"Wave Race: Blue Storm" - Gamecube

Oh no. Racing games are my worst enemy. But I guess I have to do it anyway.

We're on to the third and last launch title for the Gamecube. This one's a sequel to a little jet-ski racing game called Wave Race 64 on the-- what else-- Nintendo 64. That one was developed by Nintendo EAD, or as they were known in the Famicom days, Nintendo R&D 4. That's the studio responsible for Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda.

However, this sequel to that game is developed by Nintendo Software Technology, headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Which might explain why this game seems like such a weirdly American thing... even though one of their goals is to keep a Nintendo and Japanese centric design in their games. And to be fair, there are Japanese characters and Japanese themed levels in this game, so I guess they sort of pulled it off.

I mean, that buoy has a kanji on it.

This game was directed by Shigeki Yamashiro, who has worked on several projects before this but is known now for being the president of NST. The game was produced by a few people, notably Minoru Arakawa, the founder and former president of Nintendo of America.

Other factoids: Ryota, the main character from this game, shows up in Super Smash Bros. Melee as a collectible trophy in his outfit from this game (neat!). The game was pretty well received upon launch, as well.

So, let's see what we think of it.

Do I have to get Wave Race: Red Storm to catch all the monsters in this game?

----- Playthrough -----

Wave Race has one main mode and a couple side modes, but I knew as soon as I turned it on what I needed to do first, and that was to complete the all-important modern game tutorial. The game doesn't offer it to you, but it's simply an option there on the menu.

This tutorial familiarizes you with the basic controls, and how to do the various tricks in the game, none of which you need to succeed at the game, but more on that later. Most of the tricks have inputs that remind me of Street Fighter moves, involving hold-and-flick maneuvers with the joystick, or sometimes full-circle inputs.

Standing on your ski like a jackass sure does require some weird inputs.

Anyway, once you've learned everything you need to learn, which is mostly just the basic controls, you can be off to the races (heheh)! First up is "exhibition," which is a fancy way of saying you need to win one race on its own to unlock the Normal Championship. There's not much to it, you just need to finish in the top 3, and you'll be on your way to the next thing.

The Normal Championship consists of five races, the first four of which you can do in any order you want, and the last one is always the same, hidden course. The goal in championship mode is to finish the championship with the most points out of any of your contenders. The higher you score in a race, the more points you earn-- and on average you'll need to earn about 10 points per race to stay in the running at all. Dip below the minimum, and you'll be disqualified altogether regardless of your position in the rankings.

So either get first place or commit ritual suicide.

If you manage to finish in the top three of all points earned after the last race, you'll unlock the Hard Championship, which consists of six races, including the five from Normal in any order, but with new track layouts. The Expert Championship is the same, except it's seven tracks, with the first 6 being in any order.

And also the AI will actually be able to play the game so prepare to get angry.

I doubt I need to explain to you how racing works, but there's some unique things going in Wave Race that aren't like other racing games. The first of which are the slalom buoys-- you'll have to go to the left and right of various buoys in the water, alternating, in every track. You can miss five, but miss anymore than that and you're automatically disqualified from the race, and you and everyone else will have a bad day.

They'll be having a bad day because you're going to take them down with you, if that wasn't clear.

The other thing to know about is the turbo system. You can build turbo meter by doing tricks or passing buoys. Every 5 buoys, you'll unlock a turbo, and if you press the Z button, you'll get a speed boost that lasts a couple seconds. It makes your jetski incredibly hard to control, so use it wisely.

The last thing to know is that the weather in Wave Race is dynamic. That means that while the game may start clear, by the second or third lap, there may be huge waves brought on by a storm, or fog may set in making it hard to see ten feet in-front of you. The weather is one of your biggest enemies in this game. Unfortunately you cannot stab it to death as it deserves.

Ah, I can't see 10 feet in-front of me. 70 mph seems a good speed.

The Expert Championship in this game is pretty hard and frustrating, and took me a couple hours of continuous trying, so let me give you some tips if you want to try:

1. Play the first/main guy. Just do it, he's the most average one. He's the one you want.
2. Don't turbo-- just don't. Figure out where you can safely turbo in the track, and don't do it anywhere else. You'll hit something and it takes you guy like an hour to get back on his jet-ski when you hit it that hard.
3. In the first lap, stay in 4th or 5th place and watch the people ahead of you until you learn the track.
4. If you can find a shortcut, use it relentlessly.
5. Cut the corners as sharp as you possibly can.
6. Miss 4 buoys in a race. Whenever it's convenient, just turbo right through one of those puppies to give yourself a lead. It's legal!
7. Pick the hardest tracks first and quit to the main menu if you're not going to get 1st place in the first 2-3 races of the Championship. Thank me later for the time this saves you.

And by the way, screw you whoever came up with the Venice track.

That was everything I learned while playing the game for the amount of time I did, and look at me. I got 1st place in the Expert Championship, which was the ego boost I needed for the whole week. I'm a winner!

I hope mom is watching the race!

Once you've finished the Expert Championship and patted yourself on the back, and skipped the credits, naturally, you can try the other couple of modes available.

First up is Time Trial, which simply lets you play any track in the game to improve on your time, if you're one of those guys. No further explanation needed.

The second, and last mode in the game (besides multiplayer) is stunt mode. The object here is to pick a map and get as high of a stunt score as possible. The game gives you some scores to shoot for, but it doesn't punish you for not meeting them, so I think it's pretty much just for fun. I tried one map, and decided I was probably done with Wave Race.

Ryota What's-his-face, retiring undefeated. Excepting the 20 times I was defeated.

----- Review -----

How long did I play?
3 hours.

Did I beat the game?
Yeh.

Intuitive Design: 

How easy is it to intuitively understand the game?

The game has a tutorial, and racing is pretty intuitive as a concept I think even to children who might pick the game up. There are some concepts that aren't explained by the tutorial, such as the buoys, but there are announcers that will yell at you when you do something wrong, which kinda helps.

Gameplay / Difficulty: 

How rewarding does playing the game feel?

Wave Race is definitely a skill based game. According to Wikipedia, one of the things it got criticized for was the twitchy controls and high difficulty level, and to all those people I say suck it, I beat the hardest championship in a couple hours so I'm sure you can do it too.

But it is hard-- however a big part of the difficulty came from selecting unbalanced characters for me at first (Akari moves like a snail but handles very well, though you need speed to win, amazingly). The other difficulty is definitely those twitchy controls. With some characters, just turning can completely shove you around in a circle, so you have to know how the handling is on your character and play to it.

The good news is, pulling all this off correctly actually is super satisfying, like it usually is in a racing game.

You'll have even more fun if you go "nyeeeow" in every turn.

Depth: 

How deep/long is the game?

There's essentially 7 maps, which really isn't that much, actually. However, track-wise, because the maps have different tracks at each difficulty, there are 18 tracks (or maybe 19). That's not really staggering, but it's a fun afternoon. I guess it can't really be said that it's that deep if I finished it in 3 hours, though.

Sound / Graphics: 

How's the sound? How are the graphics?

I might be easily impressed but honestly I think the water and weather stuff looks good even now. It would be a stretch to say it looks competitive with modern graphics, but it looks surprisingly good! The character models don't really look that good, but the world looks very nice in general. A decent amount of detail is put into the levels and they offer a nice variety of styles and locations. There are little details as well, such as the stoplight at the beginning changing per location.

The actual sounds of the game are fine. One cool note is that every character in the game comes with a unique announcer, which seems like more work than anyone would really be willing to put in, but neat. They all seem to vaguely represent some nationality or stereotype, and the announcers reflect that. For instance, Serena has a Spanish-sounding dude, Nigel has a British-sounding dude, etc.

Honestly, the music in the game is pretty forgettable for me, but it certainly has a lot of variety. I can't really pick a favorite, but you can check it all out here if you want.

Personal Chord: 

Does the game have that undefinable "something" for me?

I had fun playing the game, and I enjoyed myself, but I have to say nothing about the aesthetic is really interesting to me. The characters aren't really that interesting and don't stand out from one another that much when you're not playing them. In general, I'd have to say not really at all.

Should You Play: 

Is there a reason to even bother with this one?

I think so. I'm uncertain still if this qualifies to be on my list of "favorite games," for this console, but it's definitely fun. If you like racing games, or in really racing games with an emphasis on jumps and doing tricks (though I'd recommend against it honestly in this one), I think you'll really enjoy Wave Race.

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