Another activity he loves almost as much as skating: playing video games. In 1999, Activision released the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater game, which became a hit franchise with more than $1.4 billion in sales. “I’m most proud that it has brought an attention to skateboarding and an interest in it like never before,” Hawk said.

The Tony Hawk games were some of my favorites when I was growing up. The soundtracks helped form my musical taste and the games helped propel me and my friends to learn to skateboard. So I'm grabbing my (virtual) deck and returning to some familiar gaps and rails in the revamped Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and 4,