Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 for Game Boy Advance is a 2002 skateboarding game developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision. It is the handheld edition of the third entry in the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series, built around score-chasing runs through compact skate locations. Rather than attempting to duplicate the 3D home-console release directly, this version presents its parks from an isometric viewpoint while retaining polygonal skaters, a roster of 13 real-world pros, and the trick-combo focus that defines the series.

The central challenge is to use a skater's momentum, ramps, rails, ledges, and quarter-pipes to link ollies, grabs, flip tricks, grinds, manuals, and lip tricks into high-value combinations. Players can customize the button layout: by default, B handles jumping, A starts grinds, and the shoulder buttons are used for flip tricks, grabs, nollies, and reverts. The revert is especially important on vert terrain, letting a skater continue a combo after landing from a ramp and then carry it onward with a manual instead of ending the chain.

Career play sends the chosen skater into timed sessions with several goals to complete in each park. These include score targets, collecting the letters in SKATE, locating a hidden tape, earning stat points, and carrying out challenges designed for the individual setting. Success opens further stages and gives the player reasons to learn routes, locate useful obstacles, and experiment with bigger combinations. The game also includes competition events, where the aim is to build the best score within the time limit while avoiding bails.

The GBA version uses six locations, including Foundry, Suburbia, Rio, Airport, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. They preserve recognizable themes and objectives from the larger versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, but Vicarious Visions reworked their layouts for the handheld's angled camera and scale. This makes the release more than a simple visual downgrade: routes, sightlines, and some environmental details were reshaped to suit its own perspective, while interactive goals still encourage players to alter parts of a park or seek out unusual lines.

Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero, Rodney Mullen, Elissa Steamer, Bam Margera, and other professional skaters form the playable lineup. A Create-a-Skater option lets players make a custom rider by changing details such as skin tone, clothing, shoes, and tattoos. A tutorial introduces the essentials before Career mode, and the game provides practice-oriented sessions for skating without the pressure of advancing through objectives. Digital renditions of music associated with the console game and sampled skating sounds help carry the series' audio identity onto the Game Boy Advance.

Multiplayer broadens Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 beyond solo score runs. Up to four players can share one Game Boy Advance for Horse, taking turns trying to match the previous trick, while link-cable play offers Trick Attack, Tag, and King of the Hill. The latter modes turn the familiar movement system into direct competition, either by pursuing a score or trying to keep away from, or take over from, another skater. As a sequel to Vicarious Visions' Game Boy Advance adaptation of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, this edition continued its approach of translating the series' fast, combo-led skating to Nintendo's handheld with platform-specific presentation and features.