A few weeks back there was some debate as to the origins of HydroThunder and Rush 2049 as they appeared on Midway Arcade Treasures for the Nintendo GameCube. I decided to write Midway and find out the answer. To my surprise, they replied to my email!
My inquiry:
----------------------------------- Your Question, Comment or Feedback: I was wondering if someone could tell me if HydroThunder and Rush 2049 are direct ports of a particular console or if they were significantly improved for the GameCube version on Midway Arcade Treasures? -----------------------------------
Midway’s Response:
----------------------------------- On 1/1/2009 you posed a question to Midway Support which was noted as inquiry 37353.The question you posed and our response are listed below. Your Question, Comment or Feedback: I was wondering if someone could tell me if HydroThunder and Rush 2049 are direct ports of a particular console or if they were significantly improved for the GameCube version on Midway Arcade Treasures? Thank you for contacting Midway Tech/Customer Support. Please see below for details about your inquiry to Midway. Hydro Thunder is a direct port of the arcade version Rush 2049 was direct port of the Dreamcast version which had extra modes like Deathmatch and Stunt. Regards, Midway Tech/Customer Support For more answers visit http://support.midway.com where you can "Q&A Search" or "Ask a Question".
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2 Comments
Oh, yeah, a direct port of the arcade… except y’know, the menus, the two player split-screen, the options menu, the loading screens (which didn’t exist on the arcade)… all borrowed from the Dreamcast version… but other than that, totally direct. 😉
Interesting experiment I just performed. I fired up the 3 definitive home versions: Dreamcast, N64, and the one on the Midway Collection on GC. Selected Hydro Park as the track and Midway as the boat and set off. Know what I discovered? Much to my surprise (seriously, I was really surprised) the Dreamcast version looks superior to all of them. No real shocker on the N64 one, that was there just as a control. But the “arcade port” on the ‘Cube was really washed out with WAY too much filtering on the textures. The Dreamcast one was razor sharp, and textures you couldn’t even read on the GC one were clear as day. All three were hooked up via s-video, so the playing field was even on that front. It’s just too bad about the sad little Dreamcast controller being the input option… that thing has and always will suck.
It is possible that Midway doesn’t know what they’re talking about.