663rd played so far
Genre: Racing
Platform: Nintendo 64
Year of Release: 1996
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Publisher: Nintendo
Sure, we have plenty of racing games – early on it was an easy genre for multiplayer, and it’s something people still love – but few take place on the water and I swear even less use jet skis – googling it, this is the only notable one that does, with only Diddy Kong Racing offering something slightly similar.
At this point in time, Mario Kart and F-Zero were the big Nintendo racing franchise. This doesn’t quite seem like either, but it will be interesting to see where it leads to.
Our Thoughts
While the answer isn’t quite that it’s somewhere in between, it neither has the cartoonish feel of Mario Kart or the speed of F-Zero. Instead, there’s some sense of realism, but also a loose race that lets you get on with things without requiring a lot of practice early on, something Nintendo clearly does well.
You’ll easily score more than enough stars from your early races to keep going for a while, but the difficulty ramps up well enough that you have to stay on top of things and improve if you want to keep going. It’s well done and becomes a lot of fun.
Water is quite difficult to represent well in games and was even harder two decades ago. This game does it well – perhaps not with perfect physics, but it looks good and realistic enough. It’s quite impressive, needed for a game that relies so much on water, but done better here.
Final Thoughts
Wave Race 64 is an interesting racing game – not too high intensity, but with plenty of challenges in keeping up with the track and making it through the game.
It looks decent, too, with enough focus on the water to make it feel right. Sure, it’s not realistic, but so close enough that the game feels right.