See how Tony Hawk took over the game industry 25 years ago

Ralph D’Amato joined Neversoft in 1998 and worked as a producer on the first eight Tony Hawk games. Then, 20 years later, he made a documentary about it.

Pretending I’m a Superman: The Tony Hawk Video Game Story is the story of how Neversoft, Activision, and Tony Hawk built a juggernaut in the late ’90s and early 2000s, and between D’Amato’s access and Ludvig Gür’s direction, the film gives one of the best looks to date at how the series came about — and you can watch it for free on Tubi.

As part of an effort to spotlight game-related books and documentaries, Polygon is running an email interview series with the people behind them. Check out the full list to read up on a photography book documenting classic arcades in Japan, a Street Fighter 2 documentary, and others. Below, D’Amato discusses how Pretending I’m a Superman came about, the pros and cons of having someone who worked on the games involved, and his new skateboarding game Cheapskate.

Polygon: We’re about five years past the release at this point, but do you remember how Pretending I’m a Superman came about and why 2020 felt like the right time to tell this story?

Ralph D’Amato: The documentary came about through the fluke connection of the director of the film, Ludvig Gür, and myself after I watched a YouTube fan video he made that covered the entire series. He went into more detail than I could ever remember about the game and it just so happened he was an aspiring director. I’m a huge fan of documentaries and I had viewed a string of video game docs, King of Kong, Ecstasy of Order, Chasing Ghosts, etc. etc. I felt like the story of the THPS series should be told through a documentary, and after meeting Ludvig everything just took off.

As far as our launch date, we wanted to time it around an event and 2020 was the 20th anniversary of THPS. We also caught wind of the THPS 1+2 reboot [that] was launching so we thought a simultaneous launch of our doc with the game would be a great fit. Skateboarding was also going to be part of the Olympics which added to the great timing. Unfortunately, COVID spoiled a lot of our plans including a nationwide theater release, but at least we made it through COVID.

Critics often get nervous when documentaries are made by people who were involved in the projects being documented. What would you say were the pros and cons of working as a producer on the film, while also having worked at Neversoft?

One of the biggest pros was I had connections to all the pro skaters. I worked with them over the 8 years I was at Neversoft, so we already had established relationships. I can see how critics might think that someone too close to the subject matter could interfere or slant interviews a particular way, but I really separated myself from the actual interview process. I stuck to production and Ludvig was in charge of directing. I think it worked out really well for us.

Looking back on the film now, do you have a favorite moment that stands out?

There are multiple, really. It had been quite some years since I saw some of the skaters, so it was cool re-connecting with each of them. One of the best moments had to be meeting and interviewing John Feldmann from Goldfinger. He was extremely accommodating and we did the interview in his home studio, which was awesome!

Is there anything you’d change if you could do it all over again?

You know, hindsight is always 20-20, and of course there are things that I would change. First and foremost would be having an entertainment lawyer on my side. The waters of the indie film world are filled with sharks. Overall though, I’m really proud of what we accomplished on our own. It was a passion project that Ludvig and I had and I’m happy with the results.

I saw you’re also working on a new skateboarding game, Cheapskate. Can you give a quick rundown of how that’s going and your plans with it?

Cheapskate is a passion project to make a highly accessible skate game for the action sports gaming community. The ultimate goal is to provide fun single-player, account-free multiplayer, and easy mod support for custom levels and activities. Our side motive is to have an ongoing creative outlet in a genre we love with a player base we enjoy working with. Check us out at cheapskategame.com… or for the THPS documentary go to THPSfilm.com.