Tony Hawk's Underground, also called THUG and loosely referred to as Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5, is a skateboarding video game for the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Game Boy Advance and Xbox platforms released in 2003. A PC version was released exclusively in Australia as a budget release in 2005. This version was ported by Beenox. It is the fifth game in the Tony Hawk's series. It features the ability to create a custom character, and supports face mapping and online play on the PS2 and PC versions. Unlike its predecessors, Underground focuses heavily on its story mode, and to this extent includes a large number of in-game cut scenes. THUG is also the first game in the series to introduce the ability to travel around levels on foot. This game is rated "T" for teen because of the strong language, mild violence, blood and suggestive themes.
For the first time in the series, the player can get off the board in order to walk, run and/or climb around as an alternate to skating. This is necessary to reach some locations and challenges. The player is now able to leave the skateboard in the middle of a combo of tricks and continue the combo elsewhere, as long as he or she continues within a time limit. This time limit is another skill that can be improved. Added to the moves in THUG is the wall push, the wall plant, hip transfer, and acid drops. In each level of the game (usually by beating a challenge that requires it), the player also has an opportunity to use vehicles throughout the level. Encountering the professional boarders in each level features them trying to teach the player a new trick to add to their slots (although these goals are not necessary for progression in the game).
Once you have arrived in Manhattan, you decide to make a skate video hitting famous lines and tricks in well-known areas of Manhattan, and complete the sponsorship video by performing various tricks over a burning taxi. Once completed, you talk to Stacy who tells you to join the Tampa AM skate event in Florida. You arrive in Tampa in trouble with the police for driving a shoddy vehicle (an old hippie bus lent by Stacy) with a police-offensive bumper sticker. Eric gets arrested for mouthing off to the officer, meaning You must first do favors for the local police force to bail out Eric and proceed through to your Tampa experience. By the time the event starts, you get into an argument with Eric when he "forgets" to sign you up. After impressing local pros, and doing some doubles with Tony Hawk himself, you are allowed into the event.
Once you dominate the event, you join the sponsor of your choice (choosing from Birdhouse, Element, Flip, Girl, or Zero), which sends you to San Diego to do a demo. Eric is soon joined to the team, introduced to you during your party-induced hangover. When you and Eric impress your team manager Todd with your performance at the demo, you are sent to Hawaii to film for a team video. In Hawaii, you search for a spot that has been untouched by skaters. You eventually find the rooftop of a tall hotel, and call Eric to film you skating on (and off of) it. When a police helicopter arrives, Eric insists that you leave, but you want to seize the moment of a challenge, and perform a McTwist off of the hotel's roof, over the helicopter, and onto the rooftop of the neighboring building, with Eric capturing it on film. Your team then travels to Vancouver.
In Vancouver, after doing some local favors, you go to Slam City and view your team's video premiere, after hurriedly finishing parts for it. To your surprise, Eric had edited your filming of the rooftop jump to his benefit. Todd immediately makes Eric a Pro, and presents him his own pro-model board. After confronting Eric, who couldn't care less about your plight, you enter the Slam City Jam contest, and (despite still being an Amateur) lie that you are a Pro and take on a series of Pro competitions. The competition resolves into a one-on-one between you and Eric. You win, and are declared a Pro by Todd. After designing your own deck and gaining a shoe sponsor, the team decides to go to an international Pro skateboard demo in Moscow. While practicing for the demo, you are reconciled with Eric, and the both of you perform a double performance together.
In Moscow, you follow a drunk Eric when he steals the keys to a Russian tank, and he takes it on a ride through town. After attempting to stop it, you lose control, and crash into a building, and become trapped in the tank under a pile of rubble. Eric runs off, leaving you to get sent to jail. The team sacks you, and leaves you stranded in Moscow. The American Embassy bails you out, but you must get home by doing favors for locals.
When you get back home, you find that Eric has changed. He now has many sponsors, has a record label in the making, and now only skates for money. Eric reveals that he has been plotting to bring you down from the very beginning, and that the money is all that matters in professional skateboarding. You resolve to show Eric how wrong he is by making a "soul skating" video; a collection of pure skating exhibitions featuring a team of the best pros selected by yourself and Peralta. This is very successful, and provokes Eric into challenging you to a last skateboarding line in return for the Hawaii tape he refused to let air at the Slam City Jam. After you win, you take the tape and walk away from Eric, who curses as you leave.
On a second run-through of the game, there is an alternate ending. Instead of you following Eric's line again, a cut scene shows him flashing the tape at you, but in a final frustrated move, the player elbows Eric in the jaw, grabs the tape, and walks away as Eric faints onto his car. If all of the challenges are completed in Normal mode first, the player is rewarded with a collection of game cheats, presumptively done to assist the player in a replay under Hard mode. The game's producers admitted that by virtue of the difficulty of Eric's line (even in Normal mode), both the alternate ending, as well as the cheats, were added on following playthroughs to spare the player that frustration.
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