Hydro Thunder

The gameplay of Hydro Thunder is similar to Sega's Daytona USA. It consists of racing high-tech speedboats through treacherous environments, from the cold seas of the Arctic Circle to a post-apocalyptic version of New York City.

Scattered across the tracks are blue and red boost icons. When touched, these icons allow the player who touched them to boost. Red boost icons are more scarce than blue boost icons because they give more boost fuel. When a player has boost fuel, they may use the boost button to boost, which increases the boat's speed and allows the player to knock other boats into the air, a feature described by the game as the Mighty Hull.

The arcade version of Hydro Thunder utilizes the same basic cabinet as Midway's earlier Hyperdrive, and was also sold as a conversion kit for that game. It has the same cabinet seat as Atari's San Francisco Rush. It also has the same steering wheel on the control panel as Cruis'n USA, minus the standard foot pedals, and adds a variable position throttle with forward, neutral and reverse directions. The game also has an unusual volume adjustment, where the regular play volume is usually set lower than the feedback volume for the subwoofer in the seat. This is intended to place the player "in the game" and make the player feel like an actual pilot of a powerful, high-tech speedboat.

In addition to the arcade, Hydro Thunder has been ported over to several home consoles. The PlayStation version of the game includes a career mode not found in the other versions. The Dreamcast version of the game has graphics that are more detailed and closer to the arcade version than the other console versions. The Nintendo 64 version allows up to 4-player local multiplayer (instead of just 2-player) when the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak is present.

The Dreamcast version received favorable reviews, while the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation versions received mixed or average reviews, according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. GameSpot gave the Dreamcast version a positive review, over a week before its U.S. release date.

An unnamed reviewer of Next Generation said of the arcade version in its July 1999 issue, "Boat-racing games have never been very popular, perhaps because it's hard to tune the control just right and keep the excitement as high as in a land-based game. Now, with Hydro Thunder, Midway has finally created the boat-racing game that will bring this sub-genre to the forefront." Three issues later, Jeff Lundrigan of the same magazine (now labeled NextGen) said that "the Dreamcast version is just shy of being a perfect conversion." Eric Bratcher later gave the Nintendo 64 version two separate reviews, first saying in its February 2000 issue, "Even without two-player, this is still a really fun game, though still a bit, um, shallow"; an issue later, however, he said that the same console version was "not as pretty as the Dreamcast version, but if you own an N64, you need this game."

Midway had plans to create a sequel for Hydro Thunder; however, the project was soon cancelled and never recreated, though it did result in the formation of the Thunder sub-series including Offroad Thunder and Arctic Thunder. A spiritual successor to Hydro Thunder, titled H2Overdrive, was developed by Raw Thrills with the assistance of the former Midway San Diego members who worked on the original arcade version of Hydro Thunder, released in May 2009. A sequel titled Hydro Thunder Hurricane was released for Xbox Live Arcade. Microsoft had bought the rights to the series after Midway was acquired by Warner Bros. It was released on July 28, 2010.