0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Aqua GT

        

Originally released for the Dreamcast in 2000 the game received a Playstation 1 release the following year, developed by Promethean Designs and published by Take Two Interactive, the game is a third person powerboat racing game, both the Dreamcast and Playstation releases were exclusively in Europe.

The game has three modes to choose from Championship mode it the main meat of the game with the player advancing through three championship levels Bronze, Silver and Gold. Starting out the player has the choice of five powerboats an each coming with their own stats for top speed, acceleration and handling, an additional 15 boats can be unlocked by progressing through the game with the game featuring jetboats, monos, batwings and catamarans.

The tracks in the game are all set around real life cities such as London, Amsterdam, New York, Venice, Paris, Tokyo and Rhineland, in the championship mode the player first does a single qualifying lap before each race, at the conclusion of the race points are awarded to the six competitors 10pts for a win down to 2pts for finishing last.

In addition to the championship mode the game has an arcade mode where the player must beat the clock the final mode is a two player split screen mode this is a head to head battle between the two players.

Powerboat racing game no story or story elements present.

With this being a fairly late release in the Playstation 1s life cycle reviews are next to impossible to find so we head to GameFAQs for their user ratings, with this game currently sitting at 3.20/5 from a total of 15 user ratings. It has not faired too badly with 3 users giving the game its lowest score of 2.5/5, a majority of users rated this game as a 3/5 with a handful giving the game a better score with a couple giving it a 3.5 or a 4/5 respectively with one using clearly enjoying the game with their 4.5/5 score.

Difficulty wise we have a total of 13 users rating this category with a majority rating this game as having just the right difficulty level. A significant number rated the game as being on the easy side while a couple found the game simple the remaining user found the game on the tough side, averaging out the game comes in at easy/just right.

The games lifespan we have a good spread of playtimes from the 10 users that rated this category, with the majority spread between 12 hours of game time up to the 40 hour mark with one user spending 60 hours with the game. The remaining two users spent either 4 or 8 hours playing the game, this averages out at a 22.8 hours lifespan for Aqua GT.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, and no surprise to see this California based used game store not stocking this European only release so we move on to Retrogames.co.uk who does have a single copy of the game available, priced at £4 disc quality is a little low with Retrogames rating the disc as a 6.5/10 it is at least a complete copy with original case, manual and covers.

eStarland.com another based in the US so no surprise to see this game not stocked likewise Amazon.com don’t stock this title either so we head over to the co.uk version of Amazon. Where we find a decent number of copies available with a good quality complete version of the game priced at £3.60 once you have added in the shipping, a very good copy of the game is not much more either with one available for just £5.02 this again is for a complete copy.

If you are looking for a like new used copy again you won’t have to pay much more with prices ranging from around £5.50 up to £7.80 for a complete like new copy of the game. It is worth going for a new copy though will two on the market at the time of writing the first is priced at just £6.60 and comes with free shipping, the second is a little more coming in at a few pence over £14.

  

Written by

P J Gibbon