Hydro Thunder

"How do you "Burn Water"?"

Another arcade port from Midway. This one, however, is not a wasted effort. A wide variety of boats and tracks make this game tolerable for a longer time period than Blitz 2000. This game has improved graphics, even from the arcade version. If you like racers, this one's for you. It's interesting to note that while Midway launched four games alongside Dreamcast on September 9th, only Ready 2 Rumble Boxing was truly original. Blitz 2000 and Hydro Thunder are arcade ports, and Mortal Kombat Gold is a ''classic compilation''.

GRAPHICS: 9
The visuals in this game are awesome. There's incredible attention to detail, and many of the graphical ''extras'' will probably go unnoticed, like the hot air balloons floating around. The water looks nice, and so do all the boats. 2-player mode's frame rate hardly slows down at all and doesn't lose much detail.

SOUND: 7
The music and sound FX are OK. Nothing really stands out. The boats, splashes, and such sound good. That dude who yells, ''Go'' gets on my nerves, though. We know you said ''Go'' already! Quit saying it! We don't need to hear it three times!!!

CONTROL: 9
The control is very good. Turns are made very well and each boat handles differently. The Turbo-Boost is pretty cool, and being able to jump outta the water is nice too. I wish there was a feature to turn my boat into a platypus that lays eggs. OK, I don't really mean that.

REPLAY VALUE: 7
There are plenty of tracks and boats to choose from. However, all the boats have the same moves: accelerate, brake, turn, and Turbo-Boost. It would have been nice if all the boats had their own special moves. Also, multi-player is confined to only two players. Head-to-head racing has never been my thing.

OVERALL: 8
Wow, the overall is actually an exact average for once! Oh, who cares. If you like racers you might want to buy Hydro Thunder. For me, there wasn't anything that really impressed me all that much with this game. If you've played the arcade version, you've played this version.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/00, Updated 04/04/00