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The Tony Hawk franchise has been making waves ever since it debuted so many years ago. Every gaming platform since the series’ launch has been privy to its own version of the skating giant, so why should the Zodiac be any different? Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 has made the jump from GBA to the Zodiac. How does this port hold up? Stay tuned to find out.

The Zodiac version of Tony Hawk 4 is a port of the Gameboy Advance title. Though #4 isn’t the newest in the series, it still holds up as a decent title to its own right. The game places you in the same familiar isometric view of the GBA games, and it controls pretty similar as well. The title has seen a bit in the way of improvement during its transition over to the Zodiac platform, the most obvious of those being in regards to visuals.

The game now looks significantly better than the GBA title did. The skaters now push many more polygons than they used to, and have a much cleaner look to them. They are a bit blocky still, but overall much better looking than the GBA did. Multiplayer can now be played via Bluetooth, instead of using a link cable, like you needed for the GBA version, so if you have 3 friends that all have Zodiacs (good luck), then you can hit the pipes together with the classic modes like trick attack, horse, etc.

Something that didn’t make the transition to Zodiac overly well is the controls. The Zodiacs analog stick doesn’t seem very suited to controlling the skaters. It still feels much like using a d-pad like on GBA, but since it’s a stick, it’s much more sensitive, which can end up with you making turns that are too sharp, or even falling over during a manual or grind while trying to balance yourself. The controls do take some getting used to, but after about half an hour or so, you should be busting out combos like a pro.

One of my biggest gripes with the game is that even given the Zodiacs excellent sound capabilities, Tony Hawk 4 still shares the same midi soundtrack as the Gameboy Advance version, instead of opting to use mp3s akin to the console version to make for a better audio experience. Thankfully, this can be remedied thanks to the Zodiacs inherit capability to import and play your own mp3s from your computer during any of your games. But even with the ability to play your own music during anything you do on the Zodiac, it still would have been nice if they had have put that little extra bit of effort into things.

While the game isn’t a visual marvel, especially when put up against some of the other Zodiac games currently available, the gameplay is still just as fun as it was on GBA. The game could have looked a lot better had they built it from the ground up as a Zodiac game, but you really can’t complain as a first offering. Anyone that owns a Zodiac, and is looking for a skater game, check out Tony Hawk 4, it’s worth the price of admission.