When Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 was released at the tail end of the summer in 2000, it was quickly apparent that the game’s skating had been transformed. The introduction of manuals — balancing on the board’s front or back wheels — enabled players to link air and ground tricks into long combos.

Just as revolutionary was the soundtrack, a wellspring of classics with zero skips.

The game’s 15-song rotation is seared into the minds of a generation who kickflipped and nosegrabbed to nu-metal (“Blood Brothers” by Papa Roach), hip-hop (“B-Boy Document ’99” by the High & Mighty) and punk (“Five Lessons Learned” by Swingin’ Utters).

As I watched an in-game video of Tony Hawk pulling off the 900 and several of his other signature moves, Public Enemy’s collaboration with Anthrax on “Bring the Noise” blared through my television speakers. The aggressive rhymes and ad libs of Chuck D and Flavor Flav, paired with Scott Ian’s precise but aggressive work on the guitar, blurred any dissonance between hip-hop and heavy metal.

“I feel like the Anthrax and Public Enemy track was a beacon,” Hawk said over a recent video call, flanked by logos of the latest remake in the franchise bearing his name.

That remake, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3+4, revives two critically acclaimed titles with high-definition versions of famous skaters and cherished parks. But none of this happens without the original games.

Hawk said he was initially surprised that the songs in the sequel made such big waves. “To me it was just a soundtrack of skating,” he said, “so it didn’t seem out of the ordinary or something that people would pick up on.”

But the authentic music helped even nonskaters get into the mood. The street-level grit and grime of skating in a virtual New York, complete with Central Park and a subway station, stood out most when accompanied by Naughty by Nature’s “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.” While players dodge taxis, the group’s brash trio — Treach, Vin Rock and DJ Kay Gee — torch the record with heavy-hitting bars and scratches.

Hawk was closely involved with selecting songs for the soundtracks and said that the creative process was a democratic one because he trusted the music team of Neversoft and Activision, the franchise’s original developer and publisher.

Two songs that landed in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 stood out in particular.

“For me, ‘Bring the Noise’ and ‘No Cigar’ were the sort of dark horse hits from the whole series,” Hawk said. “I’m really proud of all of them being included.”

“No Cigar,” by the Swedish punk band Millencolin, delivered raw, rebellious lyrics sung by Nikola Sarcevic and upbeat metal-infused chords.

“We were skaters and gamers before we even started to play music,” Erik Ohlsson, the band’s lead guitarist, said in a group video interview.

When their friend Steve Caballero, a skater who was not in the first Tony Hawk game, said he was joining the sequel, the band asked if he would have any input on the music, Ohlsson said. At that point in our conversation, Mathias Farm, the band’s rhythm guitarist, brought himself into the frame.

“Our band started off singing in Swedish,” he said, “but when we saw all the skateboarding videos coming from the U.S., that’s when we switched to playing in English.”

That left them as outliers in the Swedish punk scene, but it paid off when Neversoft reached out to Millencolin. Twenty-five years later, its music lives on. This summer, the band played “No Cigar” with Caballero at a concert in Belgium.

“The game brought all kinds of music together into a skateboarding, cultural moment,” Farm said. “But it took us years to really grasp the impact that soundtrack had and how it ended up being such a huge part of our careers.”

In addition to the expanded gameplay of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 — nosegrinding the helicopter in Hangar to “No Cigar” is a uniquely textured experience — the game’s short movies were also upgraded. Each of the game’s playable skaters is featured in a mixtape showing off signature moves. Veterans like Kareem Campbell and Bob Burnquist shred terrains to tracks that embody their skate style.

In the movie for Rune Glifberg, the Copenhagen native known as the Danish Destroyer, the lengthy outro to Lagwagon’s punk track “May 16” flows seamlessly between the air and lip tricks performed onscreen. It drives home the lingering and emotional refrain by Joey Cape, who closes with, “It’s just another Saturday.”

Cape has explained that the track, from Lagwagon’s fifth studio album, “Let’s Talk About Feelings,” was inspired by a once ruptured but now reconciled friendship. Yet it acts as the connective tissue of my core childhood memories at a time when all I cared about was skateboarding and bailing again and again on my PlayStation.

Cape embraces the way fans have come to appreciate, and interpret, the song.

“I never had a problem with that, because you’re writing lyrics, you’re a writer,” he said in a video call. “I mean, how great is it that anybody is actually listening to or reading our song?”

When Lagwagon was asked to join the game’s soundtrack, the decision was a no-brainer for Cape and his bandmates. They believed that the Pro Skater series was an authentic representation of the culture they all loved.

“Who could have known what an impact that game would have, and the soundtrack of that game, and what it would do for bands like ours?” he said.

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 allowed me to skate in a park I made myself, even if it was a few randomly placed halfpipes and kicker ramps in an empty lot. It took the skateboarding experience from a simple simulation to an eccentric, arcade-style adventure.

It also elevated my music tastes. Zack de la Rocha’s unruly presence on “Guerrilla Radio” by Rage Against the Machine showed me the power of combining hip-hop and rock. I wasn’t alone, and the franchise continues to reach new generations of gamers and skaters.

“It made skateboarding more accessible to the masses,” Cape said. He added, “It even got older people to go, ‘I’ve been doing this stupid cubicle job — I need to go out and skate on the weekends again.’”

Produced by Alice Fang, Maridelis Morales Rosado and Rumsey Taylor.