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About Hydro Thunder
Amazon.com As the first boat racing game on the Dreamcast, Hydro Thunder takes full advantage of the advanced processing power of this 128-bit machine. You'll steer one of 13 different boats through 14 fast and furious racing environments. As with the arcade version, you'll race against the clock and numerous other boats in a quest to reach the finish line first. The spectacular graphics and detailed race environments make this a most atypical racing game. In fact, there are times when you might find it difficult to concentrate on the racing because there is so much peripheral eye candy. We were most impressed by the New York Disaster, Far East, and Arctic Circle racing areas. Many of the best elements of Hydro Thunder are likely to be completely bypassed by casual gamers, since there are numerous hidden tracks, boats, and other elements to be uncovered in this game. However, persistent racers will be well-rewarded, since some of the best tracks can only be unlocked after winning several races. --Brett Atwood Pros: Detailed race environments Numerous hidden game elements Cons: Difficulty level will challenge beginning gamers Review When you think about racing games, you naturally think of wheels - be it two, four, six, or ten. The most memorable racing games have put you on some sort of road. Why is that? Perhaps air is too bland in its sheer openness, and water simply doesn't deliver insane jumps, tight corners, and clever tracks. Prepare to reevaluate that opinion, because the best boat-racing game to hit arcades has made its way to the Dreamcast - but what it hasn't done is brought anything new with it. If you've played the arcade version of Hydro Thunder, you already know everything about the game. So little has changed, in fact, that you'll wonder if Eurocom even made an attempt to do anything more than port the game's code to the Dreamcast. There's no intro, no new modes, no CG of any form - just the simple single-race-then-start-over play style that you'd expect from an arcade game. It's almost as if Midway were satisfied with simply changing "insert coin" to "press start" and was done. This game has only two modes - play on your own, or play with a friend. There's no time trial, no tournament, no battle or practice mode, just the pay-per-race-styled "game" mode that you're already familiar with. And once you're actually in the game, there's not a whole lot you can do besides race. There's no difficulty control besides the actual track you pick; the mid-race pause menu has no options control; and the game doesn't even allow you to restart your race. You'll have to quit out to the title screen and choose your track and boat all over again. But what the user interface is lacking, Hydro Thunder more than makes up for in gameplay. Boat-racing games have had little success because of the vast difference in physics from conventional street racers and the inability to replicate this difference accurately. Hydro Thunder breaks that trend and shows that boat racing is indeed a different dish. The engine was built entirely from the ground up, and it's clear that the team had spent plenty of time making the physics as real as they've ever been in a boat game. Probably the most impressive aspect of the engine is that you can see your boat bounce in the wake created by another racer. These effects, combined with the realistic nature of the game engine easily make Hydro Thunder the best racing game to hit the water. Speed is a racing game's most essential attribute, and Hydro Thunder has plenty of it. Even with tons of on-screen activity the frame rate is silky smooth, and pop-up simply doesn't exist. In the first-person view a breathtaking sense of speed is achieved, with only slight diminishment in the other views. The graphics are simply amazing. All the different flavors of boat racing are represented in Hydro Thunder - from catamarans to powerboats to nuclear-powered concept racers. And each boat not only has a distinctive hu
