Bam Margera Is The Heart And Soul Of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 Remastered

In my zillenial head, it’s hard to separate skateboarding and Jackass. The urban sport may have existed for decades before Jeff Tremaine and Johnny Knoxville joined forces to deve🌌lop one of the most influential t🍌elevision shows in history, but the way in which they intersect means it’s impossible to think about one without surfacing the other. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Skateboarding entered the mainstream after the release of Back to the Future (every kid had a deck under 🐬their Christmas tree that year), but returned to prominence during the Gen X counterculture movement which Jackass was at the centre of.

During the 1990s, early home video cameras and skateboarding existed in tandem. It wasn’t uncommon fꦕor skaters to take a camera out with them to record attempts at tricks, praying for the perfect landing to be slotted nicely into an upcoming montage - this even became the plot of several later Tony Hawk games. This is where publications like Big Brother, Bam Margera’s CKY, and myriad others found their feet in the world of sport and entertainment until the two cultures eventually clashed and Jackass was born.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Jackass Are Kindred Spirits

The original 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater released for the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation in September 1999 and tried to capitalise on the growing popularity 🌠of extreme sports culture at the time. Before the dawn of smartphones and the internet, there was nothing cooler than hitting up the skate park with your friends and trying to imitate icons like Tony Hawk, but now there was a way to🐎 translate this experience to a video game that looked like the real thing and played even better.

Even decades later, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater is a timeless arcade gem 𒁏that you can pick up and play no matter your skill level and still feel incredible. It was so popular when it initially landed that it supercharged a skateboarding ♊boom, allowing Tony Hawk to earn millions and new athletes to spring onto the scene and make careers all their own. As Activision is known to do, it began producing annual sequels with new stages, mechanics, and skaters until it reached a point of diminishing returns. But for years, it was on fire.

Tony Hawk would regularly appear in stunts for Jackass a﷽nd Wild Boys, always willing to put himself in danger for incredible footage and epic stunts. He’s definitely a good sport.

Jacka🃏ss premiered on MTV a year later in October 2000 and quickly became the biggest thing the network had ever produced. Looking back, it was laughably simple and arguably a crude prototype for the DIY creativity that would usher in the debut of YouTube years later.

You had a video camera, some cool dudes, and plenty of willingness to acܫt ridiculous in public and try to hurt themselves. The result was comedy that felt gnarly, authentic, and a perfect match for the counterculture spirit that skateboarding is all about.

Skateboarding Games Wouldn’t Be The Same Without Jackass

Bam Margera in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on a rooftop.

Before long, the show’s cast members began to appear in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, with Bam Margera debuting in the third game while Steve-O followed in his footsteps as an unlockable skater in the fourth - he even rode a sick mechanical bull. Underground saw the series 🎃incorporate voiced characters and story modes, including several members of the Jackass crew, as they played themselves and got involved in increasingly crazy stunts. You were obviously still playing a Tony Hawk game, but the overall tone, atmosphere, and embrace of blood and violence made it feel like some sort of unofficial crossover.

Right up until the series faded into obscurity, it remained in lockstep with Jackass as movies were released that tried to express the same carefree vibes of the original show. In 2025, the rebellious nature of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Jackass has matured into a warm nostalgia to recapture what o꧟ur lives used to be, even as the people who used to perform these stunts or grind on half pipes have grown older, left fame behind, or sadly passed away.

Jackass had its own game release for the PS2, PSP, and Nintendo DS in 2007 but, whatever version you picked up, it was rubꦏbish.

So, when 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 Remastered was announced earlier this year and the si🎶gns poi𝔍nted towards Bam Margera not being a playable skater, people were bummed. I’m not surprised that Activision might have hesitated con⛦sidering the controversial figure we’ve seen Margera become in recent years. He was always one of the most popular members of the Jackass crew, thanks to his good looks, willingness to do the wildest stunts, and his spin-off show, Viva La Bam, that earned him millions. Bam was huge, and childhood friend Ryan Dunn was with him every step of the way. , and Margera’s world fell apart.

He withdrew from close friends and members of the Jackass crew, became a destructive alcoholic, and developed a habit of getting himself into trouble on and offline. And when it was decided to produce Jackass Forever, he was a part of the production for just a couple of weeks . I found it difficult to watch as someone I admired was being eaten alive by his demons so publicly, doubly so as someone with a history of alcoholism in her family. Healing can be hard, and in some cases, impossible. Activision wanting to sidestep the potential fallout of in💛volving Margera in the remaster isn’t hard to understand.

Now, thanks to the intervention of Tony Hawk on behalf of Margera, he🍃 is not only back i💯n the game as a playable character, but the backlash towards his removal is being used as a huge marketing beat for the upcoming remaster. Activision saw what fans wanted and Margera is💯 seemingly in a healthy enough place to take part in and celebrate a culture and series he was instrumental in bringing to life in the first place.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Jackass will always be inseparable in my mind, especially as an adult when I look back on both of them with such rose-tinted glasses. So when the remaster broke cover, it had to respect where it came from and bring everything into the pr💜esent day, warts and all. That includes Bam Margera, and I’m over the moon hꦓe’s made the cut.