Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (NTSC-U)

Dreamcast Resurrection - 2009 (since 2008)

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Ripped: Ambient sounds (can't be noticed, see readme).
Downsampled: Some videos (only companies logos, other videos are intact).
Source: GD dump.

First of all, I'd like to say I'm very proud of the work I made in this game. All important videos (introduction, ending videos) are intact, so as sound of them and in-game music. How I did that? First, I examined the "preview" videos, you know, the little ones that plays when you select a level. Like the music videos in THPS 1, they're encoded them with the same quality of the main videos (bad work, bad work...), including the sound (yeah, I know they don't play any sound!). So I re-encoded then to a very little bitrate, and guess what, I played them side by side and couldn't notice any difference. Well, at this point I still needed some space, so I took a look at the music files. Each level has a ambient "music", and you can't hear them with music turned on. It's useless sounds like birds in the school, horns in NY, etc. I deleted them, and you wouldn't notice if I haven't tell you. It doesn't affect the gameplay at all. The only way to notice that is if you play without music, and I doubt anyone do that. At this point files almost could fit in a CD-R. To get the extra space I needed, I downsampled companies intro videos (I haven't touched the cool introduction video!), and you can't notice any difference (even if you could, who care about them?). As a bonus, I adjusted the volume of Activi... logo, because the guys that ported the game just used copy/paste in the intro of other game, and volume level was different of the other videos. Anyway, I got the space I needed. Again: all videos except companies logos and mini level preview are intact, it means full quality and stereo sound. Same about the sounds and music, nothing touched, full quality and stereo sound. Echelon got the space they needed downsampling the videos, but I found a better solution. Last thing was adjusting file order. Last thing but the most important, because files were a mess, all in alphabetic order (again, bad work!). You remember Echelon's release? Everything you select made your Dreamcast reader moves a lot making noises? Well, that's solved. I optimized file order as I did in THPS 1, and results got very alike. Your reader almost don't move during reading! It means faster loadings and MUCH LESS noise. A lot less. After making that I hacked binary and burnt the disc with a little dummy file. If you like this game and have played other releases, I really recommend that you try this one, it's much better for sure.

Don't forget that the Dreamcast version is the better version ever made of this game, because Playstation version (ignoring its bad graphics) has a lot of "fog" (your view distance is very small) and choppy videos (15fps?). Same happens with PC version, that is a port of Playstation game. It's the same crap but in higher resolution. In Dreamcast you have a very nice view distance and 30fps videos. Enjoy!

Features of my release:
- Not corrupted files at all, it was made with GD dump files.
- Used a much improved file order, loadings are much faster, Dreamcast reader makes much less noise.
- Selfboot.
- Dummied for 700mb CDs.

About the game:
- It has VGA Box support.

Other comments:
- "Extras" folder in the pack contains some useless stuff.
- Release comes with covers.