The Birdman and his posse of more than a dozen pro skaters grind and kickflip across seven vast levels.

Timed sessions have been dumped in favor of more than 15 timed objectives per level. THPS4 discourages you from choosing the easy difficulty setting by naming it Kid Mode.

The clever tutorial takes you through skate college. Your freshman "year," you master the ollie; as a sophomore, you learn grinds, and so on through junior and senior "years." Tony's college is a hands-on kind of place, so practice long and hard for that final exam: landing a 10,000 point combo. Sounds a lot more interesting than penning a paper on "Hamlet and Godzilla: A Study in Tragic Heroes."

Doing well in Career Mode gives you the cold hard moolah to visit the Skate Shop for a new deck and duds. The Skate Shop is also the place to edit your moves, check out stats and eye movies of Tony, Bob Burnquist and other pros.

Developer Vicarious Visions's terrific animations just get better with every new Tony Hawk. You can also indulge yourself in new tricks, new specials and spine transfers.

Multiplayer action requires GBAs and Game Paks for every player and enough GBA Game Link cables to connect all systems.