 A game as popular as Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 is guaranteed to get a million ports. It was initially released for PlayStation in 2000, and later received ports on Dreamcast, Nintendo 64, Xbox, Windows Mac, Gameboy Color, and eventually the Gameboy Advance in 2001. Now, the Gameboy Color version was...uh...well, it tried. It's obviously not even close to the original game, but it's really not that bad, as long as you keep your expectations low. The Game Boy Advance version, however, that came about a year later, this game is a damn fine piece of work and a really nice surprise. Again, it's not going to resemble the PlayStation game too much, but it's actually kind of stunning how the controls and the feel of this game match the original. There's no open-world stuff here, so there's no going around and talking to people or running errands or whatever stuff you might see in later Tony Hawk games. This one's essentially just skating through six different courses and achieving certain goals. Are you guys earning money or knocking over barrels or, uh, collecting wings? That's in addition to completing objectives exclusive to each course, like reaching a certain area or kick-flipping over a roof gap or grinding every rail you can find. For game modes, there's a free skate which allows you to just screw around in practice, there's single session, which has you just play one course, and there's career mode. There's no custom created characters here, but there are 13 different skaters you can choose from, each with varying skill sets, and the money you earn with each character essentially acts as experience points to unlock more stuff, buy new equipment, upgrade your character, and alter their stats, and there's ten different stats you can mess around with, as well as six different tricks you can unlock. There's a surprising amount of content here, especially considering you can do this with 13 characters. The thing that makes this game among the absolute best on the Game Boy Advance, however, is the controls. They are almost perfect, and that's quite a feat considering there's fewer buttons to work with here. Your skater moves forward automatically, and it's B to crouch, and eventually jump, and holding B allows you to pick up more speed, and releasing B does an ollie. The A button grinds, and you see the usual balance meter there that you use to control with the D pad. The L button does a flip trick, the R button does a grab trick, but the thing is, all these functions combine seamlessly to stack together tons upon tons of tricks. It is extremely player friendly, it's really easy to get used to, and believe it or not, it has the same feel as a Tony Hawk game, despite looking so different. The first time I played this, I just went to Free Skate, and I got the controls down almost immediately, and I ended up messing around for like 30 minutes just doing whatever. It is super fun. There's even a special meter you can build up, which enables you to do your skater's signature moves with each having at least three, and they're laid out no differently than moves in a fighting game. Like to do Tony Hawk's signature 900, just press right down and R. I really can't overstate how fantastic the controls are in this game, it's a great example of a title that's easy to pick up and get the hang of right away, but it can be tough to master, especially as the courses get tougher. Once you get the momentum going and land a few tricks on a row though, this game gets incredibly addictive, just like any other version of Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2. Now I should point out the music. The soundtrack was a huge deal in the original, and added a ton to the experience to the point that it's a huge help in making it one of the best games ever made. The music on the Game Boy Advance, in general, on the other hand, has a notoriously bad rap thanks to the low quality sound chip, but the music here in this game is still pretty dang good. There's no licensed songs here, there's nothing you'd recognize, but it's light years better than a lot of other Game Boy Advance soundtracks. It's pretty evident that while they couldn't shell out for any real songs here, they'd probably sound like crap anyway, but the composer understood that the music in a Tony Hawk game is a big deal and should be treated as such. So yeah, when I first picked up Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 for GBA, I was not expecting a potential top 20 game for the system, but the visuals, the amount of content, and the pristine controls really make this game super addictive, and a great time, to the point that I really wish I had this one back when it first came out. It's one of the very best portable games I can remember playing, and it's well worth picking up. Alright, I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day!