Arcade Archives Water Ski

Genre: Sports (Water Skiing)

Players: 1-2 Alternating (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Water Ski is a Water Skiing game released in 1983 in arcades and the follow-up to 1981’s Alpine Ski. This modern release sees the game coming to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2019.

While it might seem like Water Ski would likely be a straightforward retread in a new setting, it’s actually surprisingly ambitious for its time. Players control the water skier themselves as they move left and right to dodge obstacles in the water, but they are tugged along by a speedboat that moves independently, meaning that players must be mindful of its movements, as it will not only limit their own movement, but they must take care not to get the rope connecting them snapped on a taller obstacle. As with Alpine Ski, players have a limited amount of time (2:30 by default, only able to be reduced through options), and they take a 10-second penalty when they crash.

On the positive side of things here, controls feel much more responsive overall, and the multi-use button of the prior game has now split into two buttons – one for jump and one to slow things down. Unfortunately, the jump button is extremely sluggish to respond to your input, making it highly unreliable, and this combined with the at times unpredictable movements of the boat can make it far too easy to collide with objects you tried to dodge or jump over.

This release of the game includes a new “Hi-Score Mode” that challenges players to score as much as they can in one run before seeing a game over screen. There is also a new “Caravan Mode” that does much the same, but with the limit being five minutes (assuming you can even manage to extend out your time that much). In addition, this release of the game includes various display options, sound options, challenge modifiers, button mapping, and online leaderboards.

Overall, I think Water Ski is a huge improvement over Alpine Ski, but it still suffers from control issues that make it very difficult to recommend to modern players. I admire the attempt to innovate on the previous game’s formula, but the end result still feels sorely lacking.

tl;dr – Water Ski is a game where players try to race through a course while avoiding obstacles. This is a huge improvement over Alpine Ski, but still suffers from control issues that make this game far too frustrating to recommend.

Grade: C-

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