T&C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage (NES) Playthrough
368A playthrough of LJN's 1988 license-based action game for the NES, Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage.
This video shows my reaching Round 26 before getting a game over. There is no ending and once you've gone far enough the stages start to repeat. I'm playing as the Tiki Man/Kool Kat team.
In one of the more unusual instances of brand-licensing for an NES game, this Atlus-produced cart isn't based on a TV or movie tie-in. Rather, Wood & Water Rage is a game based on the characters that appeared on t-shirts sold by Town & Country Surf Designs, a Hawaiian surfboard and clothing manufacturer and retail operation.
It's a multi-event "sports" game in the same vein as California Games (https://youtu.be/inOOO8ZQHM0) and Caveman Games (https://youtu.be/dzgofv9ihis), but this one features skateboarding and surfing. Either event can be played in isolation or in the "Wood and Water Rage" mode that alternates between the two.
The skateboarding sections take place on a cluttered up deathtrap of a street. You have to weave around stacks of boxes, animals, oil slicks, and toys as you collect coins, grind rails, and use ramps to launch yourself over giant holes in the road.
The surfing sections have you pulling tricks for points as you fight to stay ahead of the wave while avoiding birds, fish, and characters floating by on inner tubes.
The skateboarding is my favorite of the two modes. The controls are easy and simple, the objective is clear, and it's fun to see your scores improve as you learn the track variations. That pink sky sets a nice mood, too.
But somehow, the surfing event manages to be even more frustrating than the one in California Games. The game doesn't make it clear what it expects you to do, and the manual's explanation of the controls is competely useless. As a kid, I struggled so much with this mode, and it wasn't until years later that lucked into figuring it out enough to make some headway.
For anyone that never figured it out, here's my take on it. The stage is an auto-scroller and the main goal is to just survive until the end. To keep ahead of the wave, first, hold A to build momentum and hold up to move up the wall of water. Then, while still holding A, hit down to pick up speed, and when you're about halfway down the screen, hit right to propel yourself forward. You can also jump the wave by holding up and B at the top of the wall which is useful for avoiding the animals. It's fairly easy to pass the event once you know how to do it, so hopefully that explanation will spare some poor soul a bit of torment.
Wood & Water Rage seems to be a fairly polarizing game. There are many, like me, who absolutely love the game for its awesome skateboarding levels and the killer soundtrack, and there are many who utterly loathe it because of the ridiculously unintuitive surfing controls.
The skateboarding alone was always enough to keep me hooked, though. I had no idea what T&C was as a kid, but it didn't matter. I loved the game anyway.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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