Part 1:Mechanics This guide is a comprehensive overview of knowledge and techniques in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 that are essential for speedrunning. It is intended for people who already have a general knowledge of playing the game, but are new to speedrunning it. I hope some of the information here is also helpful to current runners looking to improve their runs. I am currently working on a video version of this guide to help visualize things in the future. PM me in the THPS discord if you have any questions about this guide or the game.
Which Version of THPS1 to Play N64 Console We prefer the N64 version of the game because it has the fastest loading times, roughly 4 seconds to load a level. Also, while not strictly necessary for runs this version allows you to spin during frontflips and backflips. Note that the N64 requires either the Jumper Pak (originally bundled with the console) or the Expansion Pak to run. The Expansion Pak enhances graphics but slows loading times, so the Jumper Pak is preferable. If you only have the PlayStation, Dreamcast, or NGage version, don’t hesitate to try out running the game! You should just know that you will be at a disadvantage for full game runs.
Emulation vs Console Console is significantly faster than emulation. There are a few runs on the leaderboards done on emulation (Joint holds the IL WR for DHJ with a run done on emu), so if it’s all you currently have go for it, but don’t expect to take world record in full game runs. For perspective, Nahoc’s any% TAS run (emulation) has an in-game time of 2:52 and clocks in at 4:53 total using speedrun.com timing. Contrast George’s previous WR any% run on console, an in-game time of 3:25 but a total of 4:39. That’s a total of 47 extra seconds of loading times in runs which are both less than 5 minutes total.
Controls General Tech You can use the analog stick or dpad for movement. According to n64squid.com, there are over 7000 possible angles the analog stick can input. Even before considering jitters and nerves you can imagine that with the old N64 technology this is absurdly more inconsistent than the 8 directions possible on the dpad. Using a claw grip can make fast Wallrides and grinds easier to hit. George plays this way and recommends it. I personally would play with a normal grip but occasionally switch to claw at a few specific moments in my runs, which I will note in future level-specific guides.
Configuration Glitch This is a relatively new discovery so it is not thoroughly tested and understood, but if you configure your control settings a certain way you can map 2 commands to the same button. BSGrind, the founder of this glitch, and I have been experimenting with glitched control schemes, mainly mapping Ollie and grind to the same button. This at least gives the benefit of claw with easier execution, and may prove to have other benefits. I have recently adapted to using this as my preferred setup.
The way I set it up: Change c-left to Grindslide. Change c-down to Grindslide. Press A. C-up will automatically change to JumpOllie and c-down to Flip Trick. Change these both back to Grindslide and press A again. This time, c-up and c-left automatically switch to say Flip Trick. Change them both back to Grindslide one more time, hover the cursor over c-down and press A. All 3 should say Grindslide now, but in game c-up does nothing, c-left is Flip Trick, and c-down is both Jumpollie and Grindslide. C-right remains Grab Trick as normal.
Scoring Every stage has a high score and pro score to get. Ignore high scores since you need them to reach pro score anyway. You can rack up points quickly in the game, so even in any% when we only need 3 tapes for a level it’s always fastest to get high score, pro score, and the hidden tape instead of the SKATE letters or destroying the 5 objects.
In some levels like Warehouse and the competitions I think it’s important to understand aspects of scoring to make sure you’re hitting the target score in your routes quickly.
Multipliers You can increase your score quickly by doing multiple tricks in one jump, or by spinning in the air. Each trick or spin (each 180°=+½ multiplier) you add to your combo adds a multiplier to the final score you receive from that combo.
Point Staling Each time you use the same trick in the same run of a level, its base score decreases, so vary your tricks. (Staling only applies after you land a trick, bailing has no effect on it.) In THPS1, scores and staling apply the same regardless of switch [stance].
Nollie and Fastplant Pressing up or up up before letting go of c-down to Ollie will make you Nollie or Fastplant respectively (you have a generous window to buffer these inputs, even before holding c-down). Nollie can give you slightly more distance, and fastplant gives you more height (which can mean more distance as well). You also get points for these (base 200 for nollie and 250 for fastplant), but more importantly you get a multiplier for them, and their animations can be instantly canceled into any trick so it’s safe and usually worth it to add them when you have time to input them.
Madonna and Benihana These grabs are faster than most and have high base scores, so we often use them at the beginning of levels to gain points and special quickly.
Specials After scoring enough points you’ll build your special meter and when it turns yellow you gain access to your skater’s signature moves. Your max speed is higher with special, so build it quick and keep doing tricks to maintain it. Signature moves (aka specials) have high base points, and some can be held or spun. Each character has 3 signature tricks in their kit (except Tony who has a total of 4). Unlike other platforms, N64 lets you spin frontflips and backflips with the analog stick and adds the spin multipliers. Add in fastplant and you can gain a lot of points quickly with these. Landing a special trick gives you a small temporary boost in speed. The later you finish the trick before landing, the greater this boost is.
Storage Aka buffering tricks. Whenever you press a c-button or a direction, the game stores this input for a brief period. So, if you press and release c-left in the air and then a couple frames later hit left, you will kickflip. Beware of misinputs due to this, but also know that you can store wallrides which is very useful. Press and release c-up a bit before jumping towards a wall and you will instantly wallride upon contact.
Menu Tech Retry->End Run End Run from the menu takes you to a screen where it shows you how many tapes you earned, then has flavor text saying what you’ve unlocked. It takes a long time to get past these screens, so it is actually faster to Retry a level, then to immediately Pause and End Run. Retrying still earns you the tapes from the run, but skips the tapes animation and flavor text parts of the menu the next time you End Run. Competitions are an exception since you have to End Run to get your competition score. Those levels don’t have tapes, but instead have judges scoring your runs. Comps only use your 2 highest scoring heats, so we run 2 heats then hit End Competition after getting our second score, and if we’re in the top 3 we’re awarded a medal.
Score Canceling Whenever you land a trick or combo, that score takes time to increment your total level score. You won’t earn the high or pro score until the level’s score actually reaches it during this counting. End Run makes you wait for the score to tick up which is another part of why we Retry but in comps we can’t restart and you’ll sometimes end levels with a big trick that earns the pro score and can take time to count. So, as soon as you start a new trick the score will skip it’s counting from the last trick and instantly add up to what it should be. Because of this, at the end of every competition and the end of some levels we quickly nollie or fastplant or 360 shove it to cancel this score. We then End Run or Retry in the air since we don’t have to wait for this new score to add up, we merely have to start the trick.
Trick Tips and Score Display Trick tips are totally unnecessary. I recommend leaving Score Display on when learning. It can show you when you are inputting nollie vs fastplant (since canceling these animations makes it hard to tell) and it makes it easy to know if the trick you’re about to land will be enough to hit Pro Score. Turn it off once you’re comfortable with your fastplant inputs to stop the text from obscuring the screen.
Soft Reset In some versions of the game you can hold Start and Select for a few seconds to instantly return to the main menu. This is Z+Start in the N64 version. We’ve theorized that it may be possible to save a second per level by using this instead of Retry->End Run because it’s faster to go through the menus than to wait for the level to reload. However to do this would require you to time holding Z+Start well to where you quit out just as you hit the last objective. This is further complicated when you realize that many levels end with turning and/or hitting tricks in the last few seconds which makes it hard to simultaneously hold Z+Start during those moments. Also note that it doesn’t always work properly in menus, and there are ways it can crash the game. Soft reset is usually the fastest way to ragequit out of a run.
Speed and Misc Tech Speed Your speed in the game varies constantly, and is not always easily noticeable, but it can affect not just your time to get from A to B but also whether or not you can clear certain gaps so it’s important to understand some of the nuances of what affects your speed and how. You accelerate when holding down while turning left or right, and you turn much sharper. Just make sure to hit down after or the same time as left or right so that you do not brake on accident. Skating or landing on a decline will accelerate you and an incline will decelerate you significantly. Landing tricks crooked will slow you down, so try to land as straight as possible. Having special built increases speed, so we usually try to do a trick at the beginning of each level to build that quick, and we do tricks throughout the run to maintain it. Landing a special trick gives a small temporary speed boost, so we try to use specials wherever possible.
Parallel Grinds The closer you hit a grind to parallel, the more speed you’ll retain. Try to turn with the rail you’re going to hit just before Ollie’ing to it. There are only a couple specific spots in the runs where you won’t want to hit a grind as fast as possible.
Transitions and Rotations Holding up while launching off a quarter pipe will allow you to fly out of the ramp and on top of the landing above it, or to a ramp on the other side of it. You can also hold up or down in the air to rotate your skater’s model and change their collision detection. Use this to help clear gaps, land flat on ramps to prevent bumping on landing, and even save yourself from bails when you fly out of a quarter pipe and need to land on flat ground. It’s also best to land all 4 wheels at the same time, so when about to land on a decline it’s often a good idea to rotate forward a bit.
Autokick Off Normally, your skater will automatically start pushing with their foot without any input from you. While holding Ollie, they will magically move forward. If you go into control settings, you can turn this autokick feature off, and you will then need to hold the flip trick button in order to move forward. With this feature off, you actually move faster. This speed boost helps make many parts of the run more consistent and every level’s record is faster with it. It makes execution harder since hitting flip trick too early or holding it too late after an ollie can cause you to bail, but I highly recommend learning it for its benefits.
Wallrides There are places in the run where we want to get very high quickly. Instead of taking intended long winding routes up multiple ramps, there are places that we can utilize wallrides. You can ollie off of wallrides and if done properly you can get significant height and/or distance from them. There are 3 factors that affect your wallride: speed, distance, and angle. The faster you go when you hit the wall, the more momentum you have to translate upward. The less time you spend on the wall before ollie’ing off of it also allows higher jumps, so be quick about that as well. The closer you are to the wall when you ollie onto it, the higher you will be able to get. Careful though, because if you get too close and ride the wall before your Ollie you won’t be able to wallride it. Lastly, you will go higher and shorter the closer to perpendicular to the wall you are, and farther and lower the closer to parallel you are. If you’re too close to perpendicular though, trying to wallride will cause you to bail when you hit the wall. You can hit it tighter than 45 degrees, but not by much.
Skater Choice There are minor differences in timings between characters based on their stats, and they all have at least 2 unique specials. Currently I believe Rune Glifberg is the best character in the game, but outside of certain individual level records every character is still viable since the differences are not too significant. Jamie and Geoff are the 2 that most runners currently use, and I’d recommend using one of them when starting out. I plan on making a more in-depth character guide in the future.
Outro That’s it for the guide! I hope it’s helpful. I want to give a big shoutout to BSGrind (https://www.youtube.com/user/eminemzaks112) for discovering and refining a lot of this stuff and to SilentLaws (www.twitch.tv/SilentLaws twitter.com/SilentLaws) for helping me edit this guide. Oh, and who am I? I run this game under the handle Nami on speedrun.com, my runs are at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzvVVKc0fGKSJclkLBr3F6A and I livestream runs and practice at www.twitch.tv/NamiTheFox. Thanks for reading! Bye!
