When Full Fat's port of Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 2 for the Game Boy Advance was released in 2001, video game publications, including IGN, were quick to point out its similarities to Vicarious Visions' earlier handheld port of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2.
Sure, the developer had switched out the skateboard for a bike and the levels and characters were all based on those from Dave Mirra rather than those seen in Tony Hawk, but there was a remarkable overlap between the way in which the two companies' presented their 3D worlds on a handheld device, with both opting for a very similar isometric perspective that felt more than just a coincidence to the Tony Hawk developers.
"We had this golden cube," Matt Conte, the lead programmer on Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 & 3, told me earlier this year. "It was sort of like a picture on the wall of what a quarter pipe would look like. And that was the basis for everything that was built in the game. We took screenshots and lined them up and it was exactly the same thing.
He continues, "I think there was probably some corporate pressure over at the other guys' studio. Someone probably said, 'Okay, we've got the Dave Mirra IP, go and build this exact title but with a BMX bike.' I think that was an indication that we had not created a genre but had adapted a genre for the platform."
Interestingly, rather than being angry at seeing their homework being copied so running to the press to slag off the rival publisher at the time, Acclaim, Vicarious Visions decided to do something far more creative instead, having its artists place some cheeky digs at Dave Mirra in its follow-up, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, which are specific to the Game Boy Advance version of the game.
Rob Gallerani, a former developer at Vicarious Visions shared the piece of trivia with us, while speaking to us for an upcoming feature on another project that he worked on at the New York-based studio, and, as far as we're aware, we haven't seen these documented anywhere else online before. As a result, we thought it might be worth sharing in the hopes that you might get a kick out of it too.
"In Tony 3, we put a BMX bike in the dumpster in the back of the skate shop during the credits," says Gallerani. "And what was funny was those were unique tiles, right? But we were like, 'Damn, this is so worth it.' And I think in one of the neighborhoods too, there was also like an old creepy house and we put tombstones in the back. So we put 'DM' on the one of the tombstones. We basically took every opportunity to knock Dave Mirra without directly knocking Dave Mirra."
We don't know about you, but we love about details like this, with it personally calling to mind the famous Easter Egg from Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, which saw Rare take digs at Sonic the Hedgehog and Earthworm Jim by placing items next to a trashcan and sign that read "No Hopers". We have to wonder if Full Fat ever noticed this, or if they got to the chance to reply in Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX 3, which launched a few months after.
We should acknowledge, though, the implication is a little bit grim, with the gravestone and junked bike creating a dark narrative that hasn’t aged particularly well in retrospect, given Mirra’s unfortunate passing at the age of just 41, in 2016.