Wave Race 64

Why I bought it: This was given to my brothers and me as a Christmas present to go along with our first home console, Nintendo 64. For those interested, we also received NBA Hangtime and Cruisin' USA. Christmas 1997 was definitely my favorite Christmas ever.

Thoughts: I debated on whether to play this game on the Nintendo 64 or my Wii Virtual Console. Though the Nintendo 64 graphics look like absolute dog shit on my flat-panel television, I wanted to be able to use that Nintendo 64 controller. In retrospect, that probably made this game much harder than it needed to be. For those of you who don't remember, the single joystick on the Nintendo 64 is incredibly loose. Combine that with the really responsive handling of these Jet Skis and what you get is a game that feels broken. Thankfully, I eventually discovered (after about an hour) that you could customize the sensitivity of your controls. After that realization, the game became much less difficult and much better. The concept of this game is simple enough. You race Jet Skis against racers on a circuit of 6-8 races, depending on what difficulty you select. When I got to the character selection screen, I was greeted with only four characters to choose from. Still, I was not disappointed, because apparently my brothers and I decided to change their names. Fittingly enough, considering it was 1997 and none of us had very sophisticated senses of humor, we named them "Biatch", "Horse Shit", "Hugh Gass" and "Unlce F-ck" (I'm blaming Ryan). Apparently, we did not feel that spelling out fuck was appropriate. Anyway, Horse Shit was a blonde female, Biatch was an African American, Hugh Gass was a fat white man and Uncle Fuck reminded me of Mark Wahlberg.

I began the first race and quickly realized that you have certain buoys that you must either pass on the right or left (much like Slalom Skiing). Trying to navigate buoys while taking blind, sharp corners proved to be difficult, but it didn't ruin the game. Also, you could easily execute tricks like barrel rolls and flips. However, these tricks usually just caused me to crash and lose a race. After about two hours, I was able to complete the 6 circuit cup on hard difficulty and retire this game for good. Though it took me two hours, a good racer could complete the entirety of the circuit in about 12 minutes.

I remember as a kid I mostly just did practice in which I could do as many tricks as I wanted without having to worry about racing. Though I remember being able to do tons of tricks, in reality you can only do about four. It entertained me then, but the racing in itself is somewhat uninspired.

Should I have bought it: I am glad my parents bought this for my brothers and me. Granted, I believe they only bought it for us because it was one of three games at Target that offered multiplayer, but still. This game was a big part of my childhood and I am glad that I was finally able to complete it.