
The first star would have to be the boats and the different designs. I spent hours trying to get past them and I think that I am pretty good at racing games. The game starts getting difficult on the medium tracks. If you finish in first place on all of the hard tracks, you will open up bonus tracks and boats.

You must finish in the top two on all three of these tracks to unlock the hard tracks. If you finish in the top three on all three of the tracks, you unlock three medium tracks and three medium boats. There are three easy tracks and three easy boats that you can select. The game is broken out into four different racing categories and you must start at the first (easy) to unlock the next category (medium). Hell, I would memorize a track and race it 15-20 times more before I would beat it. You will not sit down and finish this game in one or two gaming sessions. This is the sign of a good racing game in my eyes. It is not quite difficult to the point of frustration but it is difficult to the point of wanting to play it again and again to just win one more race. This game has to be one of the most difficult racers I have played in a long time. If you are looking for a challenging racing game, look no further. Locations include Lake Powell in Utah, a lost island complete with tropical settings and exploding volcanos, the Arctic Circle where you get to pull a Titanic and dodge icebergs, the Greek Islands, Venice, the Far East where you race in China and an awesome ship graveyard where military battleships have long been laid to rest. There will be a minimum of nine straightforward tracks, a couple secret ones and possibly two loop tracks. At this point you can bash your opponents as much as you want. During the Mighty Hole, your boat will flash white and for a time you will be invincible. There is also a special boost called the Mighty Hole performed by simply holding turbos for a while.

The boosts are controlled by a meter, which can be extended if Balloon icons are picked up. The other boats may not be very fast to start, but really cook when hitting a boost. Some boats are incredibly fast from the start, but do not utilize the hydro boosts M as well as others. Cool stunts can be performed by hitting turbos as you are pulling back on the wheel. You either push the wheel in to go faster, or pull it toward you to slow down. The steering is controlled by an almost airplane-style wheel.
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As you advance, you get into faster vehicles like the Hydro Boats, and you learn how to use waves to get to boosts hanging in the air or to jump to a higher placement. In the Beginner level, your vehicle is very stable. Unlike some games where a ramped-up difficulty simply means harder competitors, HT offers more control over your boat. HT has three difficulty levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced. This leads into the levels of difficulty. There are also a few secret boats, one of which will be a hovercraft, and another is a concept speed boat created by the team. What looks to be the ultimate boat sim focuses on three types of boats: Catamarans (a cool speed boat with two pontoons), Super Boats (your basic V-hull power boat) and Hydro Boats (those awesome two-pound boats that always look like they're about to flip over). Most "boat simulators" put you in the cockpit of a stationary object as tons of sprites and backgrounds come racing toward you. "Even though they say on the box they use realistic physics, nothing stands out." He's right. "I have looked at several boat simulators, mostly on the PC," states Steve Ranck, head designer. Hydro Thunder is the result of 18 months of hard Midway's San Diego team, this game is the ultimate in super boats-an area of racing mostly overlooked in the arcade industry.
