70%PlayStation

By the turn of the millennium, skateboarding had never been more popular. It headlined the ever-growing X-Games, and it was woven into the fabric of the punk rock scene, which was extremely popular with youth at the time. At least part of its popularity must be owed to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, a 1999 arcade-style skating game that helped introduce a new generation to the blossoming sport. While it only sold about 3.5 million copies, the series it created was vastly influential, and it's remembered fondly by many current amateur and pro skaters alike. Not so famous, however, are its many imitators and knock-offs. Of course, parents would still pick these games up—they had someone skateboarding on the cover, after all—but they would rarely capture the same type of audience or momentum that THPS did. Ever so rarely, though, one of those imitators might be more than meets the eye. Every so often, a seemingly unassuming and generic game might just be able to offer just as much—if not more—than the legendary THPS's debut. For a select few, that rare title was Grind Session for the PS1.

Now, let's make something clear here. Grind Session handles very similarly to the first THPS game—the controls are almost identical—and both games focus around skating within a time limit in various locations worldwide, all while attempting to earn the highest score and find the hidden collectables of each stage. On its surface, Grind Session is strikingly similar, and the fact that it came out a little under a year after THPS1 didn't help its case. To many, that was all it needed to be shoved into the bin of "knock-off extreme sports games." For what it's worth, Grind Session actually started development before THPS1. But even taking its much more popular competitor out of the picture, Grind Session has plenty to offer in its own accord.

The most prominent of its unique features is the game's technical lines system, which requires players to perform tricks or grinds along pre-set paths. This would give the player Respect—the game's currency with which you unlock new stages—but it also gives a varying amount of extra time depending on their difficulty. This is where Grind Session gets so much of its charm from; not only do these lines encourage varied gameplay and exploration, but they are essential to setting high scores and reaching 100% completion. Unlike its more popular predecessor, you can't really rely on vert-only skating to beat the pro scores; you'll have to explore each stage to find the optimal path. As the name implies, Grind Session has a stronger focus on street skating—grinding, specifically—which really favors making the most out of each stage and exploring them to the fullest. The level design in turn is generally impressive, and most levels have a secret area or Easter egg to find.

Grind Session is a pretty short game, and while it's got a handful of enjoyable multiplayer modes, it's pretty easy to even 100% in one sitting. One of the game's strengths is the amount of unlockables it has—the Dream House is a really cool sandbox-style addition—but while it's a fun game, there's no point in unlocking every character, especially since it would require beating the game six times. It at least has the endurance mode, a neat addition in which you'll have to perform a preset list of tricks within a time limit. But perhaps the reason it feels short—even with a fairly healthy amount of content—is that the game is maybe a bit too generous with its physics. You'll likely find yourself landing a bit too many tricks over the game's brief runtime, and as a result, it feels Grind Session never really expects too much of you, even for 100% completion. As expected for a game of its time, you'll also find yourself fighting with the camera sometimes, and it's a bit strange that you can't come to a stop easily and reposition yourself.

Grind Session was certainly not the success Sony was hoping for, and it didn't really attract too much attention, even among fans of the genre. Perhaps it just didn't have the star power of Tony Hawk to draw from, or perhaps there was only room for one arcade-style skateboarding game on the PS1. Either way it's a shame. Grind Session is a fundamentally solid game, and in an alternate universe, it's easy to see this game taking off, becoming the springboard for better, more polished games. Any hope of that happening died with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which would release just a few months later. Team Shaba, the game's developers, would go on to work on a few offshoots of Tony Hawk games later down the line, but their debut title would become a fading memory for all but a very few. And while Grind Session never took off like it maybe should have, it can hold its head high knowing that, for at least a moment in time, it was the best skateboarding game on the PlayStation.

75%No Platform Specified

In the end Grind Session is a good game. It's not original, nor terribly innovative, but it plays well. And it's pretty fun. Those things count for something. It also presents a couple of features that work well in skateboarding games, and that haven't been seen before.

I can't help but think, however, that the core of the game is pulled straight from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. The biggest problem I see here is not that Grind Session sucks, quite the opposite. It's OK. But a weird kind of reverse kinetic starts working on me when I play it. Grind Session plays so much like Tony Hawk, it feels so identical to Tony Hawk, and it controls so much like Tony Hawk, that when I pick up the controller, and start playing it, I just want to play Tony Hawk instead. Why? Because the original is better. Tony Hawk is a better game, hands down. It's like choosing between imitation crab and real crab, except they're the same price. Or like picking shoes, which do you pick at the same price, Nike or a Taiwanese imitation? Hmm...

The developers at Shaba would have done themselves a big favor by trying harder to differentiate Grind Session from Tony Hawk, rather than to imitate it. And even if it was developed before Tony Hawk, Grind Session feels like an imitation.