Wave Race: Blue Storm - All GameCube Games

[Cube]

Similar to my N64 playthrough, I will also be looking at every GameCube game, tied in with the follow-on from N64 Magazine, NCG Magazine.

The GameCube was the first console I got on launch day, with my mum driving to the store after work. The black one I wanted was out of stock, so I settled for what I thought was blue (only to later find out was purple). With it I got Star Wars: Rogue Leader and Extreme-G 3.

While I played many games I loved, there were loads of games I read about in NGC Magazine that I wish I could have tried, which is why I want to go through every GameCube game. My rules are lax with completing every game, just like with N64 games. I’ll be aiming to complete single player games (using cheats if I’m getting really fed up – this is purely for fun), and trying to get a feel for things like sports games, but if a game is feeling immensely tedious or frustrating, then I'll move on, but I'll make sure I have tried enough of it.

As there aren’t many significant leaked prototypes for the GameCube, I will include a few bonus non-GameCube titles that have some connection to the N64 or GameCube. I’ll explain those when I get to them.

I will be also marking any modifications I make to the games, such as texture packs. There are three kinds of widescreen modifications.

• Widescreen Hack: The emulator renders outside the usual view.
• Widescreen Code: An Action Replay or Gekko code adds widescreen support to a game.
• Widescreen Patch: The actual game file is modified to support widescreen.

Luigi's Mansion

Luigi won a haunted mansion? And Mario’s trapped inside? You have to find him!

• JP release: 14th September 2001
• NA release: 18th November 2001
• EU release: 3rd May 2002
• Developer: Nintendo
• Publisher: Nintendo
• NGC Magazine Score: 90%
• Mods Used: Widescreen Code, Texture Pack

For a launch title, Luigi’s Mansion was an odd choice. It’s a child friendly horror themed game starring the brother of Mario, and isn’t the kind of game you see people buying consoles for. I got a GameCube on launch day (with the EU’s later but bigger launch line-up) and didn’t buy any of Nintendo’s own games with it. I kind of dismissed Luigi’s Mansion altogether, although much later I played Luigi’s Mansion 3. Going back to the original, I’ve realised I definitely missed out.

In Luigi’s Mansion, Luigi has won a mansion in a competition. Mario, being suspicious, checks it out first and ends up disappearing. While exploring the mansion, Luigi bumps into Professor E. Gadd, a ghost hunter that passes on his special ghost hoover to Luigi, as he feels too old to do the physical work himself. It’s up to Luigi to capture all the ghosts and rescue his brother.

Going straight from Nintendo 64 games to Luigi’s Mansion, the leap in graphics is incredible. There’s so much detail to Luigi and the entire world feels alive and animated. The detail on the Resident Evil-style door unlocking animations (which can be unlocked) is a marvel when hands were extremely rouge throughout the N64’s entire life. Lighting is also a key concept of the game, with Luigi’s torch being a weapon to stun ghosts and casting great shadows.

Luigi’s Mansion follows a tidy room-by-room structure. When you enter a room, the lights will be off. You’ll need to find the ghosts in the room and defeat them (sometimes they’re already in the open, other times it takes a bit more effort). The lights will turn on, but it’s not over: there’s a boo hidden in every room (although you can’t find them in the starting rooms until you accidentally free them all), and you’ll need to find and defeat them – although they can also flee, so you’ll need to follow them through the mansion to capture them.

The game’s true brilliance is in the portrait ghosts, which you’ll encounter throughout the mansion. These will often ignore Luigi until you figure out how to startle them. You’ll have to analyse the room and their actions to solve the “puzzle” of each book. There are some hints available, you can use the Game Boy Horror to scan rooms in a first person mode and scan the ghost for a vague clue, or read books you find throughout the mansion for some hidden details. They don’t tell you the answer, but instead guide you into thinking up the right idea.

As you interact with the environment and defeat ghosts, you’ll find money, coins and gems scattered around. These don’t provide upgrades, but are instead linked to a scoring system. Even if you don’t care about scores, it’s still compulsive to try and get as much as you can, searching every nook and cranny to find hidden secrets. The notes also flutter around beautifully, thanks to the game’s wonderful cloth physics, and it’s just lovely to see a shower of money.

The ranking system was Nintendo’s plan for the main criticism of Luigi’s Mansion at the game: the short length of it, so a way to encourage replays was added into the game. As a big launch title, I can understand the complaints, but playing it now and the shortness of the game is actually in its favour. There’s also a slighter harder mode unlocked at the end of the game, although Nintendo weren’t entirely happy with what made it to the game at launch.

However, the GameCube was released a lot later in Europe, which gave Nintendo a bit of extra time to tweak things. The Hidden Mansion is mirrored in the PAL version of the game, and retains the original darkness of the original (the normal mode was brightened up a bit in Europe). In this version, harder ghosts appear earlier, there are more ghosts in some rooms and some of the boss fights are tweaked, which gives a much bigger incentive to play through this version as it’s more than just ghosts with more HP.

Luigi’s Mansion truly is a wonderful game that still stands up today. It’s full of charm, especially with Luigi nervously humming the wonderful theme tune, and the entire mansion feels like a living place. While it was a poor choice for a launch game, it’s still a great game.

Fave

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Put simply, Luigi’s Mansion is a living cartoon. Yes, we probably said much of the same thing about Super Mario 64 all those years ago – but the difference with Luigi’s is the detail. When you see Luigi shiver with fright as another Boo appears from nowhere behind him, watch a ghost stretch and deform as it’s sucked into the hoover’s nozzle, glimpse a golden coin bouncing and spinning as it skitters across the floor it hits you that – in the right hands – a console of GameCube’s power can create the kind of visuals that actually add real personality to the game.

Mark Green, NGC Issue #67

Remake or remaster?

It’s a massive shame that only Luigi’s Mansion 2 was remastered for the Switch. It really should have been a combination of both games. And even if one were to be chosen, this one is much closer to Luigi’s Mansion 3.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to buy Luigi’s Mansion, but it will be playable via the Switch 2 NSO service.

[Glen-i]

15 minutes ago, Cube said:

and isn’t the kind of game you see people buying consoles for.

Oi! Speak for yourself!

Luigi's Mansion is the only one in the series I ever bothered to finish. I think it's shorter length helps it there. I found the other two games too long.
The European Hidden Mansion is so strange, it's so much harder then the other versions, and the third boss even has a completely new mechanic that's not used anywhere else!

It's also the only way you can get an A rank, BTW. Good luck!

[Dcubed]

Luigi's Mansion is the best classic Resident Evil game.

Phenomenal game... that came out at the wrong time.  When everyone wanted a huge "proper" Super Mario 64 sequel, they instead get an intentionally short n' sweet and highly replayable adventure game.  It was a game that flied completely in the face of industry trends, and that was not by accident.  Nintendo were making a concieted effort, even back as far as 2001, to avoid the current industry trend of chucking more and more gameplay length and production values into their titles; with ballooning budgets and more and more FMVs; as evidenced by the many early GCN era interviews of the day (like this one).  Games like Pikmin also followed the same philosophy, of making shorter games that were designed to be highly replayable.

And really, that works completely to Luigi's Mansion's benefit.  It's a very replayable game; that encourages repeat playthroughs where you continue to get better and better ranks.  It's a big part of why I keep coming back to it, and why I enjoyed it much moreso than its 3DS sequel (Though LM3 does manage to top this one).

BTW, @Cube, I'm disappointed that you didn't make any mention of the excellent 3DS remake, which makes good on the original GCN version's promise of stereoscopic 3D support! Not even a mention of the GCN's hidden S3D support? Or the S3D screen that was shown at E3 2002 and never made public knowledge until a sudden Iwata Asks 3DS interview 9 whole years later!?

This little puppy right here.  Under our noses, the whole time!

FOR SHAME CUBE!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited yesterday at 11:49 AM by Dcubed

[Cube]

Wave Race: Blue Storm
 

Lay wake to your opponents in the perilous waters of this fierce competition.

• JP release: 14th September 2001
• NA release: 18th November 2001
• EU release: 3rd May 2002
• Developer: Nintendo
• Publisher: Nintendo
• NGC Magazine Score: 91%
• Mods Used: Widescreen Code

Wave Race 64 showed how water physics could work in 3D, and how the movement in the water can affect controlling a Jet Ski. Blue Storm, on the other hand, focuses more on just how stunning water can look, being a wonderful technical showcase of what the water can do. There’s so much detail not just in the water itself, but under the water and the surrounding area as well, such as an immense amount of different wildlife. It all looks absolutely stunning in motion.

|The major feature added to this is the weather, with different strengths of rain up to a thunderous storm. These don’t just change how the courses look, but also alter the waves on them as well. So you’ll not only have to deal with the course’s natural waves, but how the weather and other racers affect them as well. This does make the game extra challenging, though, and the CPU racers don’t tend to have the same issues you do.

One issue, though, is that there doesn’t seem like there is much new to the game at all. There are only seven courses and while only one is a complete remake of a Wave Race 64 course, some of the others use the same kind of style: Ocean City Harbour is a lot like Twilight City, Arctic Bay is like Glacier Coast and Aspen Lake is a lot like Drake Lake. While the tracks are different, the close theming to the original make Blue Storm feel a lot smaller. Aspen Lake comes across as the worst, too, with the original Drake Lake having an ethereal beauty to it with a fog that slowly lists, which is lost with the new weather system.

One thing that’s a bit harder to quantify is the “style” of the game. Something just feels a little bit less exciting than Wave Race 64. The announcers don’t seem very enthusiastic and there’s just a muted feeling all around instead of what should be high-octane energy. Parts of the game feel oddly calm, such as the lovely, soothing loading screens where you can mess with riddles in the water. It’s rather jarring.

Blue Storm is a really well made racer, but it lacks the impact of Wave Race 64.

Great

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For as long as the one-player mode lasts, it’s almost a perfect racing game – it always was, which is why the US-based development team wisely chose not to mess around with it in any kind of fundamental way. That’s not to say there aren’t one or two things we wish they hadn’t touched. The announcers (a different one for each of the eight riders) are very irritating. Miss a buoy and they’ll explain the rules of the game in a very patronising manner, even if you’re in first place on the last race of Expert mode. And they pronounce ‘buoy’ as ‘boo-ee’, which is just about the most annoying thing anyone can say in an American accent. The volume control is tucked away in the options menu.

Martin Kitts, NGC Magazine #67

Remake or remaster?

I think we’re due a new game.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to play Wave Race: Blue Storm.

[Glen-i]

8 minutes ago, Cube said:

The announcers don’t seem very enthusiastic and there’s just a muted feeling all around instead of what should be high-octane energy.

But that's the best thing about him!

"The Turbo is wasted on you..."

Edited 2 hours ago by Glen-i

[Dcubed]

Wave Race Blue Storm is a good sequel to the N64 game, but it is wildly different from a tonal perspective.  Unlike the N64 game (which was made by EAD), Blue Storm was made by the American 1st party studio Nintendo Software Technology; a newly minted studio founded in 1998 and housed inside NOA's offices.  Comprised primarily of graduates from the Digipen School of Technology, it saw production oversight from a number of former EAD/R&D1 staff members, notably including Shigeki Yamashiro; who served as director on Wave Race Blue Storm and previously worked as a programmer and producer within EAD.

This team really hit the ground running, releasing no less than four games in their first year (2000); including Bionic Commando: Elite Forces, Crystalis GBC, Ridge Racer 64 and Pokemon Puzzle League (licensed from Intelligent Systems, as a reskin of the cancelled Panel De Pon 64).  What's notable about all of these four games? They're all licensed titles.  NST worked very differently from Nintendo's Japanese-led studios, operating more like a traditional western game developer; and this philosophy bled into their games as well, both for better and for worse.

Wave Race Blue Storm was their true big break though, and a huge step up in terms of developmental priority.  This wasn't some small licensed title for their fresh graduates to cut their teeth on, this was a launch title for Nintendo's next gen cubic console and a direct sequel to a fairly popular and beloved EAD-made title.  It was so important that EAD had even lent them the original source code for Wave Race 64 and instructed them to straight up reuse the physics engine from that title.  This proved to be an excellent decision, as WR64's water physics were (and still are!) a triumph of engineering and remain, even 25 years on, the best simulation of watercraft physics that the industry has ever seen.

Given that context, we start to see why Blue Storm was designed the way it was.  On one hand, this was an American-made game, done in the "American Way".  This meant that EA was their competition, and the happy-go-lucky easy going vibes of the original Wave Race simply wouldn't fly; instead, they focused on trying to make the game "cool".  This meant techno & R&B music, and a much edgier vibe were in.  On the other hand, this was the sequel to a beloved EAD Japanese-made title, and so they were never going to stray too far away from what made the original game so great.  The big new gameplay twist (the Turbo mechanic) was actually a mandate from EAD, and a direct suggestion from Miyamoto himself; and these fresh-faced graduates were never going to say no to their boss.  Luckily for them, their boss was Nintendo and Miyamoto, which meant that this new mechanic was going to be fucking fantastic; and the absolute right decision to make.  This was no time for NST to start developing an ego, that would come later on.

Likewise, a team of fresh-faced graduates were never going to steer too far away in terms of course design either; going so far as to include a direct remake of one of WR64's most iconic courses (Southern Island).  As such, it's no wonder that the course archetypes veer very closely to their N64 counterparts.

You know what though? NST did a bang-up job here! While many people bemoan the tonal shift and how this game can err dangerously close to becoming a remake of the N64 game, Blue Storm plays like a dream and has excellent level design.  It makes excellent use of the Gamecube's greater processing power to make the courses more dynamic than could ever be done with WR64; with crates falling from ships and causing waves, to wildly varying weather conditions, to killer whales jumping out of the sea and causing tsunamis that you have to race through.  All of these real-time physics greatly alter the way you have to tackle each course and all of the new mechanics work perfectly within the context of the game; and while most of those new mechanics were mandates from down on high? It doesn't take away the incredibly accomplishment that they pulled off with this game.  It's hard to believe that a sophomore effort from a group of new university graduates could turn out a game this good, but that's exactly what they pulled off.

They say that Nintendo has the midas touch when it comes to working with outside developers? Turns out that Nintendo had already proven their golden hands with NST well before they started working with other western developers.

While it's tragic what later happened to NST over Project HAMMER, it's at least comforting that NST have recently just started to find their footing once more within the last 5 years or so on Switch.  It took a long time, but perhaps they do still have a bright future ahead of them after all.

Wave Race Blue Storm is not a perfect sequel, but it's a sequel with a distinct personality of its own.  And that is perhaps exemplified most perfectly by the hidden Sarcastic Announcer cheat that was hidden for more than 10 years before it was finally found!

Edited just now by Dcubed