Namco’s 1996 arcade racer Aqua Jet gets its first ever home release this week
The jet ski racing game is the next entry in Hamster’s Arcade Archives 2 series
Retro specialist Hamster Corporation has announced the third game in its new Arcade Archives 2 series, and it’s another early polygonal Namco game.
Hamster, which has been releasing retro arcade games under its Arcade Archives series for the past decade, launched its new Arcade Archives 2 series in June, starting with the first ever home re-release of the original arcade version of Ridge Racer.
It followed this up with the first ever home release of Air Combat 22, and now it’s announced that the next game in the series will be jet ski racing game Aqua Jet, which was released in arcades in 1996.
Like Ridge Racer and Air Combat 22 before it, Aqua Jet made use of Namco’s System 22 arcade hardware, which offered texture mapped polygonal graphics at a high frame rate.
The original arcade cabinet for Aqua Jet had players standing on a large jet ski and moving it side to side, while cool air blowed in their face to simulate speed.
While this obviously hasn’t been replicated for the home version, it does speak volumes about how important it is to see the game getting a home port for the first time ever, since finding a working Aqua Jet machine is getting progressively harder.
According to the Video Arcade Preservation Society, of which around 10,000 members participate in a census of arcade games owned, Aqua Jet scores 1 out of 100 for ownership, meaning it’s one of the least commonly owned cabinets among enthusiasts.
Aqua Jet will be released this Thursday, August 14, and will be coming to Switch 2, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as an Arcade Archives 2 game, and to Switch and PS4 as an Arcade Archives game.
Each Arcade Archives game features Original Mode, High Score Mode (where you keep playing until you die) and Caravan Mode (where you have to get the highest score within a certain time), with online leaderboards included.
Arcade Archives 2 versions also add Time Attack Mode (where you try to beat the full game as quickly as possible) and Network Mode (where you can play online) when the game supports multiplayer.
Players who opt for the Arcade Archives 2 version will also get multiple save slots, a rewind feature and VRR support enabling a “more accurate reproduction of the original arcade game’s experience”.
To date there have been 371 games released in the Arcade Archives series, with a further 108 released in a separate series called ACA Neo Geo.
Arcade Archives 2, however – of which Aqua Jet will be only the third release – marks Hamster Corporation’s move from re-releasing sprite-based arcade games to polygonal ones.
