Hydro Thunder Hurricane Vs Riptide GP Renegade - Storming Asgard/Firewater

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MrThunderwing

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Published on June 10, 2019 1:27:07 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTQc1JLhThA

Game:

Hydro Thunder Hurricane (2010)

Duration: 4:01

727 views

11

With apologies to George RR Martin...

If the arcade racer is gradually changing from a mainstream of popular culture from the past, to a niche gaming genre enjoyed by only a few older gamers like myself (and a handful of younger gamers with an interest in all things retro), then the power boat/jet-ski based racer must be seen as perhaps the nichest of niche branches of the genre as a whole (closely followed by futuristic racers of the WipEout and F-Zero ilk).

The original Hydro Thunder was a game I'd never played in the arcade, but I picked up a copy of it at the same time I bought my Dreamcast after hearing good things about it. And, oh boy, it certainly didn't disappoint. Coming off the back of the PS1 era as I was, Hydro Thunder's arcade quality bright and colourful visuals absolutely blew me away, combined with it's fun over the top gameplay and wacky stages on top of a solid 2 player mode.

When the Xbox 360 exclusive sequel came out, Hydro thunder Hurricane, I actually ended up picking up a secondhand Microsoft console right near the end of its life cycle, purely for that one game. It equally didn't disappoint, turning the visuals up to 11 and adding in a load of equally outlandish stages and environments, whilst managing to keep the core gameplay intact (I miss the hull crusher though...). An arcade spiritual successor to Hydro Thunder, as Microsoft now owned the Hydro Thunder IP, was released back in 2009 called H2Overdrive that was developed by Raw Thrills (I say spiritual successor as I believe that Raw Thrills is comprised of ex-Midway staff members). I've never played it, but it looks great fun and frustratingly remains arcade only at present, with no prospect of a home port looming on the horizon...

Riptide GP Renegade is an absolutely brilliant budget priced game created by Vector Unit, the same guys who did Hydro Thunder Hurricane. It really does feel like another spiritual Hydro thunder psuedo-sequel, with all the sort of crazy and outlandish trackside elements that you'd expect to see in a classic Midway (or Sega) racer from the 90's, particularly as it's a futuristic jet-ski game.

Both games look great. Riptide benefits from the additional power of running on more advanced hardware than the 360, my PS4, and it runs at 60fps versus Hydro Thunder Hurricane's 30fps. I've never really had an issue with Hydro thunder Hurricane only running at 30fps (surprising really, as I am a bit of frame rate snob), but side-by-side like HTH looks noticeably chuggier than Riptide GP. The later released PC version of HTH does run at 60fps, but is apparently graphically sub-optimal in other ways when compared to the 360 version (or so I've been told). I've never tried it myself as it needs Windows 8 as a minimum to work on.

Oh and there are a couple of absolutely thumpin' DnB tunes in Riptide GP Renegade tool! Nice.

I uploaded this video to my Google drive to import into YouTube (at some point) awhile ago, and this has suffered from the issue I've been having for well over 6 months now of none of the under 2K resolution options showing up in my 4K uploads. The only reason I upscaled the video into 4K in the first place was to stop YouTube compressing it so much after processing, something that it does to any 1080p upload of mine no matter how good the quality of the raw file. If you're having buffering issues with the video, try it on your phone in the YouTube app instead. Whatever Youtube is breaking on the desktop version of the video doesn't seem to be affecting the app versions, where all the correct resolutions will show up.

#H2Overdrive #RiptideGP #HydroThunder

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