Why did Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 include a UN-banned booby trap?

When i first played Tony Hawk’s Professional Skater 2, He was obsessed with the park editor. Well, to be more specific, I was obsessed with an aspect from the park editor: a pit full of sharp spikes.

Image: Neversoft / Activision via Polygon

I did so many skate parks with this trap. Each park would be covered with holes built to jump over these “pungee pits.” It is a beautiful memory of my childhood.

Fast forward 20 years, and after having a conversation with my roommate, I finally connected the dots that this silly trap from my youth was also used in the Vietnam War and is now banned by the United Nations.

That conversation made me realize that there is probably a whole generation of people, myself included, who learned about this guerilla warfare technique through a lighthearted skateboarding video game. So I decided to get to the bottom of why Neversoft specifically chose to name their spike trap “pungee pit”.

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