Protagonist (Tony Hawk’s Underground)

The protagonist is the playable character of the Tony Hawk's Underground games.
In , the male protagonist was voiced by , Arif S. Kinchen, , or ; the female protagonist was voiced by or .
==Biography==
===Undeground===
Unlike its predecessors, Underground focuses heavily on the story mode, and to this extent includes a large number of in-game cutscenes. It is the first of the series to really incorporate narratology, which is the extent to which a game follows a storyline or the events occur in a structured timeframe.
The story follows the trials and tribulations of two initially unknown skaters: Steve, and his friend Eric Sparrow. The game's story begins in their hometown of New Jersey, with Steve and Eric exploring the area and helping prepare for Chad Muska's skate demo.
After the demo, Steve performs in front of Chad as he explores the New Jersey skating scene to grab his attention. Once accomplished, he suggests that Steve earns a sponsorship from the local skate shop, and gives you his skateboard out of respect.
After impressing the local sponsored skaters, one of Steve's friends, Shawn, says that the local drug dealers have stolen a skateboard from Stacy Peralta's shop. The player goes on a dangerous odyssey to retrieve it, after which Eric proceeds to light the drug dealer's car on fire, as "revenge" for stealing his skateboard earlier in the game.
Steve then meets up with Stacy Peralta, then asks for a sponsorship from his skate shop. He makes an agreement, as long as Steve shows him something original, and doesn't film in any local spots, as he's seen them too many times.
After Eric hears the good news, he says that the drug dealers have been following him, angry that he destroyed their car. The pair realise they're no longer safe in their hometown, and board a last-minute train to Manhattan, New York.
Once they arrive in Manhattan, they 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, Steve talks to Stacy, who tells him to join the Tampa AM skate event in Florida. The duo arrive in Tampa and get in trouble with the police for driving a shoddy vehicle (an old hippie bus borrowed from Peralta) with a broken tail light and a dodgy bumper sticker.
Eric gets arrested for talking back to the officer; requiring Steve to do errands for the local police force to bail out Eric and proceed through to the Tampa experience. By the time the event starts, Steve gets into an argument with Eric when he "forgets" to sign you up. After impressing local pros, and doing some doubles with Tony Hawk himself, Steve is allowed to participate in Tampa AM 2004.
Once Steve dominates the event, he joins the sponsor of their choice (choosing from Birdhouse, Element, Flip, Girl, or Zero), which sends him to San Diego to do a demo. Eric soon joins Steve's team, introduced to Steve during a party-induced hangover sequence. After the pair impress team manager Todd with their performance at the demo, Steve and Eric are sent to Hawaii to film for a team video.
In Hawaii, they search for a spot that has been untouched by previous skaters. Steve eventually finds the rooftop of a tall hotel, and calls Eric to film them skating off it. When a police helicopter arrives to investigate the disturbance, Eric insists you get out of there, but not wanting to miss the moment of a perfect photo opportunity; the player performs 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. Steve's team then travels to Vancouver.
In Vancouver, after doing some local favors, the player goes to Slam City Jam, and views the team's video premiere, after hurriedly finishing parts for it. To their surprise, Eric had edited the footage of the rooftop jump in Hawaii to his own benefit. Todd immediately makes Eric a pro, and presents him his own pro-model board. After confronting Eric, who couldn't care less about Steve's plight, Steve enters the Slam City Jam contest.
Despite still being an amateur, Steve lies that he's a pro, and takes on a series of pro competitions. The competition resolves into a one-on-one session between Steve and Eric. Steve wins, and is declared a pro by Todd. After Steve designs his own deck and gains a shoe sponsor, the team decides to go to an international pro skateboard demo in Moscow. While practicing for the demo, Steve and Eric reconcile, and the pair perform a double performance together.
In Moscow, Steve follows a drunken Eric when he steals the keys to a Russian tank, and he takes it on a joyride through town while standing on the tank with a can of beer. After unsuccessfully attempting to stop it, Steve loses control, crashes into a building, and becomes trapped inside the tank under a pile of rubble. Eric runs off, leaving Steve to be arrested by the Russian authorities. The team expels Steve, denies liability for damages, and leaves him stranded in Moscow. The American Embassy bails him out, but he must get home to New Jersey by doing favors for locals.
When Steve returns home to the States, he finds 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 Steve down from the very beginning, and that the money is all that matters in professional skateboarding. Steve resolves 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 Steve and Peralta.
This is very successful, and provokes Eric into challenging Steve to a last skateboarding line in return for the original skating tape from Hawaii that he'd refused to let air at the Slam City Jam. After Steve wins, he takes the tape and walks away with a snobbish attitude from Eric, who curses as he leaves, thus ending the story.
On a second run-through of the game, there is an alternate ending. Instead of Steve following Eric's line, a cutscene shows him flashing the tape at Steve, but in a final frustrated move, Steve elbows Eric in the jaw (knocking him out), grabs the tape, and walks away. If all of the challenges are completed in normal difficulty 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 difficulty), both the alternate ending - as well as the cheats - were added on following playthroughs to spare the player that frustration.
===Underground 2===
The game opens with Steve skating at home in his New Jersey neighborhood from THUG, one year (according to the official BradyGames strategy guide) after the events of THUG. Suddenly, a van shows up in the middle of the ramp, and Steve slams into the van. Two people wearing hockey masks drag Steve into the van. Steve awakens in a dark room with skaters Eric Sparrow, Bob Burnquist, Chad Muska, Eric Koston, Rodney Mullen, Mike Vallely, and Wee Man.
Then, Bam Margera and Tony Hawk reveal themselves explain their plans for the first annual World Destruction Tour, a sick-as-hell, around-the-world skateboarding tour. The final goal of the tour is that the losing team has to pay for everything. The skaters then split into two teams; Team Hawk and Team Bam. Steve joins Team Hawk.
The tour starts off in Boston, where Bam manages a last-minute win thanks to one of Paulie's stunts (he dumped a port-a-potty in the sea with someone inside), which surpassed the advantage that Team Hawk had at the time. As a result, it was determined that one of Hawk's teammates should be eliminated, and this fate fell over Bob Burnquist.
Later on, in Barcelona, Tony's team takes the lead again. However, the punishment for Team Bam was to have the rookies of each team (Eric Sparrow and Steve) swapped, much to Bam's relief and Tony's annoyance. At that time though, word had spread out about the World Destruction Tour, which was supposed to be a low-profile event, but now is appearing on TV news.
The next leg of the tour is the German capital, Berlin, where Steve and Sparrow are eventually swapped back. At that moment, an underground film "writer, producer, director" by the name of Nigel Beaverhausen wishes to bring the tour to the public, but instead winds up being humiliated by Tony and Bam. After causing chaos in Bangkok (the skaters were en route to Australia, but Chad Muska suggested a stop in Thailand), the tour lands in Australia (actually, Bam's team arrives later due to departure problems that make them wind up in India).
At the end of the leg, Steve is supposed to be eliminated by being stripped naked and hit by mousetraps launched at him, but due to Rodney Mullen spotting a mathematical error in the teams' points, Steve has to compete with Eric - the loser will be eliminated from the tour. The group ponders on what to do when an Australian skater kid shows them a video of the tour, created by Nigel Beaverhausen.
Tony then decides that whoever humiliates Beaverhausen will stay on the tour. Eric only manages to steal his clothes, but the player, with Nigel's clothes (Bam's idea, as he too did not want Eric around anymore), goes off causing a rampage on Australian citizens, so that Beaverhausen will be blamed for it. Then, Eric is eliminated from the tour, which advances to New Orleans.
At the end of the New Orleans leg, Nigel revealed that he filmed the whole tour, even before he met Tony and Bam in Berlin. Nigel then proposes that, if he is allowed to film the whole tour, he will pay for all the damages of the tour. After Phil Margera shows Tony and Bam the long damage bill (with a high final money sum), they accept. Team Hawk then performs a death-defying stunt called the "Equalizer" to tie up with Team Bam, which is successful.
However, team members Mike Vallely, Chad Muska, and Rodney Mullen are arrested by the cops for stealing and destroying the helicopter used for the stunt, leaving only Steve and Tony Hawk for the final leg of the Tour: Skatopia, defined by Tony as "The Skateboarding Mecca". Though Team Hawk, reduced to two members, performs well enough to win, Bam decided to blow up Skatopia, confident in his victory.
In order to save people from the imminent damage, Tony quickly evacuates the skaters and their pets and so, thereafter, Bam dares the player, who is still stuck in the back end of Skatopia, to exit the whole flaming park in a combo (which he considers impossible), which the player does, giving Team Hawk the win in the World Destruction Tour. Nigel then wants Bam to give him the tape of the tour, which only shows Bam's father, Phil Margera in the toilet. The game ends with Bam and Tony humiliating Beaverhausen once more, as Bam pulls down his pants in international TV broadcast.
==Gallery==
LarcSpies.png|Steve's voice actor, Larc Spies.
==Trivia==
*In both games, he/she is still referred to as male by other characters.
*This is the only protagonist to be playable in more than one game.
*In THUG, the protagonist's only voice actors are Larc Spies (male protagonist) and Melissa Disney (female protagonist), making the sequel's added potential voices non-canon.
==Licensing==
This article contains content derived from the Tony Hawk Wiki, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
Category:Male
Category:Female
Category:Video Game Heroes
Category:Successful
Category:Teenagers
Category:Falsely Accused