For many developers, the chance to remake a beloved game is both an honor and a challenge because they must retain what players love but also modernize the title. It’s a challenge that Iron Galaxy took on with zeal with Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, with the studio ultimately continuing the format established by Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2. Unlike that first remake package, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 contains something that lets Iron Galaxy put its own stamp on the titles: a brand-new park.
Dubbed “Waterpark,” this new addition needed to pull out all the stops to match the other locales of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4. Thanks to modern technology, Waterpark is the kind of Tony Hawk level that players of the originals could only have dreamed of at the time. Game Rant recently spoke with game director Kurt Tillmanns about the development and inclusion of Waterpark in THPS 3+4.
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Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 Shouldn’t Be the Final Games to Get the Remake Treatment
Now that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 are getting a fresh coat of paint, one beloved entry deserves to get the same treatment.
Waterpark is a Classically Styled THPS Level Made Possible By Modern Technology
Once Iron Galaxy learned it had the chance to put its own level in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4, the team set out to answer a somewhat tricky question: what hadn’t been previously done in a Tony Hawk game? As Tillmanns said, the answer came from looking up skateboarding clips from the last several years:
“Waterpark is the first thing that we came to. If you Google “awesome skate runs over the last few years,” you’ll see skaters skating around in water parks and stuff like that, right? Doing the loop-de-loop on the funnel slide like Tony has done before. It’s like, ‘Cool, yeah. That’s a no-brainer. We should totally do that.'”
Coming up with the idea is just half of the challenge, as any Tony Hawk park worth its salt needs to have interesting skate lines, opportunities for trick combos, and unique, hard-to-reach locations to stash pick-ups. Waterpark also had to fit within the context of the other parks that the team was remaking from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 and 4. Tillmanns notes that “Waterpark is probably the largest Tony Hawk park in the game,” going on to point out that “If you built it to scale, it’s probably visible from space.” But that size allowed the team to get truly creative with the park’s definitive elements, with Tillmanns pointing out that “The ‘SKATE’ line in Waterpark probably underwent the most iterations of anything in the game.”
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 Play Tester Response to Waterpark Bodes Well
It’s one thing for the team at Iron Galaxy to have faith in its new Tony Hawk park, but it’s another entirely for player response to share the same sentiment. Thankfully, play testing of Waterpark provided some of the most valuable feedback the team could’ve gotten, assuring them that it was on the right track. As Tillmanns said,
“…we had a a play tester play through Waterpark, and after the play test, they were like, “When I get home, I’ve got to look up a YouTube video of how to complete those goals because I don’t remember how to complete those goals from Tony Hawk 4.” They just they fully thought it was a Tony Hawk 4 park, and that was one of those moments where we felt like, ‘We got it. We nailed it.'”
For returning players and new players alike, Waterpark represents one of the more exciting elements of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4. It’s the right addition of “new” while honoring all that came before it.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4
- Released
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July 11, 2025
- ESRB
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Teen // Lyrics, Mild Blood, Mild Violence
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 4
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Local Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
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Yes – all platforms
- Cross Save
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No
