Achei muito divertido esse jogo, é um bom passatempo pra falar a verdade.

A primeira coisa q vem na minha mente é de como o jogo é bonito. A água do jogo (dependendo do circuito) é tão bonita, tanto pela qualidade dela (q caramba, é muito bem feita, as marés em especial são bem impressionantes), quanto pelas cores mesmo, a água tem um azul tão lindo de olhar, e mesmo quando não está azul, alguma outra coisa no cenário complementa as cores cinzentas da água, como em Drake Lake, que apesar da água estar bem cinza o céu azul contrasta muito bem. Esteticamente não tem o que reclamar, é muito lindo msm.

Obviamente que, mesmo com uma estética boa, é crucial ter uma música que encaixe com ela pra conseguir transmitir a vibe da melhor maneira possível, e com certeza os desenvolvedores acertarem nisso. As músicas combinam perfeitamente com o jogo, e chega a dar até uma tranquilidade só de ouvir algumas músicas e observar os cenários.

A gameplay é inesperadamente (pra mim pelo menos) competente. Imaginei que por ser antigo, eu teria que me acostumar com os controles ruins assim como acontece com muitos jogos dessa época, mas não, os controles respondem muito bem e vc consegue direcionar bem o seu boneco pra onde cê quer ir, muito bom isso.

Por enquanto só joguei no normal e no Hard, então não joguei todas as pistas, mas das que pude experimentar, gostei de quase todas. Geralmente tem algumas que você vai passar vergonha nelas (pra mim foi Marine Fortress e Port Blue), mas conforme você joga mais essas pistas vc vai pegando o jeito e fica bom nelas, oq é algo muito bom na minha opinião. Mas não sei, sinto que, se não fosse pelos gráficos, quase nenhuma das pistas seria memorável (Sunny Beach é o maior exemplo disso), oq me deixa meio receoso de dizer que elas são maravilhosas, mas não tem problema, ainda sim gosto bastante mesmo não sendo tão memoráveis como gostaria.

No geral Wave Racer 64 é um jogo bem divertido que estarei voltando pra revisitar com certeza!

Finished "Normal", "Hard" and "Expert" Championships.

Game is extremely punishing if you make mistake, with long recovery time if you fell from the jet ski, which makes almost no chance to catch up with your opponents. What makes it worse - if you don't get enough points to access next race in the circuit, you are disqualified and need to start championship from the first race. Considering that final cup has 8 races and your only mistake can cost you the chance to compete, this is pretty hard punishment and severe time investment into perfecting every turn and pray to not be overthrown by the unpredictable waves or your opponents, who also can tackle you in the most unexpected moment.

After countless tries to apprehend "Expert" cup, I gave up and started to use suspend points before each race start. I'm considering it a nice compromise for the good of my nervous system.

After this rambling, I must say, that this must be a pretty impressive game for its time, and right now it still stands as one of unique racing games on the market. The games' famous wave physics system is fantastic and makes racing feel fresh, dangerous and a little unpredictable. You really feel their volume, opposition and necessity in careful traversal through them.

The handling of jet ski is also surprisingly realistic and needs to get used to, but when you do, and when you understand how these machines behave, it all feels extremely satisfying. Making turns in advance for manoeuvring effectively through the serpentine of floating beacons, diving to go through obstacles above the water, jumping full speed on the trampoline making sure you chose the right angle so that inertia will position you correctly after landing on the water - all those moments extremely impressive and satisfying thanks to the physics engine and track design.

Overall, it's a nice small wonder of a technology and still pretty original type of racing, which with help of NSO is accessible more than ever.

It took a few months for the Nintendo 64 for a new game, and when it arrived it met with glowing reviews. I do remember playing this slightly as a kid, and distinctly remember having a lot of trouble with it due to being awful at it. However, it was only short goes as it was a friend’s copy of the game.

Wave Race 64 is a jet ski racing game. Not only do you have to complete the circuits, but you have to pass buy buoys on the correct side. Miss one and you’ll lose some power, miss five and you’ll fail that race.

The ocean and how it moves is the main impressive part of the game. The ocean moves in a realistic way and it still stands out as water in games is still not easy to do today – to the point that it’s really games that are entirely focused on water that have proper wave simulation (games like Sea of Thieves). The water is also not just for looks – it affects the movement of your jet ski and you’ll have to work out how to race using them to your advantage.

The levels in Wave Race also manage to feel distinctive, which is not an easy task for water based games. While I’ve just praised the waves a lot, one stand out level is Drake Lake – which doesn’t have waves. The level starts off foggy but clears up as you progress, with the lake having a silvery reflective surface. There’s something really beautiful about this level, even today.

Another very memorable one is Southern Lake. In this level, the tide is going out. Each lap, the obstacles will be different due to the level of the water. A big pier blocks the way on the first lap, but you can zoom through its supports on later laps. Unfortunately, the game only has 8 courses (plus a bonus training course)

There are three main difficulties in Wave Race, however the difficulty doesn’t just alter the enemy racers. Instead, the locations of the buoys are different, making navigating the levels much more difficult. You need to truly master the waves to succeed at the game and your reward is reverse mode, where you race across the tracks backwards, which makes the levels feel a lot different.

Outside of the main championship mode, Wave Race offers time trial and a stunt mode. You can set your own high stores in the stunt mode as you have to make it to the next checkpoint while hitting rings and performing tricks. The other main move is a 2 player race.

Wave Race 64 doesn’t contain a lot of stuff, but there’s so much detail in what it does do that it makes up for it. It’s a really fun game that rewards skill and offers a significant challenge. Wave Race got a sequel on the GameCube, but there’s nothing out now that’s quite the same.

At first glance and play, Wave Race 64 seemed like it was a relatively short and small content game. However, the more you play and the better you get you realize that there is a ton of depth in its gameplay and progressing through the different circuits becomes a challenge that tests the skill of level and patience of players.

Being a launch/early Nintendo 64 game, this game was set to impress gamers with its clean water effects and level details. Gameplay is where the game really shines though. In order to master the later circuits and difficulty levels the player must gain an advanced understanding of the physics of the game ranging from the weight of the jet skis, the weight of the character you choose, and most importantly the waves. Depending on how you land and move your jet ski you will be able to gain precious fractions of seconds in corners that end up adding up and aid the player get through the most challenging difficulties. The AI can be infuriating in later difficulties to the point that it feels unfair, forcing the player to have near-perfect runs.

Other gameplay features such as waving through buoys to gain speed and performing tricks add to the strategy and replay value of the game.

Wave Race 64 may not have a huge amount of content but it really set the bar for gameplay in terms of racing games. For whatever reason, it has remained somewhat of an obscure cult game in Nintendo's history but for those of us who have played it and enjoyed it back in the day, it's yet another instant classic from Nintendo.

ITS COOL! Simple jet ski fun really, i think out of every type of racing game out there from realism based shit to your quirky kart racer stuff
there's another bracket of this shit thats kinda always just been coating along
and thats the shit thats being a Very specific sport type of race
Like i dont think we'll ever see a day in the gaming industry where jet ski games are the biggest craze and everybody's going nuts for buying jetskis or dressing up like a jet ski guy or something from Wave Race 64

and we're all perfectly okay with that because we know sometimes all you need is a quality multiplayer game or just a game to cruise along in and feel cool while doin iti. I saw a shark and a pirate shippp, went up some big waves, got knocked off my jetski like a Dip Shit for colliding with a bridge too quick, made a comeback from 4th to 1st
shrug
You ain't gotta be out here trying to reinvent the wheel all the time to have a good time, sometimes those wheels feel just as good as they did years ago babes

Era un juego con físicas muy complicadas para ser de "carreras".

Sin embargo, la atmósfera, música y lo relajante del agua siempre me empujaba a querer seguir jugando y tratar de mejorar. Y si me desesperaba, siempre podía escribir el cheat de que en lugar de motos fueran delfines y practicar sin limite de tiempo en el parque acuático.

Otro buen ejemplo de que Nintendo siempre le da un estilo único a sus juegos.

Waves from the future, now lost in the past.
Play this awhile sometime when you are sad and want to see what happiness was back then. Ride the waves at sunset, speed through heavy fog and watch it clear to reveal a mirror-like lake, see the tides come and go. Wind between buoys and feel your speed pick up until the power is maximum. All to music that the courses themselves must have written. And the game really shines when you try to go fast. Try to win some championships. Try some challenges. Get some fast times and high scores. All this just lets you fully experience the waves—the low rolls, the lone high swells, the choppy stretches, and rough wild water. These virtual wave sensations were a revolution in gamefeel. The designers somehow managed to make you feel the condition of the water underneath your low poly craft as you navigated via inputs on a trident shaped plastic object. Few games have replicated these sensations quite so intensely as this early effort.

And maybe one day there will be a new wave of digital waves like this. Until then these will be there for us, sleeping in old cartridges, just waiting for us to turn the simulation back on and race again.

It's hard to really say why Wave Race is captivating while at the same time being rather dull. Wave Race 64 is fairly bare bones, and frankly feels more like a prototype of what they wanted rather than a game Nintendo released. Regardless, the game does support 4 players, and showcases the power of the N64 well enough so it's hard to really state that age caught up to it or I'm just greedy.

The main problem I have with Wave Race is just how it seemingly feels empty with nothing to do. I know a lot of people harp about Ocarina of Time feeling the same way, but that game at least has you actively engaging with it. Wave Race's problem is that it simply doesn't have enough to engage with that will keep your attention away from that emptiness. While the trick system is there, it's hidden and does next to nothing when it comes to speed. While the game does have a soundtrack, the sound mixing is pretty awful with the sound effects blasting too much during any given race. As well, there's not much you can really do in order to go faster. There is no drift button, power ups, turbos, or items, just a pure race with directional influence from the player and the waves that you race on. On top of that most tracks are fairly small, and have a short cut that is vastly better to use than the intended track layout. Sure, shortcuts are great, but the fact that literally the computers use them, and make it the de facto natural track rather than the track that was already set, sorta defeats the point of a shortcut. Also what's with the low cast of characters? Legitimately, we got 4 slightly unnamed characters, and voice for the announcer. Like it would have been nice to just have more here than what we got.

Still, I have to give it up to Wave Race, at a certain point, when you look past the bones of this game; you see the meaty gameplay that it does have on it. Taking waves, blasting at higher speeds without slowing down, bopping and weaving your path through out the track. When you play this game right it feels so good. Even the hidden stuff like the additional tracks, mirror mode, and dolphin unlock feel like something you rightly earn, and give a sense of accomplishment.

Wave Race 64 is at the least, an enjoyable game. It doesn't have the bells and whistles needed in today's industry, but it does have a unique charm and jagness that you can only really find in its era. Function over form, and with some neat little novelties; I can see why Wave Race 64 is still remembered.