Hydro Thunder (Nintendo 64) Walkthrough

Hey, you found a secret!

Okay, no you didn't, but here's a game that's been on my mind for quite some time now. I had recently experienced this game for the first time on the PC, and saw that the Nintendo 64 port had minimal amounts of footage around YouTube, so I figured I'd go ahead and fix that! This is a fun, though really brutal at times, racing game made by Midway in 1999 for arcades, with this port releasing a year after. This isn't the best version around, but it does have the unique trait of being the only home version of the game to support 4 player multiplayer (however, I may advise against playing it that way -- it turns into Hydro Molasses with four people thanks to the excessive lag).

Note: I must apologize about the really bad lighting on this video. In some tracks like Nile Adventure it's near impossible to see in places; sadly, this happened on the capture level and I wasn't able to fix it in post. Trust me when I say this looks a lot better than this video makes it out to be.

All failed attempts were edited out so this video looks like a perfect straight run through.

Stage-by-stage comments

Easy courses: So, I'll just admit, for the earlier courses I didn't bother getting first place if I still reached the completion requirement. The first three courses really are nothing special; my apologies if I missed any secrets or shortcuts on these courses.

Medium Courses: Again, not much to say.

Expert Courses: NY Disaster and Ship Graveyard took several tries for me to be able to do well. Since coming in first is mandatory on these courses, you absolutely have to take all the shortcuts.

Bonus courses: Nearly all of these except Nile Adventure gave me some sort of trouble, especially Castle Von Dandy. I had one almost-win on the latter but was overtaken at the very last second, hence the presence of another score by me on the high score list.

After all that is finished, I went ahead and showed off some gameplay of each of the four bonus boats (and also showed one of the shortcuts I missed). These boats aren't particularly great for actually playing competitively but they're a nice bonus reward.

Enjoy the walkthrough!