Today we’re doing pretty well, first the Nicktoon racing game and now Power Boat by IMOtion (InJoy Motion). Of course Power Boat is one game that we have discussed before – I saw a video of the game in action on a very tiny screen at ASI but I wasn’t able to find out much more on the game until recently. We saw the game at the GTI 2008 expo last week where it has gone under a heavy revision from what you will see here, which includes the cabinet and from what I know, the gameplay as well (they have been working on fine tuning it and making the game more fast paced. You will notice from the video that the game features power-ups and pretty good graphics, hopefully it shows through in this Vimeo video. The game has 10 different boats to choose from and courses in Russia, Greece and the Carribean Sea.
I should just reiterate again in case you didn’t want to read all of the above THIS IS AN EARLIER VERSION OF THE GAME AND THE FINAL VERSION WILL BE A LITTLE DIFFERENT. The first part shows the early gameplay (and you’ll notice the choppy framerate which I have been told should be fixed in the final version) and then shows the motion features in a prototype cabinet (that looks to have been scrapped from last weeks pics). Fortunately I may be able to see the game in action soon, when I do I’ll be sure to take plenty of video of it then. Be sure to watch it in full screen. UPDATE (Oct. 2018): The original video on Vimeo was removed, so replacing it with footage uploaded to YouTube of Power Boat V2.0.
If that doesn’t satisfy you, a larger AVI version can be found through this link. Be warned, it’s about 175MB in size.
UPDATE: First direct, high-rez screenshots of Power Boat! (Click on the thumbnails to view full size)
That does look rather nice, and it’s nice to hear that they’re aware of the speed and framerate problems and are working on fixing them. I’ve always been a bit of a sucker for water-based racing games, to be honest. Hydro Thunder was a lot of fun (though I’ve never come across the arcade original) and Namco’s Aqua Jet is still something that I’ll always go out of my way to play.
I just added some new pics of the game – it’s one of those games that looks really nice even in still form. At least no one will be able to whine about how it doesn’t reach the level that a console game does, I’ve been seeing people complain about Rambo because of the screenshots that are floating around the net of that game now (and those have compression artifacts in them).
I also haven’t played Hydro Thunder in arcades, just on the Dreamcast. While I’m sure that Power Boat has it’s own differences (probably no waterfalls, at least from what I’ve seen) the motion base, great graphics and power-up system will make it a solid game.
I don’t think it looks all that amazing. It was just reminding me of Rapid Racer on the PSOne. I remember not liking it that much but the graphics were so mindblowing I was prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt. Hehehe. It hasn’t dated all that well unsurprisingly enough.
What really interested me was the 2nd half of the video. That tank game looks fabulous! The cabinet also looks fantastic. Very attention grabbing.
I have played the tank game already and it is fun. I would like to play it linked. The only thing that annoys me about the game is the accuracy of your gun isn’t 100% – sometimes it fires slightly off center but I think that is intentional in them trying to make it more realistic.
“I’ve been seeing people complain about Rambo because of the screenshots that are floating around the net”
Ugh, tell me about it. I was on CVG the other day and some of the criticism was very harsh. Hopefully we’ll have something of better quality to show soon (a video would be particularly good).
Hope they keep that music, it was the best part. Yeah, they just need to speed it up and give it a cabinet – looks good.
But that tank game! Sign me up! I’d seen screenshots but didn’t know it was that chaotic. Crank that volume and bass, dog.
(and let’s not be in denial about Rambo’s graphics: they blow)
Well I don’t think we should pass final judgment on Rambo until we see it in action. As I mentioned, the few screenshots we actually got were somewhat compressed, thus reducing the quality. Up to this point I think that Power Boat looks better than Rambo but again I don’t think that Rambo looks like the crap that everyone is passing it off as.
Panzer Elite does throw a lot at you, that is the nice thing about it. If you come across it you’ll probably find the enclosed cockpit version and that enhances the effect. They actually have a racing game installed in the same cabinet but I didn’t try it out.
Rambo does look quite sparse and ugly at this point, but I haven’t known Sega to put out an bad looking arcade game in quite some time. I have faith it’ll look fantastic by the time it’s released.
I love the Power Boat music. It does look rather slow though.
Heh just come across this. Looks like an arcade version of the PC game Powerboat GT, which was originally titled Aquadelic GT, see website here: http://www.aquadelic.com/