Wildwaters (Extreme Kayak) [N64 - Cancelled]

Wildwaters (also know as “Extreme Kayak” and “X-Stream”) is a cancelled racing game that was in development by Looking Glass Studios for the Nintendo 64 in 1998 / 1999. The project was announced at E3 1999 by Ubisoft (that was interested as a publisher) while the studio was working on Destruction Derby 64 (published in the same year), but sadly it was never finished.

Wildwaters 64 was very promising as Looking Glass were able to create an engine with real physics running for the waterflow through the river on an N64, but it needed more time and love which eventually ran out. Five different gameplay modes, including Arcade, Time Trial, Championship, Finals and Versus Battle were planned for the game.

Some months later, on May 2000, Looking Glass Studios went out of business during a financial crisis related to their publisher at the time, Eidos Interactive. Wildwaters / Extreme Kayak vanished forever, along with their other promising N64 racing game, Mini Racers.

There was another cancelled water racing game titled “Wild Water World Championships” that was planned for the Nintendo 64, but it should not be confused with this one as WWWC was developed by Promethean Designs.

Thanks a lot to Les Betterley for the help in preserving some images from this lost project!

Images (in-game):

 

Images (models):

 

1. Wild Water World Championships [N64 - Cancelled]
2. 1080° Snowboarding [N64 - Beta]
3. Mini Racers [N64 - Cancelled]
4. EggHead Shred [N64 - Proto / Tech Demo]
5. MRC – Multi Racing Championship [N64 - Beta]