Hydro Thunder was the only racing game that I played where you’re racing boats. It came out on the N64, Dreamcast, Playstation, and was also in arcade machines. Usually when you play it in the arcade, the screen is faded, but it’s worth playing it because it has a steering wheel and a thrust thing. Only one place that I have been to had a widescreen LCD arcade version of Hydro Thunder. Anyway, you can play multiplayer in this game. In the arcade, it was usually two players because it depends on how many machines are hooked up to each other. On the N64, you can play up to four players, but playing with three or four players required an expansion pack, otherwise, you N64 would explode in awesomeness.

So playing it is real simple. You race 16 players to the end of the level, and there are about 14 levels, which include Lake Powell, The Far East, Greek Isles, Arctic Circle, Lost Island, and others. Only a few levels are short and are in the style of 3 laps. In the levels there are boosts. When you get them, you hold down a button and you go faster, but you only get a certain amount of boost before it runs out, but always keep a little boost, because you can jump but only if you have a small amount of boost (boost + brake). Jumping can get you into shortcuts in levels. Other times, shortcuts can be behind waterfalls or in areas only accessible with a ramp. The graphics were good and the music was awesome. Apparently, the Dreamcast version had slightly better and more detailed graphics than the arcade or N64 versions.

Super start.

One cool thing about this game is that you unlock levels. There are 4 “bonus” levels and boats that you can unlock by beating certain tracks. Some of the tracks include Nile Adventure and Hydro Speedway, and some of the boats include Tinytanic and the Armed Response, a police boat with mounted guns. One flaw with the N64 version is that in order for the game to remember your levels, you needed the Controller Pak, however, if you don’t have the Controller Pak, you can still play it arcade style. By that I mean you play it the way it is in the arcade: by beating levels in order to unlock levels in one sitting. In the arcade, if you unlock levels and you walk away from the machine, it forgets that you unlocked them. Also, this is a game you can beat in one sitting, unlike Toy Story 2. Also like Toy Story 2, Hydro Thunder is compatible with the Rumble Pak, so forget about the Controller Pak, plug in your Rumble Pak and get ready to play.