Street 1 is like only slightly exaggerated, kinda like the first NBA Jam was compared to what comes later. 2 I think hits the best combination of keeping the basketball basics while not going absurdly over the top. V3 and after seem to have design that doesn't know what it's trying to do. 2 especially really knows what its design goals were even in the menus.
THPS 3 is like the last of the "old" Tony Hawk franchise, before THUG 2 re-introduces it as a separate mode. I think THUG 2 is the best of the games after 3 by far, but 3 fits with 2 and 1 in terms of how I can pop it in without a save and have a fun hour or two unlocking almost every level and then going back to do goals.
Actually, a few years ago, I want to say around 2012, I went online with THPS3 and there were actually two other dudes playing it. On the one suburbs map they were trying to vert move to manual to revert to grind to revert to manual to vert move from one half pipe along a fence/wall to another.
It had been like five years since I even played it so was struggling to pull off regular manuals and revert combos so I was just watching for a bit until they were like "try it taco" and I promptly pulled off every step until the grind where my guy fell face first and ground that across the wall and into the half pipe.
blood streaks from biffing it
It's kinda crazy how they put out all of those games on like nine month dev cycles and did stuff like completely rewrite the physics engine from 2 to 3 to 4. I think 3 is like a bunch of stuff they cobbled onto Renderware so they could meet the deadline. And then when they started to add the cars and climbing and bullshit. And the levels got bigger and bigger.
Then they made the Call of Duty: Ghosts co-op mode thing before: