If you didn't swallow that pill already, it's probably not gonna go down at all at this point.
The great thing about the THPS games was they were a sort of pioneer in gaming, being the first in the genre to set the bar for what makes a good skating game. I'm not claiming them to be the first skating games; simply that there was not a whole lot of interest or selection among skating games back then, so you could argue that you could play some other ones like Skate or Die, but realistically if you want a good, fun skating game, chances are you're probably gonna go for THPS over Skate or Die or some other old game about skateboarding.
Seeing these games in the aftermath of the whole scene is a bit underwhelming, since there's Skate 2 and other great games now, but back then there was little selection in the way of skating games in general; and like I said, those that we did have were a bit... Lacking. At least, in my opinion. I'm sure someone out there enjoys them, but consider the ratio of how many people are avid fans of Skate or Die, and how many are fans of THPS; it's as clear as night and day.