More on Saturn Waterworld

A bit ago I wrote about Ocean’s big push for Waterworld, the last major movie license the British publisher was involved with. In it I suggested that the Saturn port (which wasn’t shown around much) was likely not near completion — but it turns out I was pretty wrong on that front.

Bardamu left a comment on that piece referring to an interview on Planet Virtual Boy with Steve Woita, main designer on the Virtual Boy/Saturn Waterworld and a guy whose career in games dates back to the Atari 2600.

“We had nothing to do with the SNES version. We only did the VB and Saturn versions. The Saturn version was really a great version of what we wanted to do. We had smart bombs floating in the water that you’d use at the right time and take out as many enemies that were visible out in the world. The water was the best water I’d ever seen in a game at that time, Jason Plumb nailed that down. We also had a weapon that shot saw blades out onto the water, and the blades would skim 5 or 6 times before you couldn’t see them anymore. We had a bunch of very cool weapons in the game. The Saturn version was completely finished and then Infograms took us over and decided not to release the game. I’d have to say, that even by today’s standards, it was one of the best playing and looking games around. [...] The Saturn version is a very, very good playing game and I wish I could get that game out there right now.”

Bardamu also referred me to the above image, showing some better screenshots of the Saturn version in action. It does look pretty decent, admittedly, especially by 1996-era 3D graphical standards.