Were It Not For Rare's Tim Stamper, Wave Race Would Have Featured Boats

Boats? That's would have been fun

With that subheading (Water difference that would have made) I thought I was reading the Sun for moment...Or shudder the thought, the Mirror...

I knew about it being originally boats but didn't know that it was Tim Stamper's idea to turn them into jetskis though.

There's footage of the "boat" version in this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl6MZqhjt84

Aqua Jet by Namco was released in the Arcades in 1996. Awesome game that one btw! I remember trying it at an Arcad at Disnet Land Resort Paris. It's possible that the idea could have also been inspired by that other game coming out around that time.

Rivalry? As I recall, at the time Rare openly admitted that Nintendo collaborated with Rare, eg providing input on the course designs in Diddy Kong Racing.

Were it not for Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto, Dinosaur Planet would have stayed as it's own game and not turn into Star Fox Adventures (still, love that game).

@Spellbound Cool but then later we already got one, it's called Hydro Thunder.

Looks an awful lot like Hydro Thunder to me, even the levels appear to be similar. Other than that, does anyone know what games are shown at 1m07s and 1m53s into the video? Also curious about the game that flashes through the Star Fox footage at the end.

It would have worked. That is the sort of game that has been missing from the Nintendo games catalogue for some time.

Wave Race or a Hydro Thunder type game or even Mario Boats.

With the HD graphics we have and that water effects that could be created gamers are missing out. The nearest we have had on the Wii U was Sonic all star, which was good.

Maybe a new Wave Race will come to their next console and feature all forms of water transportation...add in nintendo's characters, they can even make a new title all together. Wave Race needs a new try...the Gamecube version was very good in its time, but it's starting to look its age now. We also need a new 1080 game.

What I'd give for a new Wave Race game.
And a new 1080 game while we're at it.

I liked the look of the boats! Never played Blue Storm, still curious to try it.

That was an intriguing video- Blast Dozer, Excuse me princess Link, Kirby Snowboarding...

Also interesting goldeneye was in given that Grant Kirkhope once revealed Nintendo withdrew funding but rare kept it in development.

Such an amazing period of new games and experimentation, the Wii U makes the N64 look like a treasure trove of software support.

Waverace HD with Mario Kart 8's online would be one of the finest arcade racers around.1080° Snowboarding,F-Zero,Excite Truck,Diddy Kong Racing,there's so many classic Nintendo racers that deserve to be brought into the modern age.Hopefully we'll see at least one of them on NX.

@TheRealThanos The first one is Buggy Boogie. For the second one I'd say this T-Rex belonged to Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

And Nintendo still hasn't released WaveRace 64 in NA for the WiiU VC.
I would have liked to have a boat version in addition.
That old commercial looks more exciting than a lot of Nintendo's new commercials.

"WAVE RACE!!!!!!!!"

Such an awesome game, jetskis were definitely the right choice imo.

@Darth_Pascal Thanks. Although I don't think you're right on the second one. Look at the strange icons at the top of the screen. It looked more like a tech demo. (as did the early version of Wave Race) I have the Turok games and I don't remember any scene like that or a background like that.

Maybe I should go and look up some videos of that series...

Any thoughts on the two sword fighters in between the Star Fox footage?

Blast Corps, why has there never been another game like this?
Hopefully Aqua Moto Racing Utopia will come soon to Wii U (and PS4) and give us some watersports!

@TheRealThanos This one is easy. It was the first footage of Zelda 64 as it was first called

@Darth_Pascal Really? Interesting. Never saw any of that and since there were no green clothes or pointy ears in sight, I didn't recognize it. Must be the reason why it didn't ring any bells...

I can certainly see where Hyro Thunder came from. The none existent water effects and environments in this clip really remind me of Hydro. Nintendo must have done a ton of work on it to make this into WaveRace!

The Rare team from the SNES and N64 era was extraordinary. I guess it's telling that their sun began to set at around the same time Reggie moved in. Is that one of the reasons why everyone hates Reggie's guts?

Best decision ever regarding Jet Ski's.

As for the premier N64 development Rare were the clear winners.

Rare's technical skills vastly outstripped Nintendo. Rare's games featured vastly superior graphics, higher polygons counts, dynamic lighting, incredible, multilayered texturing, higher resolutions, larger world's, higher quality sound, even using real time shadowing towards the end which is only really taking off today - they even invested in Factor 5 MusyX technology for audio all while Nintendo were happy to output highly compressed tinny audio and spent their time slapping any stretched out low res texture to fill the gap.

I always wondered what if Rare made the engines and graphics for Mario and Zelda and Nintendo stuck to the gameplay.

I'd imagine Ocarina of Time would have been the ultimate graphical tour de force on the system.

If it weren't for Rare the N64 would have bombed.

That pun was a terrible thing to sea.

@AlexSora89 Water you talking about? Stop making waves...

@TheRealThanos
Get real, Thanos, my puns make quite the splash.

@AlexSora89 Well, they... I... just because...
Oh, screw it, I got nothing. You win. Molto bene...

@TheRealThanos
Gratuitous Italian, huh! You know how to flatter a fellow NLer.

@YoshiTails Never heard that one on GoldenEye. Why would Nintendo withdraw funding after splashing out on a big license and giving the job to Rare?

@AlexSora89 Occhio, eh? Solamente però una volta, mio amico...
@dAvecaster I can agree to a point, and obviously Wave Race was the game with the best water physics on the N64, but the early footage from the trailer in the article is considerably more crude than Hydro Thunder.

Also, in my honest opinion, it isn't quite a 1:1 comparison, since Hydro Thunder is an arcade conversion and Wave Race is supposed to lean more towards simulation, even though it also has stunt tracks.

And if you take Hydro Thunder for what it is, it can be quite entertaining in its own right, and with the Expansion Pak it did still look quite decent for an N64 game:

Although the Arcade and the Dreamcast version were obviously better...

I haven't seen that video in ages! I love all the early footage of games in there. Mario 64 looks very different, Starfox is fairly different, Wave Race is so early in development that even the tracks don't seem to match up to anything in the final game and I believe at that point GoldenEye was still an on-rails shooter!

Ah the good old days...

@liveswired
http://www.grantkirkhope.com/goldeneye-007/

From the quick clip, I thought that could have quite easily have been F-Zero on water. They would be a pretty cool idea actually.

@FarsanBaloo Cool, thanks. I'd imagine that Nintendo lost interest when GoldenEye was a 'Virtua Cop' clone. Still great to see the trust the Stampers had in their staff to turn it around.

@samuelvictor Rare were big before the N64. The cast iron classics of Blast Corps, Diddy Kong Racing, GE 007 cemented their status as an N64 development powerhouse in 1997...Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong, Jet Force Gemini, Perfect Dark, Banjo Tooie and Conker BDF further reinforce this opinion.

@TheRealThanos I finally got your answer as to where the dinosaur comes from. It was from a cancelled game called Creator. I had to look at my old Nintendo Power magazines.

@Darth_Pascal Gee, thanks again! Going through all that trouble to find the answer. It must have been just as annoying to you as it was to me not knowing from which game it was. Two thumbs up.