Racing games had been around for a long time by the mid-1990s. Cars and motorbikes, futuristic hovercraft, planes. What machine can we leap onto and trash around a circuit in pursuit of thrills that we haven't experienced yet?
Alright, it's not actually the first time we could jump aboard a boatercycle in a video game, but Wave Race 64 is a clear front-runner for the best time aboard a boatercycle. Colourful, arcadey, and sat atop water physics that will leave you suitably impressed, this game has singlehandedly demolished my childhood.
So thanks, Nintendo. Thanks a lot.
Fond Memories
If not one of my first, then one of my most remembered PlayStation games was Jet Rider, or Jet Moto, depending on where you are in the world. It was a simple racing game where the boatercycles could race just as well on land as they could on water.
It was like Wipeout crossed with motocross, and it was awesome. I'd go through the championships again and again, rarely - if ever - finishing it successfully. The music still kicks around my brain from time to time. The presentation still strikes me as weird, but unique. It's still on my PlayStation Portable because it's bloody Jet Rider, alright?
It was, hands down, no contest, the greatest boatercycle game ever, simply because it was the only boatercycle game ever.
And then - twenty years later - I found out about Wave Race 64...
Fun Times
That's me doing a handstand over the finish line. I'd like to see Jet Rider do that.
Wave Race 64 has a few modes and difficulty levels for you to get yourself stuck into, but as you can imagine, the core of the game involves riding around stages faster than your three opponents (not the 19 opponents you face in Jet Rider, but we can't have everything), and in a competition, doing that more than not will get you more points towards a championship victory.
Now the paperwork is out of the way, we can get to actually riding these things, and it is a joy. Not because it's a piece of cake - it isn't - but because the water behaves like water, or at the very least wet enough for the Nintendo 64 to cope and still allow for a great game to be centred around it.
I recommend the practice mode, partly to see what tricks you can do with various analogue stick inputs, but mostly to find out how the water plays, and how your boatercycle moves on top of it.
We say that some games feel floaty, and that can be a bad thing when the game could do with a bit of weight, for example. Wave Race 64 is the good kind of floaty. Your boatercycle has bulk, and that bulk needs to get moving according to some basic physics, and then the rest of the physics kick in to deliver a wonderful floating feeling and oh hey, there's a dolphin!
When you get into a race, you've got to navigate the right direction around a series of buoys, which each success granting a boost in overall speed, and each miss sending you back to the slowest speed and knocking off a life if you will. Five misses will cost you, but the odd miss here and there over the course of three laps isn't too much of a problem, on the lower difficulties at least.
You'll notice that there aren't too many other riders in these screenshots. Most of the time I was out in front, and by a comfortable margin. I'll chalk that up to the difficulty level. When I wasn't focused on the course or the water physics, Wave Race 64 had me focusing on something a little more problematic.
Frustrations
This HUD is phenomenally busy. Times, rankings, lap counters... they're important, sure, but there are a time and a place for displaying them, and the time isn't all the time and the place isn't everywhere.
Your game is squashed into the very middle of the screen, allowing you to enjoy the water physics right under your nose and nowhere else. Giant buoys and their glowing arrow indicators. Massive time splits and reminders of missed buoys. The need to show me how fast I'm going, but not at a rate of knots, which would really immerse me...
It was, however, looking at this stuff where I noticed Wave Race 64 do another really rather neat thing.
Further Fun Times
Look at that! Dynamic weather! Fog lifting over the course of a lap or two. Even GT Sport can't do that. It's not just the weather that can change over the course of a race either, with some objects visible on one lap becoming actual obstacles on the next, requiring a small change of racing line.
It's subtle, sure, but I wasn't expecting it. Were you?
Final Word
My first championship was quite the success, but then it was on the easiest difficulty. Upping that, and tweaking the boatercycle stats to your liking, with regards to acceleration, handling and so on, will make races tighter and more of a spectacle, and make your mastery of the waves a requirement.
There's no point in being able to ride backwards, do handstands or flips and rolls if there was no reward for doing so, and so there is a stunt mode to get you going as well. I've not tried it out yet, but I'm definitely going to be back in control of Wave Race 64 again.
Is it perfect? No. Is it better than the competition? Yes. Yes, it very much is. Sorry, Jet Rider. You've a place in my heart, but clearly, that's the nostalgia talking.
Play Wave Race 64 and enjoy it.
Fun Facts
Wave Race 64 started as 'F-Zero on water', with a bunch of transforming boats. Rare's Tim Stamper suggested Jet Skis, with Shigeru Miyamoto agreeing, saying that they 'can show many manoeuvres that work well in the realistic waters.'
Wave Race 64, developed by Nintendo EAD, first released in 1996.
Version played: Nintendo 64, 1996, via emulation.
Version watched: Nintendo 64, 1996 (Longplays Land)