I got the latest edition of Official X-box magazine and have been playing the Tony Hawk demo. It's actually stopped me from playing Halo for a while. Now I know I am probably the only person in America who has NEVER played any of the Tony Hawk games, but I wish they would have put some basic controller instructions in the magazine. Can someone give me a brief rundown of some of the buttons and controls?

Thanks.

What confused me when I first started playing the Tony Hawk games is that you have to keep the jump button held down the whole time and release it when you want to jump. Another button "grinds", learn how to use it well.

How do you "break into" secret areas?

How do you do a Judo or a 900?

To get into secret areas, just break through them. Every skater's move vary, so the best way is to problem go into "edit tricks" in the pause menu and browse. To do "special" tricks, your meter has to be full. Basically the moves are like this
down and grab
up and grab
left and grab
d/l and grab
d/r and kick trick
down and kick trick
etc etc.
Each one corresponds to a move.
The special moves are usually (direction)(direction) grab or kick trick, such as down left grab or something.
Hope that helps.

For secret areas, you have to find a secret to getting them too. Sometimes you have to collect something to get in or hit a swithch for it.

Playing through 2x, and like you never really played any of the other versions. Pretty fun though, but my friend's pull off insane stuff that I have no idea how I could possibly become that good.