RETRO REBOOT | T&C Surf Designs: Wood And Water Rage (NES)
A total harsh and gnarly extreme sports game that toasts my buzz, brah! However surfer lingo works...
RETRO REBOOT
"ColonelFancy" Mike Lind
6/9/20265 min read
Developer: ATLUS
Published by: LJN
Release date: 1988
T&C Surf Designs I feel everyone may have had (or rented) growing up in the 80's. And I am confident I despised it as much as some other 8-bit compost I had the misfortune of playing. Every couple of years, I'd attempt to revisit games like this to see if I was just bad at it, or perhaps I was wrong. Nah, this one was always pretty terrible. The best thing I have going for it, it has a mildly fascinating history behind it, starting out as a Hawaiian sports shop.
Town & Country Surf Designs was founded by avid surfer Craig Sugihara in 1971, opening up the first store in a former barbershop with no more than $3000 as Towne & Country Surf Shop in Pearl City, Hawaii. It grew into an industry icon, broadening the appeal of surfing and watersports from beyond the coast of the United States to the entire world. Amazing for a family owned business. As of this writing, Sugihara is 80 years old, has passed the business to his children, and is enjoying retirement, fishing and surfing. That's a hell of a way to wind down.
Now, I'm a mid-western bumpkin who can't swim. So I had no idea what a T&C Surf was, beyond a Nintendo game. But given that Nintendo practically ruled the 80's, it must mean a degree of something, right? That still has me asking this question; WHY in the hell is this a video game!? I guess skateboarding and extreme sports were viewed as some of the early waves (huh-huh-huh-huuuuuuuh!!) of counter-culture here in the United States. This game and Skate or Die are the two prominent ones I recall. And both are pretty bad.
Wood and Water Rage consists of two mini-games, surfing and skateboarding exhibitions that expand for several levels each. Choose between the four mascots known as "Da Boys" (Tiki Man, Joe Cool, Kool Kat, and Thrilla Gorilla. I used to think they were pro wrestling gimmicks), and try to get a grasp on some of the most underwhelming and incomprehensibly banal controls this side of California Games.
The Skateboard is the most tolerable of the two games, it's a simple ride down one of the most structurally unsound roads I've ever seen. There's caution barrels all over the place, oils slicks, and gaping chasms that will cause you to plummet to your doom. I'm not familiar with the quality of Hawaii's transportation system, I would hope it isn't half as bad as T&C indicates.
Ollieing is fine enough. You can either hop off the board, or hold back on the directional pad to grab it. Some obstacles require the utilization of both. That's fine, but the problem is the collision/hit detection is about as spotty as Accuweather readings. It gets frustrating to try and line my jump and nail the timing on hitting ramps. You can also grind the rails, but honestly I was never good enough to be able to do it on purpose. In fairness, it is more about finesse, rather than trying to use speed to race through the course. It's easier to get the hang of when to accelerate and maintain your balance than any attempt I ever had at figuring out the surfing...
I'm in my 40's. I have played this game on and off throughout the decades in my life. At no point was I able to feel like I adequate knew what I was doing during Big Wave Encounter. I take the wave, I go to the bottom of the screen, attempt to rip the curl, and the wave eats me. Every. Single TIME. Occasionally, I will stay on the board long enough for a gull or some load in an intertube to get in my way and knocks me over, negating my progress. I've watched my older brother be effective as hell in it. I feel like I'm SOMEWHAT competent in video games, but the physics in this mini-game seemed beyond my realm of comprehension. I feel like if I ever completed the stage, it was by accident.
I think it involves rocking the D-pad in clockwise and counterclockwise motions at various intervals, hitting the top of the wave for big points. There's a science to trying to balance out the momentum to avoiding getting lower on the wave. Like trying to sit down and beat Battletoads, I just don't think it's fun enough to apply the effort to understand it. Even playing the bit of it I did to refresh my memory of the controls, I could feel myself growing angry.
The graphics aren't too bad They're colorful, the wacky characters have a degree of personality and expression to them, and while there may not be a lot to look at during Big Wave Encounter, Skateboard Sessions has some visible appeal to it. There aren't a lot of musical tunes, but I gotta admit, T&C Surf Designs' OST can be a brainworm for me. Astounding work from Tsukasa Masuko, long-time ATLUS music composer and sound driver who is still composing to this day. He even worked on The Karate Kid, another game that's quite annoying to play, but has a pretty good musical score. The "fail" tone when wiping out just lets it sink in just how badly you performed. The game isn't fun to me, but it's a little amazing how the audio has stuck with me all these years.
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While there's a bit of nostalgia I have for T&C Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage, just because it was fairly prominent in our household, I still absolutely HATE this game. Some decent visuals and solid music does not make up for the unsatisfying, repetitive, and underbaked gameplay. Even as a two-player venture, the amusement factor lasts as long as a snowflake on a Bunsen burner. for that matter, put the NES cart on a Bunsen burner.