I think Tony Hawk is considered a "sports game", which would make it my favorite sports series of all time. I played it from the start and I played it all the way till what is considered the "end" of the series with Proving Grounds. I was quite bummed that it ended and that all the attempts afterwards to do something new or to revive it failed.
Thankfully we got the awesome remaster, which is an absolute treat, though Activision killed off any hope for more remasters or a series revival by basically dooming Vicarious Visions to Blizzard hell...Maybe we'll see more, but VV nailed it and I just don't want to see Activision grab some random company to try and continue on and make another bad Tony Hawk game like they did before.
Tony Hawk also got me and my friends into skateboarding. I was never very good, also sorta scared to give it my all, but I could ride around, do a few tricks, and I learned to ride the ramps at our tiny ass skatepark. I kinda want to get back into boarding eventually, even just to ride around, I just gotta get back into shape for it, heh.
None of the other Skate games were ever good to me. Like I know people adore "Skate" from EA, but I hated the control scheme and it wasn't as fun and crazy as Tony Hawk.