Bam Margera Will Return for THPS 3+4 After All

By Garrett Martin | May 9, 2025 | 3:38pm

Video Games News thps 3+4

Bam Margera Will Return for THPS 3+4 After All

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Oh, huh: Bam Margera is going to be in THPS 3+4, after all. The remake of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater‘s third and fourth games comes out this summer, and originally Margera, who was playable in the originals, wasn’t going to be on the roster. It wasn’t a big surprise: the skater and former Jackass star has struggled with drugs and alcohol for decades, which has notably impacted his career and resulted in him being fired from 2022’s Jackass Forever. Still, he was a major part of the original games, and about as famous as Tony Hawk himself at the time, so removing him cuts one of the biggest names from the lineup. And with the game scheduled to release in July, it didn’t seem like there would be time for Activision to reverse course and add Bam to the remake, even if they wanted to.

Last night Activision held an event called THPS Fest in Los Angeles, where they revealed more information about the soon-to-arrive skating game. Amid the playlist reveals and skater interviews they dropped a genuine surprise: despite the initial reports, Margera will be returning for THPS 3+4. And Margera himself appeared via video to discuss his return to the series, and how much THPS has meant to him.

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Rumors about Magera’s addition to the game started back in March. As VGC covered at the time, Roger Bagley, the co-host of the skating podcast The Live Club, said during a live stream in March that Tony Hawk personally asked Activision and THPS 3+4 developers Iron Galaxy to put Bam in the game. As Bagley tells it, Hawk insisted after the publisher initially refused, and the result is Bam’s return to one of the early ’00s pop culture institutions that made him famous to begin with.

When Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4 arrives in July, Margera will be an unlockable character on a roster that includes original era skaters like Hawk, Bob Burnquist, and Kareem Campbell, as well as such modern pros as Zion Wright and Yuto Horigome. The game modernizes stages from the original classics, with a soundtrack that combines songs from the original releases with new selections that fit the THPS vibe. If it’s anything like 2020’s THPS 1+2, it could be one of the best games of the year; that first remake wasn’t just an exercise in nostalgia, but a brilliant recreation that felt as new and vital in 2020 as THPS originally did two decades earlier.

If you want to hear about Bam Margera’s return to THPS in his own words, check out the video below. THPS 3+4 lands on July 11 for the Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, and PC.