

Burnquist’s brand was just as strong as Hawk’s. On one track, his athletic career was taking off – Hawk lost his voice screaming in disbelief during Burnquist’s groundbreaking 2001 X Games performance – but on the other, kids around the world were learning his signature tricks because they were right there at their fingertips. One of the benefits Burnquist enjoyed most about being in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater was that he became a household name. We’re redoing the game, we want the originals, we want you to be involved.’ It was like going back in time, it was super cool.” It was a great show for the 20th anniversary of the game, and while we were all there together he comes up to me and he’s like ‘hey Bob, I got to tell you something.

Tony got us all together – Kareem, Chad and everyone, right? – and got Bad Religion to play. “When I heard I was going to be in the remake, it was another cool event. And Burnquist is still proud to be a part of it all.

Even two decades after Hawk broke through to an entire generation with a healthy dose of ska, punk and, well, Primus, the series’ legacy maintains. Head to any skate park in London, New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Barcelona, Burnquist’s hometown of São Paulo – or anywhere else in the world! – and any number of the locals will tell you they’re there, at least in part, because of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. That’s a fact that’s remained true for the past two decades plus. And people started skateboarding because they’d played the game.” The tricks, the names, the music, the places we’d skate. With the games, Tony injected that culture right into people’s living rooms. For the first few years, people knew us but they didn’t know our culture. But they were taking it without a message.
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“Skateboarding, when I got in the scene in ‘95, was getting big: it was on ESPN, the X Games were getting bigger, and these TV events were taking skating to the mass media. “It was crazy then, and it’s still crazy now,” he tells us.īetween then and now, Burnquist would go on to star in six more Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games (skipping the third entry to appear in the less impactful ESPN X Games Skateboarding) and the games would, in a sense, define his career. It was the first time the game was available to play to the public, and there were only two playable characters: him and Hawk. That he’d call me, ask to put me in the game… that shows just how Tony is, right? Very inclusive.”īurnquist recalls a skate event in Northampton, UK, where there was a cabinet loaded with that demo. And at the time, I was one of his biggest competitors. “Tony and I were in the demo for the first game together,” says Burnquist.
