Upon booting up the game, players will notice that there's only one boat and one track in Arcade Race mode. Like other racing games, placement in each course is translated into points for that championship, and the final standings are determined by the overall point score. Unlike Ring Master, there are only eight levels with no variation in difficulty.įinally, there's Championship mode, which takes tracks from any of the previous three modes and shuffles them together in each championship run.
Hitting a barrel becomes much worse than missing a ring, since it takes more time to recover from an explosion. Gauntlet takes all of the rules that were established in Ring Master and replaces the rings with exploding barrels. Even the easiest courses tend to become exercises in trying to get a perfect run at the maximum difficulty. Unlike the Arcade Race mode, Ring Master contains variable difficulty levels for each course, so not only do the time requirements shrink, but the rings themselves also do, as they are laid out in completely different patterns. Missing any of the rings will deplete your stock of nitro and add time to your final tally, and since trophies are only handed out to those meeting certain time milestones, a good run would mean missing fewer than 10 rings by the end of the course. Nitro can only be obtained by passing through the rings in a given course. Ring Master transforms the race into a time trial, but with a few stipulations. Like the original, a boat's initial stats will be a factor in its chances of taking one of the prized spots at the end of the race, but the nitro canisters littered throughout the course are also tremendously helpful. Trophies are only awarded to those who finish in the top three at the end of each race. In Arcade Race mode, you grab a boat and try to take trophies in all eight of the game's tracks. Hydro Thunder Hurricane features four different modes for solo players. The result is Hydro Thunder Hurricane, and while it might not have been created with any of the original development team, it sure feels like something they would've conjured up.
Hydro thunder hurricane secret boats license#
After picking up the rights to the name during Midway's bankruptcy sale, Microsoft contracted Vector Team to use the license for their next racing title. Midway Games is no more, the arcades still have not gotten over the slump, and the team that was responsible for the original game has almost finished up crafting the spiritual sequel to the original called H2Overdrive. Despite the success, a sequel was never made.įast-forward 11 years, and things have changed quite a bit. By retrofitting the cabinet and changing from cars to boats, they created Hydro Thunder, a racing game that saw success in both the arcade and home markets, thanks to the inventive track design and fast speeds. Midway Games had seen some success in this type of development with the San Francisco Rush series, which put gamers behind the wheel of a high-speed race car on the streets of San Francisco. Desperate to bring in more business to keep arcades thriving, developers tried everything to counteract the rising tide of home consoles. Fighting games and Dance Dance Revolution were still bringing people in to the facilities, but arcade machines were losing their hold on the masses. The year was 1999, and in the North American arcade scene was beginning to dry up.
0 kommentar(er)
