People mostly know Bam Margera as a skateboarder and prank icon, thanks to his work on Jackass and Viva la Bam. While the 2025 TV schedulewon’t be seeing a return to such projects, thanks to Margera being done with Jackass, there’s another venue at which you can enjoy his particular set of skills: your video game console.
That’s not as unusual as you’d think, as during this press tour, Margera has been sharing his stories with the franchise’s original form – both behind and in front of the controller. That second half is what took priority in my interview on behalf of CinemaBlend, as Bam Margera provided this anecdote when I asked what he felt was the largest change since he started appearing in the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series:
Well, I can tell you this: when we did the very first game, I thought it was really high-tech Hollywood stuff, putting on a spandex outfit with all these lime green balls, tracking my style on the halfpipe. And that was right around when The Matrix came out; so when he did that pause of the, there were 32 cameras that filmed them, and we thought that that was like a real high-tech thing.
Initially appearing in 2001’s original release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, the West Chester, Pennsylvania native would become somewhat of a fixture in the franchise. Continuing to recur in the lineup through 2007’s Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground, that specific span of time saw a lot of changes being made in how video games were made, sold, and even played.
For comparison, that same span of time saw the original trilogy of Halo released on the Xbox. In real time, the public saw gaming go from a niche hobby to a massive entertainment battlefield, with 2004’s Halo 2 (altered ending and all) landing first-day sales that were eventually compared to those of a major blockbuster.
Fast forward to 2025, and video games featuring A-list actors and personalities aren’t a novelty, making the comparisons to the movie industry even stronger. Neither is the usage of Bullet Time, as this year’s 28 Years Later was able to achieve that same feat, with merely a fleet of iPhones. Bam Margera can attest to both, as his description of being scanned into Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 sounds like something out of a Marvel movie:
Activision now has 167 cameras in a globe, scanning you from head to toe, that you could do The Matrix thing, not only just horizontal. Now you can do it every which way. So it was really incredible to see that. And I’ve done a lot of Hollywood stuff, and that was the most high-tech thing I’ve ever seen.
Admittedly, there’s one Bam story that inspired me to ask about the good old days. As you’ll see in the behind-the-scenes video below, the scanning process that brought Mr. Margera into the game is shown off quite well. Though as you watch, you’ll actually learn the tale of how the first two Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater actually led Bam Margera to miss quite a few flights in his heyday:
Skateboarding has played an important part in Bam Margera’s sobriety journey, with that practice acting as the eventual door to mend his friendship with Tony Hawk. Eventually, a skate session between the old pals led to Margera being a last-minute inclusion in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4.
Being billed as the “secret skater” of the freshly released title is a pretty cool distinction to have, even more so with Viva la Bam’s titular star being a huge fan. If things go well enough, maybe he’ll be able to continue featuring in hypothetical remakes of other Pro Skater entries.
Or maybe, with this new experience in game acting under his belt, Bam may want to start a new series that translates that experience into something new. That sort of thinking certainly worked out in Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes’ recent Call of Duty experience. Should you be feeling a bit nostalgic for the days of shredding to a killer soundtrack, you can currently purchase Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 on all major gaming platforms and relive some of that past glory.
