Catching up with Team Hydro, part 3 - A 1UP classic from June 10, 2009

No thanks to Kotaku for failing to recognize this blogger as the person that uploaded the video clips and reporting on H2Overdrive. I'm not a staffer with 1UP and I didn't get paid for this. I'm just a fan of the game who had to work for a few months on getting interviews and footage. I posted the clips to share with everyone online, but a little acknowledgment would have been nice from Kotaku.

If I had to sum up H2Overdrive in a single word it would be "Stunning!" Before I even mention the controls, boats, levels and features I have to start with the graphics. They are among the most impressive of any arcade racing game, ever. This goes back to Sega, whom are the kings of racing games in the arcade.

Sega has rarely been matched at the genre by an outside developer and hardly ever been beaten, especially not by an American developer. That was until Hydro Thunder (HT) came out. Granted, visually HT didn't have the polish of the Sega Model 3 gems, but when combined with fantastic boat designs, levels, water physics, secrets and super-tight controls it was more than a match for anything Sega (or Namco or Konami) could do. Now imagine how much further graphics have come in the past 10 years. How nice models, textures and effects look now on a high definition LCD rather than a CRT. You'll get an idea as to how stunning H2Overdrive (H2O) is compared to the classic arcade title.

There is still a part of me that asks "what if?" I'm one of those that wishes to have seen footage of Hydro Thunder 2 in action. Even though the game was cancelled I was stoked to have known that the original boats would have gotten a facelift and some of the tracks would have been revisited and changed dramatically.

What Specular Interactive did was more than finish the sequel that had been canned by Midway all those years ago. They tried to secure the name of HT but couldn't manage it. In their favor they did the next best thing, reassemble the HT team and create a new boat racing game from the ground up. They took the best elements from HT and concepts from HT2 and then supercharged them. The boats are now far more brutal than they've ever been, yet carry over some familiar themes from the classic title. My favorite from HT got a new lease on life, while I'm not keen on knives I will say that it looks and plays just like I remember... only, somehow better.

Okay, there is no mystery to the "somehow." Team Hydro is back and in full effect, using everything they've learned while working on many other titles over the past decade. This translates into a game that is as easy to get into as the original, and yet like the original, provides enough of a challenge to veteran gamers. The control varies on the different boats. Those that prefer something steady and reliable have something to fall back on, those that prefer lots of drift (yes, even on water!) or hard turning also have something to choose from. Those eager to modify their boats, search for shortcuts and secrets will return again and again to get the most out of the title.

H2O uses the trusty steering wheel and throttle setup from HT. There are no pedals but the boats can perform some unique things by shifting the throttle and pressing a boost button at the right moment. The cabinet itself is more than an upgrade kit to an old Hydro Thunder cabinet. It is a new design from the ground-up, with all new electronics and controls. It feels very solid but the devil is in the details. The gauges on the cabinet have working electronics, showing speed and boost fuel. Most manufacturers would rather just slap a sticker with graphics over the gauges. The cabinet lights up to show who the leader is on a multiplayer race. The steering wheel is tighter than the original HT and the sounds and music are channeled through the seat, bringing players closer into the experience. There are also plenty more things going for H2O but rather than talk about it I'll let the people at Specular explain these features...

1. Who are you and what do you do?

Brian Silva. Short answer: Senior Artist/Game Designer. Long answer: I mostly build the tracks in H20verdrive (terrain, props, skies, etc), placing ramps/boosters/other obstacles in all tracks. Plus track design/layout, coming up with and collaborating on new gameplay features, as well as overall game tuning/balancing, and some other things I can’t think of right now. Oh, I also do the announcer vocals and various other voices in the game.

Steve Ranck, founder & president of Specular Interactive, Inc. I spend most of my time as engine & gameplay programmer, as well as lead designer and producer.

2. What are you currently playing or favorite games (when you aren't on a deadline)?

Brian: Professor Layton, Burnout Paradise, Dig-Dug, Robotron, not leveling my useless Paladin to 80, and Tetris DX for GB (but only on the toilet).

Steve: Hmmm… when I’m not on a deadline? Let me see if I can think back that far. The most recent games I’ve played are Left for Dead and Metal Arms. Some of my favorite games of all time are Half-Life 2, Call of Duty 4, and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. Sinistar and Joust are up there, too.

3. What was your previous game development experience?

Brian: Right before this, I was creating art for World of Warcraft: Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King.

Steve: I’ve been designing and building games since I was 12. My first games were all electronic & mechanical, until I met the Apple II and started writing games in assembly language. Many years later, I got my first job in the games industry with Midway in San Diego where I started on the port of Cruis’n USA for the N64 and ultimately...

[2023 EDIT: This was all I was able to recover from my old 1UP page regarding H2Overdrive. When IGN shut down the servers they wiped countless game videos, and the rest of this blog post. Below was the only part that remained which I uploaded to YouTube thankfully.] 

 

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Catching up with Team Hydro, part 2 - A 1UP classic from June 9, 2009

Steve Ranck and the rest of Team Hydro The Team Hydro Interview, E3 2000 

1. First things first, how many boats (submersible, semi submersible or other amphibious craft) can we expect to see in Hydro Thunder 2?

Steve - Oh we’ve got Hydro Thunder 2 questions.

Yeah I’m getting right into the meat of the subject. Hydro Thunder 1; Yeah it’s big, yeah it’s great on the consoles. But let’s get to what’s new.

Steve - First thing we plan on doing is bringing back all the old boats. So all the old boats will be selectable but they’re upgraded versions of the boats. So you’ll recognize them but they’re really tricked out now. And then we’re going to bring in a whole series of other boats. So in total probably about 20 boats. That’s what we’re shooting for.

2. How many tracks can we expect to see in the sequel to Hydro Thunder?

Steve - How many track, well...?

Michael - As many as we have time to make. (laughs) At least as many as we had before.

Steve - At least as many as we had before. But with Hydro 1 we just ran out of time. We just kept on making tracks until we ran out of time.

Michael - We threw in the loop tracks in actually in the last two months or so.

Steve - We actually had a third loop track which is available in the home versions. And we finished that track about a week after we shipped. So it just barely didn’t make it. But I’ll tell you what we did was what Midway does is give every employee that works on an arcade game their own cabinet. So with our cabinets we have this special version of Hydro Thunder.

Aww what’s up with that?

Scott - One extra track.

See you could put that on E-bay.

Scott - Hey. That’s an idea.

Michael - That’s what I was thinking. 

3. Can we also expect to see many more secret boats and tracks?

Steve - For Hydro 1 we did not put enough secrets in. We know that. The players found the secrets in about a month. So we’re going to load Hydro 2 with secrets.

But they’re going to be a lot harder to get into or figure out?

Steve - Some of them will be hard, some of them will be obvious and some of them will be very difficult.

4. Will there be any repeat tracks from the first game?

Steve - Yeah. We’ve already completed... one of the tracks we’ve already completed was Lake Powell. And let’s tell you a little bit about it. What we’ve done is taken Lake Powell it’s the same exact track as it starts off it’ll look identical. But it soon quickly changes into a completely different track. The water levels change so it exposes different canyons and so forth. But the majority of the tracks are brand new.

Scott - You should mention Lost Island is now Found Island.

Steve - Go ahead.

Scott - One of the track ideas we have is taking Lost Island and making a version called Found Island. Where this lovely, lush, tropical, reclusive island has been turned into this overpopulated resort area. It’s filled with cruise ships, hotels and tourists. So the whole track will change based on that.

Found Island? I was going to say Marshall, Will and Holly are going to come by in a raft and you’re just going to throw them over a cliff or something. Hey maybe that’s how they get there. (laughs)? 

5. How much more powerful is the new Hydro Thunder 2 game engine as compared to the first? Steve - We’re pushing about 10 times the number of polygons. And it’s completely revamped. We started off kind of just expanding the engine a little bit. But we just tossed it out eventually and started from scratch. And it’s completely a new engine for Hydro 2.

Michael - We’ve also changed 3D hardware. The first one was 3DFX-based.

Steve - And we haven’t announced the new one.

But it’s a new one?

Michael - It’s different hardware.

Ten times?

Scott - Ten times. And that’s not even counting all the extra effects that’ll be in there.

I’m getting to that.

6. Was writing the sequel difficult considering you had a pretty good model?

Steve - No it wasn’t difficult. (laughs) A lot of feedback we got from your pages helped to affirm what we believe players liked in the game. We’re going to bring all that back. At it’s core it’s still Hydro Thunder. The game still feels the same. But it’s going to be that much better.

Scott - Developing was a lot easier in some ways because we could go right in with a drivable engine and start laying out tracks and see what’s going to be fun. Whereas on the first one we were halfway through the project before we could actually start really driving these tracks the way the engine would actually feel in the final version. And only then did we know if it was actually going to be fun.

Michael - In fact they had to redo lot’s of tracks that were too narrow or you know. So this time they don’t have to redo nearly as much work.

Steve - We must have built Lake Powell four times.

Scott - Three or four times.

Michael - Lost Island got redone several times.

Steve - Lost Island over and over again until we got it right.

Scott - Five or six times on Lost Island.

Steve - But we don’t plan on changing the speed of the boats or the field of view or the physics of the boats. Although we’re going to enhance the physics of the boats. We’re going to allow the players to do some things with the boats they weren’t able to do with Hydro 1.

Michael - And we’ll be able to address making the lower end, the easy boats, a little easier to drive. Many of us have watched people play in the arcade for hours since it’s shipped.

Steve - Or our moms. Our mom’s come in there. Mom comes in grabs the throttle and hits the walls. So maybe we can make a boat that almost drives itself. For mom.

A mom boat. Now that would be interesting.

7. Aside from the Mighty Hull attack will there be weapons in the sequel? [ I actually forgot to ask this question at the E3. I'm sorry to the fans that wanted a definitive yes or no. I'll ask Steve Ranck for the official answer and I'll post it as soon as i receive it.] ?

8. Will the weather play a role in the new Hydro Thunder?

Steve - It does. Basically when it rains in San Diego we get a lot more work done... Oh you mean the weather in the game? (laughs) We actually had plans to do a lot more weather for Hydro 1. We didn’t have time. All those ideas are going to be moved into Hydro 2.

Michael - We should have plenty of time.

Scott - We’ve already started playing around with weather effects.

9. Have the physics changed in the sequel (regarding ramps, jumps, collisions and rooster tails)?

Steve - Rooster tails? We’re going to give it another shot. We tried to do rooster tails with Hydro 1. But what happened was it threw up so much mist and spray behind the boats players behind the guy couldn’t see. But we’re thinking of putting them in as a special move. So you can do a special move and throw up a rooster tail and blind the guy temporarily behind you.

10. What videogames are your current favorites?

Scott - Counterstrike. Free mod for Half Life.

That’s the only thing you’re playing?

Scott - That’s all I’m playing. I play that every single night. I’m so hooked on that game.

Steve - I actually got him started on Counterstrike (laughs). So it started out Team Fortress then I kind of moved from Team Fortress to Counterstrike. And now I bounce between the Counterstrike on the PC and Code Veronica on the Dreamcast.

Michael - I play slightly different games than those guys. Although I do like Team Fortress a lot. The last favorite game was Rayman 2 on the Dreamcast.

11. Is working as a team easier this time around?

Scott - I think so.?Steve - We had some “rough waters,” sorry. We had some hard times on the first project with a couple of people. But now we have the core people together and it seems like fun to play because everybody knows what each other’s strengths are and weaknesses are.

12. What were your favorite memories over the course of Hydro Thunder 2’s development?

Steve - We’ll get back to you on that one.

Like for Hydro 1... the Fourth of July party. Where something must have happened.

Steve - Something happened, yeah.

Scott - Yeah.

Michael - Oh the Fourth of July. That was very...

Scott - Was that a fun memory?

Steve - You’re not going to get it out of us.

13. How do you feel about the console versions of Hydro Thunder?

Scott - Steve?

Steve - Mike?

Michael - Nah.

What is this. Like the Three Stooges? (laughs)

Mike - To be honest I was disappointed. I was disappointed by... in fact I have a funny story. We’re not showing Hydro Thunder here at the show. But I found one booth, the controller booth way over there that is showing Hydro Thunder.

Steve - Which version?

Michael - N64. And it’s painful because they didn’t change the wrappers and there’s so many people that can’t figure out how to get into the game and it’s really frustrating. They’re trying to play a two player game and it comes up with a selection and then more selections and more selections. That wasn’t what we thought about when we were designing the original game. And also there’s no extras. You go buy a racing game and there’s like all these other modes and stuff. I’m disappointed in the home games.

Like console exclusive things.

Steve - Yeah. It just doesn’t have a home feel. In my opinion the best version though is the Playstation version. I think they captured the excitement the feel of Hydro better than any other. From a graphics point of view I think Dreamcast is the best looking. But from game play feel, a Hydro feel point of view, Playstation won.

Michael - That two player mode in the Dreamcast was... awful.

We can leave it at that. We don’t want to hurt anybody's feelings.

14. Is there a release date on Hydro Thunder 2?

Steve - Yes but we’re not supposed to say anything now.

Well not the day date and the time. But seasonal, decade at least?

Steve - That actually is also in discussion right now.

Oh my goodness!

Steve - I know I know. It’s not going to be anytime soon.

All right. Good enough.

15. What about the other top secret project you are working on?

Steve - Which top secret project is that? You guys know anything about top secret projects?

Scott - Huh?

Michael - We have a top secret project? What?

Steve - Really honestly we’re legally bound. We can not say anything at this time about the other project. We do have two other projects in the works. They’re using the same engine. So you can kind of figure it’s maybe, it’s sorta, type of genre.

Some sort of racing thing?

Scott - We didn’t say that.

Steve - We didn’t say that. But it could be.

Michael - Infer what you will.

16. How do you feel your experience working on Hydro Thunder will help future projects?

Scott - I think it already has helped with me. Well the fact that we have an established team of people that work well together that have overlapping strengths and know where to help out the other people. I think that’s probably our biggest gain.

Michael - I’ll tell you the experience that the team has now. I mean, a lot of the people on the team were quite new to the industry and quite fresh. Like a few people were right out of college. Just the experience of going from start to end. You know the long hours and everybody knows. It’s a known quantity now what goes into making a arcade videogames. Everybody’s prepared for that... I learned so much. But Gary. Gary came in green and now the guy’s doing geometry.

Steve - We had this one artist he started off fresh. It’s his first job I believe. He didn’t even know what a pixel was. He was a sketch artist. And now you should see what he’s capable of doing, it’s amazing.

Scott - He’s building boats. He’s texturing them himself.

Michael - And entire tracks.

Scott - Very, very talented guy.

Steve - His name is Gary Carbonel.

17. Has Midway allowed the team more creative freedom and time for Hydro Thunder 2?

Steve - Yes. Absolutely. With Hydro 1 there was a point in time when they were telling us to take the throttle off the cabinet. They wanted foot pedals on the cabinet. And we just stuck to our guns we were saying it’s part of the whole boat feel. We wanted to really capture the feel of pushing on the throttle and feeling the motor on your back. What we ended up doing was building a mock cabinet in our pod and when management came and sat down and played it and felt the throttle we never heard anything from them again.

Michael - There was no other discussion.

Steve - They had some valid concerns. They felt that there’s a certain group of players who wouldn’t understand a throttle. Everyone knows how to use a gas pedal. The throttle actually worked out really well because small kids who can’t touch the gas pedal could scoot up on their seat and still reach the throttle and play.

18. What’s been motivating you to keep on making games without getting burned out?

Steve - Well what keeps me going is coming to E3 and seeing all the booth babes.

Scott - That’s a pretty good motivating factor.

Is that unanimous for the booth babes?

Michael - Kudos for the booth babes.

Scott - Oh, and the money. (laughs)

Michael - Oh, there is that. Yes, yes.

Steve - With Hydro 1 we had this vision of the game. We wanted to see it in arcades. We wanted to watch people playing it. And to see that happen is great.

Mike - Yeah it’s a blast to go watch people play it.

19. After Hydro Thunder 2 are there any projects lined up for Team Hydro or are you going to take some time off?

Steve - How about a year off to sail with management?

Scott - I'm sure management will be down with that. No problem.

Michael - They agree like that. No problem. 

Steve - Hydro 2 is our focus right now. I can’t see beyond that. Believe me there’s enough to think about already.

20. Do you have anything you’d like to add for the fans or about the sequel?

Scott - Nope, I’m still stunned about the booth babes.

Michael - Keep supporting your local arcade. Because the arcade industry is really hurting right now. And if people abandon it and they just buy stuff for home teams like us are going to have to be switched to make home games and that would be a real shame.

Steve - It would be bad to see the arcade go extinct. It would be a pretty sad thing. And it’s happening already. Fewer and fewer teams and fewer and fewer companies are making arcade games.

Michael - There’s already discussions at Midway for switching some teams. And it’s hard. The financial reality is arcades are a tough market. So keep going to those, keep putting quarters in.

Steve - Personally I love arcades. I walk in I want to feel the boat throttle. And playing the Nintendo version is completely different than playing the throttle version.

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