A remake of the first two Tony Hawk games would be an absolute blast on the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Now admittedly, this has technically happened before, with the US only Tony Hawk 2X for the original Xbox, which brought all the levels from the first two games to the 'next generation' with the new 'manual' move to continue your score multiplier for Tony Hawk 1 levels. This should really happen again, but digitally with a cheaper price point.

The original games had a 2 minute limit on levels, which you could either go for the high scores, or go and get your S-K-A-T-E letters or a hidden video tape or 5 of something-or-other. Tony Hawk now requires your player to run around, ask some bum for a mission, and then complete it.

Tony Hawk was essentially an arcade game on a console, and the high score boards for worldwide rankings would be a fantastic throwback and bring a whole new reason to go back and play the original formula.

Now the main reason right now why this isn't happening is because of rights. You can't simply port over the original Tony Hawks because you need to get the rights to the licenses for all the different skaters, I think Spider-Man was an unlockable in Tony Hawk 2, then you've got all the music rights to get, it's a hassle.

Now music shouldn't be a huge problem - Activision now has Guitar Hero! They've got the music distributors falling over themselves to be a part of their lineup. That should not be a problem at all. I'd love it if they kept all the original music - keep that late 90's flavour!

Now players would be a different problem, but perhaps NOT having these players would work well with a downloadable version of Tony Hawk. The original games had a Create-A-Skater mode, and if you only had this mode and Tony Hawk, I don't think you'd have a whole lot of trouble setting this kind game up. Having the Create-A-Skater would be perfect for online modes too!

Removing characters would remove the reason for the tapes- unlocking minute long videos of the skaters. Still, I don't think too many people would be worried about it, and it wouldn't fit within the Xbox Live Arcade size limit anyhow. It could possibly fit with the new 350 megabyte limit, but they'd be lower quality. Maybe something different could be unlocked with them, but I can't think of much right now.

If this was to happen I'd love to see Activision include ALL the levels from Tony Hawk 1 & 2. Unfortunately that probably wouldn't be the case - that's a LOT of levels. If you released the core game for $10 with a multitude of tracks from 1 & 2, and then release the rest as downloadable tracks further on for a total of $20 dollars, I still think that would be a pretty fair price overall. I think many people would pay $20 for them just in retail now.

Graphics wouldn't need to be super upgraded, but new texture work and more polygons to breakable objects and the player model would certainly be appreciated, multiplayer mode like the original (Horse, the score based area capturing mode) but online would be great, and the high score tables would be fantastic too - finally a true use for the Tony Hawk scoreboard!

As for who should do it, I'd love to see Isopod games to work on it. They're already close to finishing Vigilante 8 Arcade for Activision for Xbox Live Arcade - a rethinking of the original PlayStation and Nintendo 64 title with big multiplayer support and nice graphical upgrade. While I'm sure they want to go onto an original project after Vigilante 8 as it is, much like Certain Affinity did with Halo 2 Maps on the Xbox and Eat sleep Play did with the PS2 port of Twisted Metal: Head On, a starter project to help them get off their feet, they'd be a great resource to do this. If V8 Arcade is anything to go by, they have the power to do it.