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

With the E3 still fresh in our minds, and console and portable gaming taking up most of our posts we overlook the studios that are keeping arcade gaming alive. This week we'll look at one of the little studios that is living the dream and keeping arcade games relevant.

A decade ago Steve Ranck and his friends worked at Midway. They released what I believe to be the greatest arcade racing game ever. You might have heard, or are possibly fans of Hydro Thunder as well. They left Midway shortly after to start up Swinging Ape Studios, which developed the console gem Metal Arms: Glitch in the System. They went their separate ways yet managed to stay in the industry and remain good friends. Almost 10 years to the date Hydro Thunder got a spiritual successor and I was lucky enough to be reporting the latest details.

It is almost funny how things go in cycles. A decade ago Team Fortress was the game of choice among many of the Team Hydro members. Care to guess what they enjoy playing on their free time today? A decade ago I was just getting involved with web pages and connecting that with videogames. I had a class in basic web authoring and had to do a project for my semester portfolio. I chose to do a fan site on Hydro Thunder. This allowed me to learn some basic Photoshop and video grabs to incorporate into the site. Of course this also gave me the excuse of playing the hell out of Hydro Thunder as part of my curriculum. For the couple of years that the site lasted I had written playthroughs of every level in the arcade as well as codes as they were first being discovered.

I sent an email to Midway to congratulate them on making such an incredible game. I also asked if it would be possible to interview the team that made it for the fan site. The e-mail was circulated internally and project lead Steve Ranck was down for an interview as was the majority of the team. I was blown away by the generosity and openness of the team and Midway.

It was my first request for an interview regarding videogames. Just my luck it was answered. That friendly gesture showed me that there were good people working behind the scenes. It motivated me to keep on writing and keep on asking for interviews.

Had I been turned down early on then chances are I wouldn't have written for PlanetTonyHawk.com, Capcom-Unity or even 1UP. I owe Steve and Team Hydro more thanks than you can imagine. This is why I was ecstatic when I heard the team was reunited to create a new boat racing game.

I contacted Specular Interactive about an interview and Steve Ranck who was now the President of the company replied. He remembered the days of the old Hydro Thunder Fan Site and was willing to conduct an interview. To give you a better sense of how things evolved over the years I am posting the original interviews with Team Hydro and starting tomorrow we'll take an in-depth look at H2Overdrive.

20 Questions with Team Hydro Thunder (conducted in 1999)

Team Hydro. Taken at P.F. Changs in San Diego, CA on the completion of Hydro Thunder. Top row from left: Gary Carbonel, Steve Ranck, Scott Goffman, Mike Starich, Andy Wilson. Bottom row from left: Orpheus Hanley, Dale Henderscheid, Brian Silva, Eric Browning. Not shown: Scott Patterson, Steve Kramer and John Stookey.

1. Let's have your name.

(see #2).

2. What position did you have in creating Hydro Thunder?

Steve Ranck - Lead Programmer / Project Lead

Eric Browning - Lead Artist

Mike Starich - Programmer

Scott Goffman - Lead 3D Artist

Brian Silva - Artist

Dale Henderscheid - Artist

Gary Carbonel - Artist

Andy Wilson - Artist

Orpheus Hanley - Music and Sound

3. What experience did you have with games before Hydro Thunder?

Steve - I've been designing and building games since I was a boy.

Eric - Came from Visual Concepts Entertainment in San Rafael, CA., Worked on John Madden Football for SNES and Genesis '94-'95 and the ill-fated '96 Playstation version. Before that, Clayfighter and a variety of SNES flops. My final project there was the original "Floigan Brothers" design with Brian Silva, who is also on the Hydro team.

Mike - Previous game (a puzzle game), Lose Your Marbles for Win95.

Scott - Mechwarrior 2 (intro & exit movies, wrapper art, cover art), Zork: Nemesis (intro movie, in-game art).

Dale - Some SNES and PSX.

Gary - Hydro Thunder is actually the first game I've worked on.

Andy - Worked as one of three artists on DOOM64, and a large portion of designing Troy Aikman Football for Super NES, and Sega Genisis.

4. What type of education did you get before joining Midway?

Steve - BSEE from California Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Eric - BA in Illustration from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.

Mike - Degree in Mathematics from California Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Scott - A Film degree from UCSB.

Dale - Art school.

Gary - I received my degree in Product design at Art Center in Pasadena. Watching sci-fi films (Aliens, Star Wars, etc.) really educated me in what the current trends are in entertainment design.

Andy - Honor graduate from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA.

5. Is this the first project the team is working on?

Steve - Yes. Looks like there'll be more, though.

6. What games inspired the development of Hydro Thunder?

Steve - Sega's Daytona.

7. What are your favorite games, for the PC, arcade or console?

Steve - PC: Team Fortress Classic, Half-Life; ARCADE: Hydro Thunder (really... no BS); CONSOLE: Zelda 64.

Eric - I love Zelda in all it's incarnations, Earthworm Jim, Skullmonkeys, Grim Fandango are a few favs. Metal Gear Solid I like but am stuck with that nasty Sniper Wolf.

Mike - I enjoy mainly console titles, with the Crash Bandicoot series ranking as my favorite game of recent time.

Scott - Half-Life (PC), Virtua Cop 2, Time Crisis II (arcade).

Dale - Half-life, Cycles for SGI.

Gary - I really enjoy playing Team Fortress on the PC. For the arcade, I enjoy shooters (House of the Dead 1 and 2, and Time Crisis).

Andy - For PC I would have to say any flight simulator that holds my attention for more than an hour is a favorite. In terms of arcade... Hydro Thunder (of course), House Of The Dead, and a small handfull of cabinets from the seventies and eighties. Console... Abe's Oddworld is well crafted, Star Fox 64, and Earth Worm Jim, are just a few favorites.

8. How many hours did you put into creating Hydro Thunder?

Steve - Some of us put in as many as 15 hours a day for two years straight. Weekends excluded (which is why we're still alive).

9. The reviews for Hydro Thunder have been favorable in many print and online magazines. How are you taking the publicity?

Steve - It's definitely a cool thing. But more rewarding than the press is all the emails we get from Hydro Thunder players around the world telling us how much they enjoy the game. Sounds cheesy, but it's true. It makes it worth the hard work.

10. What other hobbies do you have aside from videogaming?

Steve - SCI-FI movies and novels, taking apart and studying anything technical, dreaming up a better world.

Eric - Designing characters, playing with my 10 month old daughter Raelyn, making fun of my dogs.

Scott - 'Gator wrasslin.

Dale - Taxidermy.

Gary - I love to write short stories, play guitar and sing, sketch, work out, and practice martial arts.

Andy - My hobbies... Bass fishing, bass fishing and bass fishing.

11. What was your funniest moment when creating Hydro Thunder?

Steve - The 1998 Midway 4th of July party.

Eric - Either "SWEET JESUS!!" or "GO GO GO WE'RE FOLLOWING YOU!!" You had to be there.

Scott - When Dale went postal and tried to kill us all. Hilarity ensued.

Dale - There were some wacky moments adjusting ramp collision.

Gary - I work with a really goofy team so everyday had funny moments, but, I would have to say the funniest moment was the day we came up with Chum Dinger.

Andy - Funiest moment... almost all moments.

12. What one thing are you proud of in Hydro Thunder that you helped create?

Steve - If I had to pick just one thing it would have to be my SCLFX game engine.

Eric - The cabinet art, it's something I always wanted to do. Also, the church in Venice I'm proud of. The Cabinet art.

Mike - The networking (multiplayer) code.

Scott - The hidden "Nude Lara Croft" in the New York track.

Dale - Those little pointy things in Nile.

Gary - I am really pleased with the Far East track.

Andy - Boat texture maps.

13. During the long hours of production did the team ever loose its cool?

Steve - Sure. One guy even quit. But the rest of us really work well together and form a strong team.

14. What type of research did you do while making the game?

Steve - The team took a trip to Mission Bay in San Diego, CA to watch the Hydro races. We got pit passes and took tons of pictures and Orpheus recorded engine sounds. We'll have to do more "research" for future games, I'm sure.

15. What little or big details are you glad you created in the game?

Steve - The engine's lighting and water effects really give Hydro a unique, high-quality look.

Eric - The logo.

Scott - The polar bear animations in Arctic, the sharks in Ship Graveyard.

Gary - I love the animating vultures on the Nile track.

Andy - The creature at the end of Nile, the spinning torture room textures, and looks of the boats.

16. What one thing do you wish you could have added to the game?

Steve - 3D wakes behind the boats. I had them working at one point, but we didn't have the horsepower to keep them in and still do everything else we wanted to do.

Mike - A better Mighty Hull effect, we just ran out of time.

Scott - A better cabinet.

Dale - A small black ape in one of the tracks.

Gary - I wish I could've designed another secret boat.

Andy - More fantasy.

17. During development were there gameplay mechanics that didn't make it into the final version?

Steve - Not really. There were definitely things that we wanted to add that didn't make it, but none really revolved around gameplay. With the exception of MightyHull, gameplay ended up being as we always had intended it to be. I added MightyHull about 5 or 6 months before we shipped the game. It wasn't part of the original design.

18. From original idea to the finished product, how long did it take to create Hydro Thunder?

Steve - 2 years for some of us, a little less for most.

19. Do you have any input for the console conversions of Hydro Thunder?

Steve - The team reviews the conversions from time to time to comment on quality compared to the arcade version. That's about it.

20. Will there be a sequel to Hydro Thunder?

Steve - Maybe. Do you want one? What would you add?

A Quick Q&A with Steve Ranck (interview from late 1999)

1. Now that Hydro Thunder has been around for a while is the team changing it's name for the next project, or will it be "Team Hydro Thunder Presents"... a new game.

- We'll always be known as Team Hydro. Hydro Thunder was our first game together and so it makes sense that we keep it, regardless of the types of projects we're working on.

2. How much vacation time did you get after the completion of Hydro Thunder?

- The artists got 2 months, but the programmers only got like a month. I think I could have taken 6 months off and still not recovered completely!

3. How much work or traveling did you have to do to promote Hydro Thunder?

- Let's see, England for the ATE show, Las Vegas for the ASI show, Los Angeles for the E3 show, and Chicago for the Hydro Thunder National Championship. Next time around, I'm hoping to promote our next game in Hawaii.

4. How much feedback/ praise have you received from people around America (or the world) on Hydro Thunder?

- Support from Hydro fans has been more than any of us had expected. We receive many emails every week from gamers mostly just wanting to say how much they like the game. For the team, this is what it's all about! It's what makes the long hours totally worth it.

5. In the sequel to Hydro Thunder will there be enough changes to warrant an entirely new racing game experience, separating it from the original?

- I think it'll blow you guys away! You just wait and see, hehehehe... In fact, keep visiting Noe's site (this site) because I'm going to give him a picture of one of our new boats for him to post. This will be the first picture ever released on Hydro Thunder 2.

6. Have you been taking suggestions for Hydro Thunder 2 from this site as well as e-mail from around the world into consideration for the sequel?

- We're always open to ideas. Of course, not every suggestion will make it into the game. The strangest request we got was from a kid who wanted knives on the boats. Huh? Interesting idea, but I just can't see it happening.

7. I know you are not allowed to talk about the new project you are working on, but if you could give arcade gamers a few words to help build suspense what would you say?

- A few words? Hmmmm. How about lawsuit, fired, Bobbett. Oh wait, those are the words the Midway attorneys used to build suspense in my future if I were to say anything. At the risk of them actually pursuing any of that, I'll just say that it's a racing game on steroids. And leave it at that.

8. Are there any new or leaving members from the original Hydro Thunder team?

- At the end of Hydro, we had one programmer leave to go to Naughty Dog. He was the guy who wrote our sound system and AI stuff. With Hydro 2, we've hired a new programmer, Jason Gregory, who's been kicking serious ass. He's definitely part of Team Hydro and we couldn't be happier. Aside from that, everyone else is present and accounted for.

9. Has the team looked into developing directly for any of the home console systems? (both current and upcoming machines)

- We've discussed the idea of porting Hydro 2 to Playstation2 or X-Box after we're done with the arcade version. But seriously, that's a long time from now. We're just concentrating on the arcade version for now.

10. Does the team want to focus solely on Hydro Thunder racing games or would it like to branch out into car racing or a different genre?

- See Question #7 :) Thanks, Noe, for developing and maintaining such a kickass web site for Hydro Thunder! And thanks to all of your visitors for the great suggestions. It's good to be in touch with you gamers and hear what you'd like to see in a game!?? Go Go Go !!!-

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