Wave Race is only the fourth Nintendo 64 game to hit the Japanese market since the system's release oh, 3 months ago. Wave Race is a good game with excellent graphics and refined controls and gameplay. I will explain why I am rating it good overall and not great or excellent in the following text. Wave Race's premise has you racing against other water sports heroes in a track that is outlined by floating barriers. The difference between racing on water as opposed to land is the dynamics of your vessel as you cut the waves and splash water out and about. Whereas land is solid and offers little resistance to your vehicle, the water gives you buoyancy and offers some resistance as you cleave through the surf. The control pattern is different from land based racing games and this is where Wave Race is different by a bit from land racing game. Since you're in water, you will have to account for that by turning a bit more than you would in a land based game if you want to navigate a tricky turn due to water resistance. The look and effect of the water is very realistic and you can almost feel the water bob up and down as guide your racer through the courses. There are also great translucency effects when you are going very fast and then hit a deep part of the water. You will watch as the water washes over your vehicle and cascades down, streaming very water-like. The game is played on a 'track' where you are competing against 4-5 other racers. In addition to keeping an eye on those guys, you also have to weave in and out of buoys or targets that are littered along the track. The buoys have signs that point to the left or to the right and you will be penalized if you do not go past them in the right direction. For example, if you go past a buoy on the right side when it is clearly pointing to the left, you will be penalized for your goof. Some of the buoys are placed very close together on the track so you will have to go past one buoy and then bank hard on your racer to make it past the next buoy in the right direction. You are aided in this by the ability to lean left or right (with the help of the N64 pad's top L+R buttons) to increase the sharpness of your turns. The water helps you keep your balance since there were some times when my racer leaned at a 90 degree angle and did not tip over. Water adds a new dimension to the control and capabilities of a racing game and I was pleased to see that it was implemented well. In the end however, Wave Race is a standard racing game with some beautiful water effects and excellent controls. There were times when it was difficult to see what was coming up in the track due to the lack of any clear cut retainers and it was very easy to lose your way if you accidentally went outside of the track. In the first level, I was beached like a whale at some points and had to humbly make my way back to the race with the persisitent penalty signal shining in my face. These are only minor flaws however and they should not harm your enjoyment of an otherwise fun and great looking racing game. I hope that Nintendo will get their software schedule up and running on a more consistent basis so that the recent USA release of the Nintendo 64 does not die in terms of sales like the Japanese release did in the ensuing months this past summer. I understand their policy of releasing only top notch games which means only a few every year but people like to see variety and activity in product releases. There are roughly 6 titles per system this week on the import side for the Sony and Saturn and this will only increase as we get further entrenched into the 32-bit (and 64) gaming market. It will be a while before the Nintendo hits this type of schedule but when that time comes, we should have a lot of great software on our greedy hands.

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