As we all learned from the documentary Dogtown & Z-Boys and the movie Lords Of Dogtown, Tony Alva was one of skateboarding's true originals. He was also one of the original pros, having started the Alva Skateboard Company in 1976 when he was just 19. And at the age of 48, he's still at it, riding several times a week when he's not running the company. Or consulting on movies. Or surfing. Or, more importantly, appearing as himself in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland.



GameSpy: This is kind of an obvious questions, but I'll ask it anyway: How did you come to be a playable character in Tony Hawk's American Wasteland?
Tony Alva: I think Tony mentioned it to the people at Activision, who contacted me about it. I've never really been a gamer or a computer kid, but they exposed me to what goes on in the making of the game, and it was a lot like what I've been doing on films. I was also flattered that they wanted me to be in the game.
GameSpy: What did they tell you about the game that got you interested in being involved?
Tony Alva: I liked that they were changing it up a bit and including some of the old-school moves as opposed to just technical tricks. I thought that was exciting. But it was also fun for me because I got to go out and skate and film stuff, which I then turned into them so they'd have something to base my character off of.

GameSpy: When you recorded your dialog, what was the hardest part about doing your own voice?
Tony Alva: Well, the main challenge was to make it sound natural and not too rehearsed. And there were times when I got it in one take and other times when it took 10. But they also wanted to keep the dialog natural, so I helped them with that by saying some of the lines the way I would say them.
GameSpy: Were there any lines you had trouble with?
Tony Alva: No, but there was one line that kept popping up, something like "Alright, pretty good, dude" that was on every other page of the script. After a while we just laughed every time it came up.
GameSpy: What do you think of how you look in the game?
Tony Alva: It looks a lot like me. It's hard to really say whether it's flattering or not, but it is a digital version of me. There's a version of how I look now, and there's a version, which I haven't seen, that's me back in the '70s.