Wave Race: Bluestorm manages to trash you after 10 years

I was looking through the news when I came across a game that I have very warm memories of, yet long forgotten. Wave Race: Blue Storm was one of my first games for Nintendo Gamecube (and a launch title for it), which happened to be my first game console I ever had.

A NEOgaf user, RaoulDuke found out an interesting cheat in which you may change voice of the crew member that usually narrates and comments on your actions – new one sounds like he has a pretty bad day – no matter what you do, he will always find a way to make you feel down. “Oooh, a turbo!” replies the comenteer mockingly as you fill up your boost meter. And when you finish the race (as you can see on the video) he comments: “You don’t have inferiority complex: You’re just inferior.”

“You’ve chosen poorly.”
“That turbo’s wasted on you.”
“If you don’t win this race, I’m not gonna love you anymore.”
“Your wins are like diamonds: very rare.”

If it was discovered around the time Wave Race was released, not only it would become one of the most brilliant gaming memes, but I think it would also make GameCube as a leading platform, that’s how good it is. Even if it would… well, “Romantic Gamecube dead and gone/ It’s with Yokoi in the grave” Paraphrasing W.B.  Yeats’  ”September 1913″.

This is also a perfect chance to actually reminisce about this early 128 bit gem, of course. Wave Race: Blue Storm was a Game Cube launch title along with Luigi’s Mansion and Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2 – all of them were great, but lack of more choice (especially in Europe) seemed to prove from the very beginning, that GameCube will not get much support (Capcom’s 5, anyone?), unfortunately. WR looked stunning, and even watching the video today, after nearly 10 years you can see it does look quite decent, the water effects in particular. I remember having fun with the menus, where water was splashing with each selection. As you can see, MacOS’ widget effect is sooo 2001. In-game water was amazingly crafted, with all those corals and even animals swimming underwater – all with nice physics, transparency and weather system. Weather changed throughout the laps and caused the levels to change as well – sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Storms were looking incredible and such differences added to variety, since there weren’t many courses, although they were semi-open-ended.

The game was also rather difficult, and I never managed to unlock the last track in the begineer career because it was just too hard (although I played it once using a cheat, and I would never be able to finish it first) – controlling water-crafts was no easy feat and the controls felt somewhat unresponsive. Besides, AI was not very keen on giving up their positions, not even mentioning obligatory buoys slaloming. It was a chalenging game, but still, a loads of fun to play. Now that I think of it, it really reminds me of SSX series, but on water-crafts. Both were essentialy racing, but also featured nice stunt modes.

Gawd, all this reminiscing made me wanting to pick up this game again. Hell, it makes me fill my Gamecube collection up again. So many good memories with it! If you have Wii or GameCube, check it out, it’s one of the best racing games on the system. And you can check this awesome cheat as well! … sheesh, it’s a shame games nowadays are not like that…

Via Joystiq. Original post here.