪

♪ And I won't waste my time fitting in ♪

♪ Cause I don't think contrast is a sin ♪

♪ No it's not a sin. ♪

(old school upbeat piano music)

- Well in the 80s the skateboard scene

had a lot of ups and downs.

I remember when I got into it the late 70s,

it was pretty popular.

Skate parks were getting built all over the country

specially California side.

And then around 1980, '81, I don't know

something happened and it just kinda just crashed.

And all the skate board parks that I would see

in the magazine were like closing.

- You know the skate boarding scene in the early 80s

was raw, it was backyard.

We went from skate parks being

where we performed and did competitions

to now it's backyard ramps,

Thrasher Magazine just came out in 1981.

Transworld and, we really took it to a underground level.

We were making seven hundred bucks for first place contest.

Just wanting a picture in the magazine.

But you know what to us, it was like a million bucks.

And so it didn't matter, we were going to do it regardless.

But, we were really paving the way for what it is today.

- When I first started skating,

I didn't even know other people skated.

I didn't know anything about it cause,

I'd grew on up in Alabama and it was, pretty, pretty rural.

We had like pigs and chickens and goats and stuff

and skateboarding was like not even on my radar so,

if it wasn't on like the weekly episode

of'' Dukes of Hazard, '' I didn't know anything about it.

- There was a couple of demos at my school

that they'd come in on a plexiglass ramp (chuckles)

and, I really liked it .

I like the transition skating and.

But every time I, like my friends

had a quarter pipe down the street,

and I'd go skate and try to skate with them

and they would just make fun of me,

you know it was late 70s and kids are like

telling me that I can't skate because girls don't skate.

- Skating grew in the 80s because it was,

sort of, new, flashy activity and you know,

skating kinda went through an underground phase

in the late 70s.

And when it emerged it was suddenly this new sport

with acrobatics and aerials out of swimming pools

and it was exciting and it was irreverent.

Kids were in to it you know, cause their parents hated it.

(chuckles)

- Skating wasn't popular.

I couldn't even begin to use the term mainstream

until mid 80s,

I think 86, I don't know, whenever it was.

But going on tour every year,

suddenly we went from a few people showing up at demos

to being surrounded.

- We kept continuous skating

and kept promoting and kept traveling.

We even started making videos.

(loud bang)

- Now this is a skateboard.

- So the earliest videos, Stacy Peralta, created that.

And he turned it into, for what it was an art form.

And he put so much thought into it.

Structurally it was so professional.

The word got out, the videos become a huge success

and we started getting this momentum.

We started selling skateboard more and more.

Bigger companies wanted to use, the skaters in like movies,

commercials and a contest started happening again.

We started doing skateboard contests in like colossseums

and auditoriums where we had built huge ramps

and people would, you know come all,

all over the world to just try to come and meet these pros

that they've seen in these videos now and those magazines.

By the late 80s it was huge.

(crowd cheers)

(wheels rumble)

(crowd cheers)

- All right lets give him a big hand.

Last run of the day.

- There was a big transition in the late 80s

early 90s from vert skating, like vert skating

was like what was on television.

It was like what was portrayed as the cool

thing in skateboarding.

But vert skating wasn't accessible for every kid.

Especially like myself.

I didn't have a vert ramp.

I had a driveway and a street in front of my house.

- In that time there wasn't all these skate parks

to go skate (chuckles), like there is now.

So, it was such a different time

compared to like, oh where are we gonna skate today.

- With all the skate park closures in the late 80s,

skating, the only way skating could survive

was if you were doing it on the streets

because there were no facilities

designated for skate boarding anymore.

- Everyone just started, kind of at a default

just skating what they had which was streets you know.

You had streets in front of your house

and everyone had like a town, a downtown

were you lived in even if you lived in the smallest town

you still had a downtown.

- So people took what they loved

and started doing it out in the wild.

(energetic rock music)

♪ Don't become a hip chain ♪

♪ Be broken ♪

♪ But I check the substrate to find a halo light ♪

- Street skating started to become like the thing

that was very attractive.

Where a kid could get a board and just go out and skate

in the streets.

And because of that, all the stars that were vert skaters

really didn't have a place to perform

because like people just wanted to see a street skater.

♪ Thy progeny is born today ♪

♪ As we blow ourself away. ♪

- No one skated vert anymore so

we had to get really technical.

They had to get technical in street.

To be the best you gotta be the most technical

so you gotta somehow figure out

how to fling that board around.

Whether it would be late, early or

both a combination of early and late.

And getting to fling that thing around and get back on it.

Who cares what it looked like to do that, you just did it.

All the guys that I feel like made it out of that

made it through that, that shit storm

was, have been able to sort of have that understanding

of like, this could be gone at any moment.

Be prepared.

- Yeah with skateboarding it had these huge explosions

in the 70s, and then kinda died out.

Then it happened in the 80s again

and then it kinda died out.

And then the 90s, it was just the early 90s

it was like, I remember that time period

where I would go out skate boarding all around Arizona

or Las Vegas, and be the only skater

for you know, weeks on end.

And if you saw another skater boarder at that time

you were instantly like, ''Whoa, a skater,

like what's up homie?''

Like we're friends you know like (chuckles)

like instantly friends just because you skateboarded.

- I was a fading vert skater so it was

especially hard for me cause the interest in vert skating

had dropped off almost completely.

And my income was getting cut in half every month

by my sponsors, by my royalties.

And so I started doing whatever I could taking on jobs.

I had a little bit of an editing system,

video editing system so I would take freelance work

doing that.

Usually from other skate companies.

Actually from a video game company as well coincidentally.

And, it was hard.

It was super hard but I didn't want to quite skating

so I made it work however I could.

(techno music)

- There was this element of change

but it was good because it really made people

think about you know, what they love

and if they were really committed to it.

Whether I wads truly in love with skate boarding,

it was a challenged.

Was I going to quit cause the industry

went down in my area?

Or I'm gonna still skate anyway.

I choose to still skate anyway.

(heavy metal rock music)

- I mean skating in the 90s was just raw.

Like everybody that was doing it,

was, you know, you were part of a small group

that were completely dedicated to it.

You felt like in the 90s everything about skateboarding

was an us versus them mentality.

Like, you got it and only the people that you knew

would understand it and nobody else can get it

- Street skating is now evolving with tricks.

From Rodney Mullins, you know, invention

of probably two thirds of all the street tricks

you know, in the early 80s he was inventing these things.

And then by the early 90s he was actually

even doing it in the street.

Putting a video park that looked

almost like a PlayStation game.

(upbeat guitar music)

- It was just really go get the trick.

It doesn't matter how it looks in terms of perfection

of the shot, just get the trick.

And go out and do this until you get it.

And that was Rubbish Heap.

We created almost intentionally to look rough,

and you know bad as oppose and contrast

to the sort of slick or silky or were very professional

whatever you think of the "Bonus Brigade".

The tricks, the community, the identity,

that meant a lot.

Where we would all work and focus on a part

and every little trick you got, you focused on

okay what next, how I can outdo that next.

Where am I taking this?

(upbeat electronic guitar music)

- With the sort of underground revolution

of street skating in the mid 90s,

suddenly it came in to the forefront again

because it was like, wait a second,

these skaters are doing something new

that you couldn't deny, you couldn't avoid,

because it was right there in all the cities.

- Skateboarding with the economy,

it started kinda booming again.

It started picking up momentum and by the time

we got to the mid 90s, it was peaking

the mainstreams interest.

So they wanted to create a skateboard contest

that puts skateboarding on the grand stage

and that was the X games.

(funky techno music)

So in '95, the X games started

and the first one was in Rhode Island.

And it was the first kinda contest

to put skateboarding onto televisions everywhere

and kinda put it into everyone's households.

- Extreme skateboarders rolled over

the roadway.

- When I watch it on TV, it was horrible.

I just wanted to turn the volume down.

It was just like what are these guys talking about,

this is not what we are, who we are.

This is not our scene,

this is not what we think.

You know, the commentators were off,

like everything was off about it.

But you know, it was exposure so how do we,

instead of going like, oh boycott,

you know, you go like, how do we figure that out.

How do we make it to where the message

is right and we get it out there.

And as time went by,

they start, you know, kept going.

They kept tweaking the event.

And we, you know, there was advisory boards

that were formed.

Tony and I were on one and, you know,

just kinda, you know, tryna explain to them,

it was just this whole nother, you know,

sports world trying to say this is what skateboarding is

and we're just saying, ''Hey that's cool.

We wanna have that exposure but, this is

what skateboarding is.''

- Most of my run was just doing what vertical tricks I could

on this speed course.

So I didn't even expect It that long, when I had it.

- Tony Hawk become this poster child for the X games.

And everybody was like you know oh Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk,

and he's very successful.

And people talked like, you know,

he had made money off of it.

And other people that weren't a part of skateboarding

who may have looked at skateboarding

as a bunch of young punks who would never amount

to anything or achieve anything,

now looked at them like,

oh wow these kids can become something, can make money

and are on television.

- His style is really

what he's know for.

- Nice 50 50 across in down.

- Making the hard stuff look easy.

- I don't know if there ever a moment

when I was like a younger kid

where I'm like, this has to be my career.

I was just like I saw these dudes doing it on TV

and, like,

I just wanted to do it at that level, you know.

I wanted to be that good.

Definitely seeing the X games and seeing, you know,

guys on TV and stuff like, definitely helped

push me in that direction of like, oh I wanna do this.

But, I think it was just like.,

I wanna just be as good as them.

And then the career stuff kinda came later.

(hopeful music)

Skateboarding is interesting and it's cool.

It's cool to watch, its different than everything else.

It's creative, it's rebellious and people enjoyed it.

You know and the X games seemed like they found their niche

and they fired skateboarding into homes everywhere.

- A lot of these games I knew in their arcade,

you know, era, long before they reached the home era.

It was really great.

And of course as time went on and the extreme sports games

became more and more popular, eventually this game

became a real big deal in the arcade.

This was tremendous.

720, 720 one of the earliest, you know, skateboarding games.

It was a very big deal in the arcade.

And the reason I know from my prospective at Twin Galaxies

how big of a deal it was, by the number of people

competing to be the world record holder.

- Tony what have we got here?

- 720 by Atari, its pretty hot.

- So where are you skating right now?

- Just like around the city and then I gotta go find a park

to skate at.

- I've heard you've always been a gamer to some extent?

- Yeah.

Well I have played video games since their inception.

You know,

since going to arcade, playing PacMan, Missile Command.

Having an Atari at home, you know.

Getting into the Super Nintendo.

So I was an arcade kid really.

Skate games were rare.

You know, they made 720 then they made Skate or Die

for Commodore 64.

California games had skateboarding in it.

But it was few and far between that (mumbles)

when it was included at all in any kind of video game.

And I always knew that it would be a fun platform

to make a game, whether it be a home console

or a stand up arcade game.

And eventually Top Skater came around

and I felt like that was a step in the right direction.

At least it was more experiential, standing on the board

and you're controlling the moves a little bit.

But I always felt like there was something more to it

that could be explored.

(guitar strums)

(loud crash)

- I never thought to care about,

because Joel, Chris and I were all working

at Malibu together and Joel had seen people

leaving Malibu and starting their own companies.

And making a lot of money doing it.

So Joel thought, he'd do that, he'd start his own company.

He gathered together the best people he could find

which was me and Chris at the time,

and we got a deal doing a game called Skelton Warriors

which was a little side scrolling, slashing game.

(loud bangs)

After Skeleton Warriors we were looking

for another project and we got a deal doing this game

called Big Guns for Sony.

It didn't really work out and Sony canceled the game.

So we had a real, really hard time around that period,

where we were looking for another project.

And then we eventually did this game

called Apocalypse for Activision.

(fast drumbeat)

And that worked out really well.

We did a very quick game, we knocked it out in a year.

And, after that, Activision wanted

to continue working with us cause it worked out so well.

- I got approached by a PC developer

that wanted to do a video game based on skateboarding.

And he had a very crude engine.

It was all keyboard commands.

He asked if I would go pitch this idea

to different publishing companies

and just came up against a lot of hesitation.

A lot of negativity.

People just said you know, skateboarding is not popular.

Why would a skateboarding game be popular?

He finally gave up on it and said look,

I you know, I can't go any further with this,

but your name is out there now for the video game companies.

And he was right.

I got a call from Nintendo to come up and talk to them.

They said no.(chuckles)

I had been working with Neversoft

on a game called Apocalypse

And then around that time in the halls of Activision

there was an idea to do a skateboarding game.

So, we kinda got that going.

We hired Neversoft to start building a demo.

And then we started looking for who could we attach

to that project to kinda make it a bigger deal.

So we were looking at some magazines,

some personalities and it just seemed like

Tony Hawk was the guy.

(uplifting music)

- I don't think there's anybody really at Neversoft

in the team, Joel, Chris and I

who'd ever skateboarded before.

So this was like a new thing to us

and I remember Joel said, there wouldn't be any market

for a game like that cause it's just a small, niche market.

So no one was really thinking skateboarding would be good.

(loud crash and grinds)

- I got a call from Take-Two which is now Rockstar Games.

And they wanted to work on a game

and I liked what they were doing

but their game seemed a little too difficult to master.

(relaxed guitar music)

It was as hard as skateboarding to learn almost

and so I'd felt like that's not really the,

the hook that's gonna bring in a whole

new audience to skateboarding.

(thunder rumbles)

Activision called me and said we are working on a game,

we heard you might be working on another game,

we would like you to come see what we're doing.

- He came in, he showed up in like a T-shirt

and like ripped up cargo pants

and Activision had all these executives

all lined up in a conference room.

They sat Tony down and they started showing him

PowerPoint after PowerPoint of like revenue this,

and Activision that and like, just all that stuff.

And I could just see Tony just sort of sinking lower,

and lower in his chair, just kinda, seemed like

he was kinda bored out of his mind.

But at the the meeting, we actually got

to roll in the demo level that Neversoft had created.

And it was their, kind of first attempt

at a skateboarding game.

- What they actually showed me was Bruce Willis

with a gun strapped to his back, on a skateboard

riding through this wasteland.

♪ Well I can't wait to tell you all about her ♪

♪ All about my new girl ♪ ♪ He can't wait to tell you ♪

♪ About his new girl ♪

♪ And I can't wait for you to hear me shout it ♪

♪ All about my new girl ♪ ♪ He can't wait to tell you ♪

♪ About his new girl ♪

As silly as that sounds, as soon as I played it

and I felt just some of the controls,

I knew that was the end.

That was intuitive, that was fun and,

with my influence, with my resources

we could make this something truly special.

(upbeat rock music)

- When we started designing the levels

we basically stood on front of a big white board

and we drew up ideas, just off the top of our heads.

People where just shouting things out.

- I went to many skate shops.

I talked to many skaters.

I went to skating shows,

where I met pros and talked to everybody

and look, looked at everybodys style.

The way they dressed, the music they listened.

And the culture.

I immersed myself completely for a period of six months.

And this is what inspired me.

This is what made me come up with that specific look.

- This is the correct way

to absorb the impact of a fall.

The first thing you wanna do is

to lower your center of gravity.

Relax, and if you have to fall,

just turn your head away from the fall.

- We were trying to be realistic.

People would say when the skater falls off his skateboard

he should take damage.

You might, you know damage your ankle

or your skateboard might get messed up

and start going slower.

And this has always been a problem

with this type of video game.

People want realism where, really

people just want to have a fun time.

- I was looking to make a game

that was easy to pick up and start playing right away.

That you didn't have to know a ton about skateboarding

to get the controls.

That you could instantly start doing tricks

without having some deep knowledge of skate history

(chuckles) or of board controls.

So, for me, I didn't want, I don't want to say,

that I wanted it to be arcadic,

I wanted it to be authentic.

- When I came in, the game itself,

they had started building kind of a demo.

And they we really inspired by Top Skater,

the Sega arcade game.

One of the early test levels was, like an aqueduct.

You would skate down this river bed.

Once you got to the bottom of it

there was what become the warehouse level.

It was just kind of, like just a room

with that particular pool that was in it.

And everybody would get to the bottom of that level

and then you know, in a minute

and then just spend a half hour in the pool.

And that was one of those kinda moments

where you realize, like, okay,

this is what we wanted to do.

(loud crash)

(drum beats)

(wheels roll)

- Cool Dad, but can you do it in a loin clothe like Tarzan?

- I had seen a lot of, kind of cooperate entities

come into skateboarding and try and see

what they could take from skateboarding

and then they would just leave.

And they would leave whoever, whatever, high and dry

and they just didn't even care about the effect.

The effect that they had on skateboarding.

It was just like see how long they could

make money off of it.

So I the very beginning I was leery of you know,

the whole video game concept.

And, you know, personally I felt like the X games

were a little bit cheesy and corny.

And I felt like if this video game

is gonna be cheesy and corny, then everybody

that's involved in the game is gonna be the same.

You know, and I knew that Tony

was a little bit closer to the X games.

And his persona was a little bit more wholesome,

and you know, a little bit more mainstream

and, than mine was.

So I was a little bit like leery in the beginning

and almost didn't even want to do the game

because I just felt like it was gonna be cheesy.

- Can't even remember exactly

how it happened but somebody called me up.

I don't know if it was Tony Hawk

or from somebody from Neversoft

and they were like do you wat to be in a video game?

And I was just like, at that time I remember

I couldn't even believe it was gonna be real you know,

I was just like, I was amazed by that idea, you know.

And it was a big idea I felt like at that time.

I remember thinking like, thats just crazy.

Skateboarding has got to that level

that these major companies are going to invest into an idea

that's a skateboarding video game.

And I just thought it was the coolest thing ever.

- They game me the list of everybody involved

and I kinda was like, okay if I don't do this,

I'm gonna be like the one dude that isn't with his peers

and so I kinda almost did it because I felt like

I didn't want to be left out because those

were going to be household names from this video game.

And so I did it.

(upbeat guitar music)

♪ Tonight's the night that we got the truck ♪

♪ We're going downtown gonna beat ♪

♪ Up drunks ♪ - Once Tony came in,

he actually was, you know, was really good

in terms of giving his ideas

and giving us a lot of feedback in the game.

He did a lot of actual play testing of the game himself.

- When I first signed up I had to teach them

the softer ropes about skateboarding you know.

It was a crash course, none of them really skated.

Pushing out this way is called one type of trick

and pushing out this way is another kind of trick.

There's no such thing as a front side indy,

stuff like that, I mean it was, pretty overwhelming

the amount of information I had to give them.

But they were very receptive you know,

there are a lot of people that are in that position

that thought they had the upper hand.

You know, they, the video game is happening

so they didn't have to adhere to some crazy,

demand list of making it authentic.

(Tony chuckles)

(wheels roll)

the Mocap was, for one, embarrassing

cause you're wearing a skin tight suit

that's covered in what looks like ping pong balls.

That's humiliating enough but then to be asked to do

your absolutely most difficult and most dangerous tricks

while wearing that was ridiculous.

And I got hurt a lot doing that.

Because you're not wearing like,

really the kinda of padding you would usually wear.

And it's like okay go do a 900, like what?

- Generally I probably wouldn't have been

too involved in the process but I blow my knew out

and I had to have ACL surgery and I was on a couch

for, you know, a long period of time.

So that meant I had a month before surgery

and then a month after surgery when I was just on a couch.

I started playing the game like crazy

and I, you know, played video games growing up

but I'd never had a video game

that I had so much interest in

because it was like basically, my whole life

was around skateboarding and now I have a game

that has to do with every aspect of what I do.

And so it was so intriguing to me.

I could still get the satisfaction of doing tricks

and trying things very similar to how skating was,

except I could do it through the video game.

- The only hope I had for the game,

is that skaters would be proud of it.

And skaters might be inspired to buy a PlayStation,

that was it.

I thought that if I can get a skater to buy a PlayStation

and play this game, that's success.

When we started Tony Hawks, we didn't really think

it was going to be a super success.

But I think as we developed the game,

we personally enjoyed playing it.

I really like, you know, jumping doing like,

big tricks in the half pipe.

And I was just trying to make a game that I enjoyed playing.

But then we started getting focus testers coming in

and they would start playing the game.

And I remember these two testers coming in,

the first ones we did and they kept saying

how tight it was.

Which was like a term I never heard before.

Like,'' Dude, this game is really tight.

Isn't this video game tight,'' ''Yeah man, its tight.''

So they were really like enthusiastic

about how tight it was.

And then the thing that really tweaked us

to the fact that it was going to be successful

was when we released the demo disk

which was a disk given away at Pizza Hut I think,

and at supermarket checkouts.

The demo disk had a bunch of small versions

of different games on.

And we got a lot of feedback from that,

from people who really enjoyed just playing that one game.

It was just like a small segment

and you could play two minutes

just skating around a warehouse.

But people really just enjoyed it,

you know I really enjoyed playing that little demo.

Everybody was talking about this demo.

And, you know, I think on that disk too

was like a Final Fantasy game

which at the time, would have been you know,

like seeling millions and millions of copies.

And everybody is talking about

the Tony Hawk game on there instead.

- You would have to put a skateboarding game out

and there has been a few and you're like,

ah that's fun, but like this is weird.

And then you get someone like Tony Hawk, work on a game,

specifically and you know its gonna come out

with that language ad that representation,

so, immediately skateboarders were in.

And then non skateboarders were addicted

and that just became you know, what happened.

(upbeat rock music)

♪ Jerry was a race car driver ♪

♪ And he drove so goddamn fast ♪

♪ He never did win no checkered flag ♪

- Mean I don't know if there was songs

in video games before Pro Skater.

So when they asked us about having a song in there,

I don't think we knew what that meant

because, every video game I had I don't remember songs

and like song songs, they'd have a built in song

that was coming form a chip or something.

It was like a song from a band or anything so,

yeah I don't think we knew what that mean.

I hate it when you use your music in the video game.

Okay, but.

- Back in the 90s people where

so precious about their music.

No one wanted their music to be in commercials,

or movies, they just wanted it to be like,

only the tour and only as their own.

They didn't want to sell out or whatever.,

it was just like, really difficult to kind of like,

want to do sync store licenses for your music.

For me, growing up with the culture of skateboarding

like I talked about it was a no brainer.

I'm like of course, this makes complete sense

for the style and music we do.

The ska punk song in a video game

that supports the culture of what were doing.

(heavy metal music)

- You know the song wasn't necessarily,

it was on the radio a tiny bit and weird markets.

And there was video that was sort of a seen

but, definitely I remember noticing

a lot of people finding out about it

through the video game. (chuckles)

Of course you know, down the road

I thought it would become like, dude I can't listen

to that song again.

I've heard that loop a million times in my head

playing the game.

Like I love your band but I can't hear that song again.

Cause you know, it wasn't the whole song,

it was just the little bit.

So you know you could hear that part

lopping over and over again.

- The video game obviously turned into something

much bigger than I think anyone expected.

And the soundtrack become like a real thing

that people like listened to.

If you're able to have people in Sweden

or Italy discover Southern California punk rock in the 90s

that they wouldn't be able to get to otherwise.

You know, because the internet didn't exist back then.

- I was getting really excited

to be able to play it and see it.

And I think that started to trigger my mind

and start to think what is this gonna do for kids,

like, cause they're gonna be playing this robotically

and its gonna, they're gonna train

by playing this video game.

And that was an interesting thought for me

at that time, you know, to think that,

this may actually affect the evolution of skateboarding

which ultimately it did.

Crazy. (chuckles)

- X games five in San Francisco,

a full moon rising over the bay.

Some of the gods of skateboarding past

went right in there shoulder to shoulder,

with thousands of screaming fans who waited a long time.

Other skaters had had their moments,

Alan McKay drop it in there.

But this has really become a personal quest for Tony Hawk

to master the trick.

He is beating himself up doing for a decade, the 900.

(crowd cheers)

- Oh baby.

Stomp your feet everybody!

- Very close to the release Activision offered me a buy out

and future royalties for half a million dollars.

And I had never heard anyone even speak

half a million dollars to me.

And so that was incredible, that was to me unbelievable

but at the same time, my career had

kinda turned around right then.

I was making pretty good money.

I had just bought a new house.

I had a family.

I, you know, I had potential

and so I felt pretty comfortable.

And for the first time really in my life

I felt fairly confident in my career

and so I declined their offer to just see what happens,

ride it out, I mean it was probably the best

business decision I ever made.

But it seemed risky at the time, you know,

that seems like a lot of money.

It is a lot of money, (chuckles)

it still is a lot of money.

- Tony.

Tony.

900!

900!

Oh!

(crowd cheers)

oh god, the closest I've ever seen in my life.

(crowd drowns out commentator)

I feel like there are so many factors

of why the first game was a success.

First and foremost it was, it was made well.

It was a great game to play, I mean that is all Neversoft.

And yeah, I mean I landed the 900 that summer

by pure coincidence you know,

three months before the game was released.

And into the very end of the development cycle of the game.

(crowd cheers)

- Are you seeing this?

Tony Hawk everybody!

- Watching skateboarding go through that stage

of going from, okay that's about as much as you can do

on a skateboard to, no there's more.

It opened up and took the ceiling off of skateboarding.

It said skateboarding has not stopped here.

I remember emailing Joel, probably the next day

and I said, hey do you guys think you could get

a 900 in the game.

He's like, ''Already on it.''

And it was you know, about to be released for submission.

You know, there's a lot of whatever folklore

that's like you've got the 900 then you got the video game.

No we were working on the video game for two years

prior to that and there was no grand plan

of trying to make this trick happen.

Like are you kidding me?

I would never have been that methodical

about anything in my life.

The fact that Activision was so excited about it

and started putting more marketing money into it

that gave me the sign that it was gonna be popular

beyond just skateboarders.

(siren wails)

(upbeat rock music)

- Tony Hawks Pro Skater, now everyone things

they can skate like Tony.

(wheels rumble)

(soft thuds)

- I remember playing the video game

and me and my brother had a pool in my backyard

and we would go out there

and we would have our skateboards on our hands

and do like tricks that we would see

like in the video games.

And then we would think to ourselves

like damn, I wonder if Tony Hawk

came and skated in my pool,

if he could do those tricks that (chuckles).

And now that I'm older my pool is like that deep

and no way, you couldn't do anything in it.

But it still just like inspires

you to think outside the box, I think.

I definitely don't think that I would be

were I'm at if it wasn't for that video game

cause it definitely did inspire me to skate more.

Cause it was so fun to play the video game

that it was just fun for me to skate.

And then you know, you got older

and then kinda phased out video games

and just got skating you know, so.

- Yeah, the game definitely affected my career.

It was one of the main things that

got me like started I think.

You know I was already like super into video games

so, once that game came out, I just was like,

I was all about that game.

I spent countless hours playing that game.

And I think that can be said for a lot of other people too,

just over the years, talking to other people

that I'm traveling with and skating with.

They're like dude, I played that game,

I played the shit out of that game.

(game sounds whir)

- It seems to me that Tony Hawk Pro Skater

was a pioneer in the same way Pac-Man

had pioneered the world's love for maze games

even though it didn't invent necessarily,

you know the extreme sport game.

It pioneered the incredible community and culture

so that could expand further, expand wider.

And it would allow actually more producers

to be bold enough to embrace that genre,

of you know, extreme sports games

and get more and more extreme sport games titles

the chance to come to life.

- I had not monetary expectations.

I had no like, this is gonna help skateboarding.

Its going to educate kids that don't skate.

I didn't even think about any of that.

It was just like this game is fun to play,

I enjoy it,

I'm hyped to be in it.

I'm hyped to be around and associated

with all these other pro-skateboarders

who are at the top of their game.

And it was a good feeling, you know,

X games was like the tip of the iceberg.

Like Tony Hawk Pro Skater sent skateboarding

into millions of homes.

And it didn't just send it in there

and it was gone the next week.

It sent it into their homes and it stayed.

- Sony PlayStation!

Oh my god! (paper rustles)

Oh my god!

- I can't speak enough on how much of an impact

that this video game had for skateboarding

and the skateboarding industry to be presented

to the masses on a whole.

It probably made hundreds of thousands

if not millions of kids start skateboarding

that may have never touched a skateboard in their life.

If anything it showed our world to people

that didn't skate and got them interested.

So there are a lot of kids that started skateboarding

because of the game right.

They started playing the game,

they kinda got interested in skating

and then they started skating.

- As skaters we were blown away

because we're like looking at people that we know,

and we know nobody else knows who these people are.

Ad suddenly there's people that have never

ridden a skateboard before that asking me like,

do you know Chad Muska?

Do you know Tony Hawk?

Do you know Andrew Reynolds?

I'm like, you've never riden skateboarder a day in your life

how do you even know who these people are?

Or trick terminology, like people

that have never even ridden a skateboard

talking about skate tricks as if they knew what that meant.

- You're getting an education basically on skateboarding.

And yeah, it is a little bit skewed.

It's through this video game, you know,

and not all the trick names are right,

in my opinion and you know, somethings are undoable

and were kind of distorting peoples views

on what's possible in skateboarding.

But that also could be a good thing.

I mean future generations could think that

that stuff is possible and they could progress

skateboarding in a way.

(loud rumbles)

- So towards the end of '99, we're playing Europe

on this first kind of real tour of Europe.

We had toured the states from '94 to '98.

Solid right?

First time really touring there and we played the set.

No one really gave a shit about our band.

We're opening for the Bloodhound gang.

Then we play Superman, its like the entire place

goes fucking ballistic.

Like full circle everyone staged

it was just crazy, right, it's intense.

I'm like what the fuck man!

The game completely changed the trajectory

of my band, without question.

Like I play that show, we played

that song, and it was just like,

this is the biggest song we have

because of a skateboarding video game.

♪ Here I am ♪

♪ Growing older all the time ♪

♪ Looking older all the time, ♪

♪ Feeling younger in my mind ♪

♪ Here I am ♪

♪ Doing everything I can ♪

♪ Holding on to what I have ♪ - You have sold

a billion dollars of video games.

That is insane my friend - It's well--

- I take it you get a little slice, just my guess.

- Yeah, I can't complain. - Yeah absolutely

my guess would be.

- The game itself changed my life.

I mean I started getting recognized everywhere I went.

It was not something I was accustomed to

nor was it something that I was looking for.

When you set out to be a skateboarder

and when I started, you were never gonna be

rich or famous from it cause no one else was.

So that wasn't the driving factor.

And so when, suddenly I found myself

with this unparalleled fame from skateboarding.

I didn't really understand it, I didn't know

how to handle it but, yeah it changed my life completely.

You know, I'm like, it provided for my family.

It allowed me to travel the world

at someones else's expense, it allowed me

to skate more than ever, do tours,

I mean I can't like, the list goes on and on and on.

You know, I was on the ''Simpsons'',

I was in the White House and a lot of that

is because of the game.

- All right.

So right now I'm here with Tony Hawk.

The music is bumping, the party is getting live,

it's crazy here at Activision 2000.

Now we got his number two coming out right now,

and what do you think of it?

- The second one just blows away the first one.

I don't think people would believe that it can get the most,

this much better.

(upbeat rock music)

- How I heard about the first Tony Hawk

Pro Skater game was I saw it.

And then I saw it come out

and saw people playing it.

And I looked at it, I looked at the characters

and I'm like man, that would have been

so cool to be in this game, like.

Why didn't I get picked, (chuckles) you know?

I guess because of the success of number one,

I heard there was going to be a number two.

- There was no plan from the start for a sequel.

I think Activision thought obviously

if it was going to be a success

they would do a sequel but they weren't,

we had no plans as a company to do it.

We were just going to do this one game

and see how it did.

So it was all very contingent upon

whether the game was a success or not.

And of course it was, so we started going

on Tony Hawk two, as soon as we finished

working on Tony Hawk one.

So Pro Skater one was all about figuring out the core,

right like, the core physics, the core trick system,

getting levels to work, getting animations to work.

Getting everything to kinda feel good

and work good together.

And I think we got all that stuff working

kinda at the very end of the project

and then we put some goals on top of it

and that was the first game.

So two, was all about expanding on that base.

Now we had a solid base and we could start to explore,

kind of interesting new features in the second game.

(upbeat rock music)

- Two I felt like was the version that we wanted to make

for one, which I'm sure everybody says.

But it really, it really nailed it.

Like after two, or as we're working on two,

there wasn't that, you know, what if we added this factor.

It felt like we added everything that needed to be added

and this was gonna be really cool.

♪ Predict me ♪

♪ I'm predictable ♪

- Tony, when he made the 900, he just blasted off.

And he was everywhere, I mean everywhere.

And I remember because we didn't hang out as much

because we both weren't on Pal anymore

and when I saw him I was actually nervous

to be around him because he seemed like such a star.

And then seriously within five seconds,

or less, you realize he's just Tony.

Like when he had the first game, I was like, wow

that's something but, I don't play games.

I didn't relate, I didn't pay attention.

It was until I got hurt and busted an ankle

and going back to our Pal days,

of all the people I didn't relate to anyone

the way I relate to Tony.

I called him Tony.

I need to talk to you, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

And he just did his usual, of I don't even know

what you're talking about, it's gonna heal.

Weird set of ankles and by the way,

do you wanna be in my game?

I went up there, met Ralph, all these characters.

Neversoft was tiny at that stage.

Game comes out, I didn't pay much attention

cause it just goes out.

It doesn't affect your life.

Then I go on tour in a few months,

and I couldn't believe it, the difference it made.

Look because I was in the game, like

they had to lift me onto a van to separate from guys

that were my peers if not better.

I mean not just better, a lot better.

The van was rocking, like it was nuts, what that game did.

Not just for skateboarding as a whole

but for us as individuals.

(heavy fast rock music)

♪ There's a place where everyone can be happy ♪

♪ Its the most beautiful place in the whole fucking world ♪

♪ Its made of candy cane the plane ♪

♪ That brought out future trains ♪

♪ And the people little voice ♪

♪ And the most innocent little girls ♪

- I would get letters, it was just me and Bret

working at Epitaph it was just the two of us.

And we would get letters from people, that like,

this was around the time the handycam was invented.

Guys were , making movies and they were saying,

hey can we have your songs.

And I would send them every record we had.

Use whatever you want.

Cause it just made sense to be part of that world.

I was part of that world.

And I wanted to be in that.

Tony, was making Pro Skater 2

and had his collection of friends

that he was going to put in the game

and had asked him to give him a list of songs

from bands that they wanted to be in the game.

Tony approached Brett at Epitaph

said we wanna use your song.

And I remember back going, I don't even know what this is.

What is this? (laughs)

I think it is a video game.

- Once the second game came out

ad it had such rave reviews, and there was this

huge wave of interest in the game.

But also in skateboarding I knew that

there was something happening more

than just a successful video game.

There was something happening were it's

drawing attention to skateboarding.

If nothing else, it helped to create a fan base for skating.

Which we had never really had before.

The only fans of skating prior to that

were ones that actually skated themselves.

- So I would love to know how many hours

you spend playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater.

- Upwards of 100 hours really.

A lot of hours.

I put a lot of hours into and I'm glad I got selected,

to you know, for the competition.

- Kara here in San Francisco at the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2,

Big Score contest.

We've got 12 contestants from all over the world.

They're gonna go head to head for number one spot $12,000.

$10,000 excuse me, twelve contests $10,000, woo!

- For Twin Galaxies our big investment

of time and energy was Pro Skater 2.

The video game world loved Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 so much,

that large crowds of people swarmed to our website

and got involved with Twin Galaxy program.

Because they were essential invited in

by our Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 championships.

So its a very smart investment

cause Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2,

was the best thing we could have put our attention on

and supported because it was the big, big game

in the world at that time.

It was one of the biggest things we ever did

based on the number of people

who actively got engaged.

- Within five years of that game coming out,

more people would come to the shows and say,

I first heard you on this game, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2.

I never heard your band before but I heard this

and that's how I found you.

And that still happens today.

- As the game was still on the rise,

they, Activision was doing well

and they wanted to lock me into a contract

because they wanted to tell their stockholders

that they had me for this many years,

or for the next decade or so.

And offered me a giant advanced royalty for games.

It was weird because my agent was sort of waffling on it,

saying whoa we can cut this out, cut this out,

I was like, I've never going to see

this much money in my lifetime.

Take it.

I love working with them, (chuckles), you know.

This hasn't been a struggle,

this has been the best time of my life.

And so, I told him like, just let's just do it.

The craziest part about all of that,

is that I made those royalties back

in almost have that time.

- Well I think that the games got better.

I think that the first one was like

here's a new idea, its super fun and exciting.

And you know, the warehouse and the opening levels

so rad and it was like,

in theory you could play there for years, you know.

But, they started expanding so many different ideas

and you know, interacting and then bringing in real spots.

And I thought it was amazing.

I thought the evolution of it was awesome.

- THPS 3 was a huge improvement because it was

on the next console.

So the graphics were better, the motion was better,

the maps were bigger, you know,

obviously we were embracing the technology

and Neversoft was always on the pulse of any new console.

- And the direction went a little more arcadey,

you know, a little more, I don't know like,

satire, you know, of skateboarding.

And it wasn't quite as skater centric

as the first couple of titles were.

When four came around, we decided like,

we wanna go back to, you know,

servicing the skateboard crowd.

And I think we can do more with the game

than just the goals that we kept repeating.

♪ Oh ♪

♪ It's set in 1848 in the crush of New York state ♪

♪ And the thing about destiny ♪

♪ Is it never ever sets you free ♪

- Yes, that was so sick!

- Once the fourth game came out

and the other three were still in the top ten of sales,

that was the tipping point.

That was when we're here to stay, you know,

in so many ways and Activision started talking

about doing the O2 brand you know with BMX and Snowboarding.

With wakeboarding, it was like this is way beyond

anything I ever imagined.

We did create a genre.

(countdown beeps) (film rolls)

(camera clicks)

(loud crash)

♪ Don't you wanna go ♪

- I think for Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4

was the last one I that remember being like, big.

By the time we got to Underground

it had lost a little bit of that, like,

I don't wanna say innocence but like original intent.

And maybe I'm biased because I was only

in the first five games, but you know,

the first four, the progression was so rad

and you couldn't wait till the next one

for the next one to come out.

The potency or the relevance starts to get

a little bit muddled and convoluted, you know

as you keep trying to reinvent the wheel.

- The video game franchise, I don't know

if it was sustainable on a pop culture level

because there was you know, the best ones

were still kinda like the first ones.

It just seemed like the franchise had kind of like,

done what it had meant to do

and people and gamers interests just kind of changed.

- When we came out with the first one,

we doing something that hadn't been done in ages.

You know, it's not football, it's not baseball.

It's not this thing that's been around for a 100 years

and isn't going anywhere.

It's always had it's audience,

and it's always had kind of these ups and downs.

I think what wanted happened is, you know,

we were putting out a lot of the same feeling thing,

which is what you want, but we kept adding a layer to it.

You know, another layer and another layer and another layer.

And the stuff that we were adding to it

just became less and less important.

- We we're still trying to figure out

how we could continue the franchise to make it,

desirable for people.

And so the experience with THUG 2 in particular,

and we knew it wasn't going to be

probably as popular as five.

And obviously, you know we were always trying to

capture the magic of two and three and one,

to try and get that back up.

But yeah, there was, you know, starting to be a little bit,

okay, we are just making another Tony Hawk game.

Honestly I don't even know if we could have continued

if we had hadn't had the coolest ideas possible

that it could have continued to go upward

opposed to plateauing and the slowly losing it's interest.

- Well we saw a decline in sales you know,

once project eight came out.

And the skate franchise was coming into the scene.

That pretty much split the market so

it was like suddenly we got half the sales,

thanks to a whole new franchise.

This thing is full of technology.

It's got accelerometers.

It's got infrared senses here.

It knows where your feet are, it knows where your hands are.

You can come in ad actually go for grabs.

You can lean it, you can kick it up,

you can actually put your foot on the side of it

as if your pushing along.

The whole thing responses like a real skateboard.

Really, the best way to experience skateboarding,

is as it's meant to be, on a board.

When we did it Ride it was released too soon.

It just wasn't ready.

it wasn't you know, the syncing issues were a problem already

and just the control mechanism was pretty wonky.

So I think that by the time that we got

the second game out, Shred that was the game

that I had in mind for the first one.

By the time that game came out,

people were over peripherals.

They were over Guitar Hero,

you know the plastics were done pretty much.

And it was just, bad timing.

I don't think that was in line with a decline

in skateboarding popularity.

I feel like skateboarding had come so far

and it was kinda here to stay.

The types of things that have happened

since that series ended, in skateboarding, it's huge.

Its in the Olympics now, it's street league.

You know, it's still a big thing.

- Over the years, what the video games and stuff

ad what I see now, today, I see

how skateboarding has progressed.

The tricks that was doing back in those,

early you know 2000s, with my fingers,

I now look at Instagram now and I see kids

actually doing these tricks,

you know which I would never even think,

like, the progression of skateboarding would get that far.

But I think because of the help,

of the imagination of what we could do with our fingers

they actually thought they were possible.

So they would try them.

- Yeah I definitely thing that the game

evolved skateboarding in general.

And it made it so that,

all these new people would try these new crazy tricks

that you haven't seen before.

I think it really does help, visualizing the video game,

you know like, I think I could maybe do that

with my feet like, (chuckles) you know.

So, I think it definitely inspired a whole new genre

of just skating.

- Because of the growth of skating over these decades,

there has been shifting perspective

of what mainstream really means.

I remember in the mid 80s, when I was

doing demos for Swatch, for Converse.

I took a little heat from that because

that was considered mainstreaming it.

And a little bit of deal with the devilishness.

Later one when the video game started to appear,

it was the same argument of, yeah but that's

not core, it will deface what we do.

That also, if anything, only lifted the bar,

bringing in more and more talented people all the time.

Never was it selling out, never was it mainstreamification.

In a sense we think of the downsides.

Oh it's just another baseball diamond type of sport.

- I never coveted skateboarding as something

that I wanted to keep to myself or to hide away

from the general public.

I always wondered why kids or people

who were into mainstream sports,

didn't appreciate skateboarding.

I felt like it had so many of the elements

of something that's cool.

It was daredevil, it was creative,

it was difficult, it was accessible, you know.

And I never understood why it was not popular.

So for me, I wasn't looking to go back

to the old days of underground skateboarding.

If nothing else I was happy that I could finally

make a living doing it.

I think skateboarding should be,

and can be enjoyed by everyone.

And there's people out there that

just want the sport for themselves.

And when they see that it gets popular,

or other people are doing it, they get offended by it,

you know, and they get turned off by it

because it was something that was theirs.

It was special to them.

It's something that they discovered.

And they don't wanna share it.

I've never had a negative outlook when X games started.

I never had a outlook, negative outlook

when the Tony Hawk Pro Skater games became available

and I'd have to say, you know that

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater really helped along my career

you know, because it put me on another level of fame

and some recognition for what I have done

over the years to promote skateboarding

and show the world, you know, this art form.

(uplifting rock music)

I had these two friends growing up, they were brothers.

I went over there one day after school

and we started playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

and I saw that there was a black skateboarder

and I was like, oh my god (laughs), this is kinda cool.

I feel like if I didn't see Kareem Campbell in that though,

I probably wouldn't have like been interested.

But because I saw like, representation,

I felt like it was something that I could do.

I was expected to like play football,

and like basketball and stuff like that.

You know I'm just like, well I'm probably just gonna skate.

(laughs)

- The fact that the characters where pro-skaters

I think was,

like a key factpr for parents to see

because their kids are like,

oh look Tony did this, and Bucky did this on the game.

And they find out who these people are

and that skating is, you know, its a good thing.

There's good influential people in skateboarding.

They inspire all types of kids, all types of people

and I think that's like, the game shows that.

(hopeful drum music)

- As a hardcore skater and you know,

somebody who came up when it was this underground

industry, I'll always love it as that

and I'll aways cherish those times

and those moments because that's when

it was the most, pure to me at least.

But with the growth of skateboarding is the growth

of the industry which means more jobs for skateboarders.

More jobs for people that are involved

in the skateboard industry.

So to see the growth of skateboarding

and then to become this culturally mainstream

accepted thing, for me, I love it.

I think it's great.

- I hated it when I was in high school

and the jocks would find me and the gangsters,

were like jumping me and my friend.

After school we had to run from them,

you know, that was not cool.

It's way cool when they think, you're ,

what you do is awesome.

- I never really saw a girl skate

until I heard about the Combi Contest.

You know I saw Lizzy there for the first time,

I saw Kerrybeth Burnsides and then of course like,

little girls like myself at the time,

who were just learning how to skate

and it really opened my eyes to be like oh this is so rad,

like lots of girls do this you know.

I think, having Elissa Steamer in the video game,

was like a huge step forward for women skateboarding.

Just because it showed like inclusion

and it showed you know, girls who did play the game

and wanted to skate as a girl.

They got to be able to skate as Elissa.

And I think that's super rad and like I'm thankful

for the people who created the game,

to have done that for it I'm sure

it opened a lot of girls eyes.

- Skateboarding became bigger that Little League, truly.

Americans past time, had been surpassed

by skateboarding at that time.

And, definitely the video game was a huge factor in that.

- The game had an enormous impact.

I remember distinctly on a like Samoan pretty tough

neighborhoods.

I remember filming in there, one particular time

and these dudes come out and they were huge.

And they definitely looked like fresh out of prison at best.

In the middle of the intimidation

of just what is gonna happen right here,

are we gonna get beat up, it's like wait,

are you that guy?

Are you in the Tony Hawk video game?

And I remember his posture went from like bully to kid.

To like oh my god i've been playing you,

can you really do this trick?

And when you hear a guy like that

rattle off a name of some crazy combo,

like nose wheelie nollie 360 to shove

nose wheelie to nollie flip out,

something like that, you're like holy crap.

How does this guy know anything?

Like he appreciates what we do.

I thought I brought just one example

of how it brought the complexity of what we do

to the general public.

- It is beautiful to just to see

like people like, be able to share

this thing that we all love, like you know.

Without feeling like they're an outsider or anything

cause most people who skate already feel like outsiders.

So it's like, what's the point of trying to make us feel

like even more isolated.

- The generation that grew up playing THPS

and started skating because of it

thought that like, 360 flip to crooked grind

is just something you do when you learn to skate.

And that shit didn't even exist when I grew up.

You really, if you looked today,

the kind of tricks that people are putting on video

and doing in contests, its THPS stuff.

I'm sorry but, (chuckles) that is where it came from.

- The tricks are just getting insane

and everyone is taking it to the next level.

And everyone is getting so good, so good.

And I think that it's just gonna keep going

and going and going.

- I'm hugely proud of the series you know.

It was, I never imagined that it would go so far.

I never imagined that it would resonate that much,

and that it would be that popular.

I think the, a big reason that I'm still here,

that I'm still even relevant in this world,

is because of that series.

I mean for sure it's the reason I'm standing

on this million dollar ramp, that I get to skate everyday.

- Everybody get set here we go!

Feel it!

(wheels roll and rumble)

(crowd cheers)

- Tony Hawk everybody!

(somber guitar music)

♪ So here I am ♪

♪ Doing everything I can ♪

♪ Holding on to what I am ♪

♪ Pretending I'm a superman ♪

♪ I'm trying to keep ♪

♪ The ground on my feet ♪

♪ Seems the world's falling down around me ♪

♪ The night's are all long ♪

♪ Singing this song ♪

♪ Trying to make the answer's more than maybe ♪

♪ And I'm so confused ♪

♪ About what to do ♪

♪ Sometimes I want to throw it all away ♪

♪ I'm trying to sleep ♪

♪ I lost count of sheep ♪

♪ My mind is racing faster every minute ♪

♪ What could I do more ♪

♪ Yeah ♪

♪ I'm really not sure ♪

♪ I don't want to run in circles but I can't quit ♪

♪ And I'm so confused ♪

♪ About what to do ♪

♪ Sometimes I want to throw it all away ♪

♪ Controlling everything in sight ♪

♪ Feeling weak I don't feel right ♪

♪ Telling me I have to change ♪

♪ Telling me to act my age ♪

♪ But if all that I can do is to ♪

♪ Sit and watch the time go by ♪

♪ Then I'll have to say goodbye ♪

♪ Life's too short to watch it fly ♪

♪ So here I am ♪

♪ Growing older all the time ♪

♪ Looking older all the time ♪

♪ Feeling younger in my mind ♪

♪ Here I am ♪

♪ Doing everything I can ♪

♪ Holding onto what I am ♪

♪ Pretending I'm a superman ♪