H2Overdrive Vs Hydro Thunder Vs Hydro Thunder Hurricane

Channel:

MrThunderwing

Subscribers:

22,600

Published on February 14, 2020 10:30:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AESQMAr70A

Game:

Hydro Thunder Hurricane (2010)

Duration: 5:39

8,461 views

95

A 5 way split-screen comparison between the original Hydro Thunder, Hydro Thunder Hurricane (the actual sequel to Hydro Thunder) and its ‘spiritual sequel’ H2Overdrive. The original Hydro Thunder was a Motorboat arcade racing game, released by Midway in 1999. Hydro Thunder Hurricane was later released for the Xbox 360 in 2010 on Xbox Live Arcade, after Microsoft Studios acquired the rights to the Hydro Thunder name shortly before Midway Games was bought by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment after going bankrupt. H2Overdrive was developed by Specular Interactive which consisted of former Midway San Diego employees, along with Hydro Thunder creator Steve Ranck and was published by Raw Thrills in 2009 and in many ways actually plays more similarly to the first game than it's actual sequel, which was developed by Vector Unit.

I go into a lot more detail about this in the description of another video here: https://youtu.be/C0bZLtr287Q

So, you might be wondering why I decided to use three videos of the original Hydro Thunder on the the same track. Well, gentle viewer, I shall tell you... In trying to not only pick tracks for these comparisons that are similar, I've also been trying to use boats that are similar too and Atomic Avenger in H2Overdrive is a dead ringer for Rad Hazard from Hydro Thunder. I was sort of forgetting though that it's by far the hardest boat in the game to use... I was struggling to place higher than 3rd using it on Lake Powell in Hurricane, but I was OK with that, as the AI go to Expert setting when you use the Expert boats. What was weird though, was that I couldn't get higher than third on Lake Powell in the original game using it either.

What's weird about that, is that I've placed first lots of times on Lake Powell before, but for whatever reason, after over 2 hours of play I couldn't even get in view of the 2nd and 1st place boats using Rad Hazard. What's REALLY weird about that though, is that despite the difficult handling of Rad Hazard, I was starting to get faster times on the leaderboard than my previous fastest runs on the stage - but those were runs where I got into first easily, despite them being slower.

So, after over 2 hours of not being able to place higher than third and not even seeing the 2nd and 1st place boats I thought 'Fuck. This.' and gave Thresher a try, my go to boat, along with Tidal Blade, and I immediately got first place on my first attempt using it (and in the process shaved about 4 seconds off my previous best attempt). So, yeah, really weird... I don't know what was up with that, some sort of weird egregious rubber banding AI issue I can only assume. I wanted to use the Rad Hazard footage as that was the whole idea in the first place. But then I thought I'd also include the Thresher footage next to it, to show that, y'know, I can ACTUALLY get first on this stage. For the sake of balance, I then added a really old video run of me doing Lake Powell using the Chum Dinger boat on the other side. What's interesting here is that in that run I still managed to get a first place, even though my total time in that run is actually 1 second slower than my one using Rad Hazard (and several others) where I couldn't get higher than 3rd. WTF...?

Anyhoo, all 3 are great games. Hydro Thunder here is the Eurocom PC port. H2Overdrive was being played on the, at the time, most recent version of Teknoparrot, which now is actually the superior version to the J-Config arcade loader and is almost perfect here. In the time since I made this, it's actually been updated again and apparently all the last little kinks have now been ironed out. Hydro Thunder Hurricane is being played on Xbox 360. The two Hydro Thunder games are both running at 30fps, H2overdrive is running at 60fps.

#HydroThunderHurricane #H2Overdrive #HydroThunder

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