Former Artist Discusses Design Challenges And Approvals For Wave Race: Blue Storm

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube's original release in Japan, bringing attention back to the jet-ski racing title Wave Race: Blue Storm. Developed by Nintendo Software Technology, the game served as an early technical showcase for the GameCube. It earned praise for its controls and weather effects upon its early 2000s launch, with some critics calling it a remarkably accurate representation of water-based racing.

Behind the scenes, however, the project proved exceptionally challenging for the development team. Ken Christiansen, a former artist at Nintendo Software Technology and Disney Interactive, recently discussed his work on the game. Credited under additional work, Christiansen was originally one of the concept artists tasked with designing the avatars and their jet skis before he departed the company in the year 2000.

According to Christiansen, a significant divide emerged between the concepts submitted by him and fellow concept artist Adi Granov, and the vision held by Nintendo Co. Ltd. in Japan. The team needed to define the characters to establish the game style, but faced constant rejections through the approval process. Every painted character and sketch submitted was denied by Japan.

"When designing something, you want to find a point of reference," Christiansen said. "And this game was a two-parter, right? It's a character and their jet ski. But we needed to define one or the other, and we could only do so much with the jet ski. So, the personality and flair of the character had to come from the avatar, and so that's what we were focused on. We thought, once we were able to nail that, then we could extrapolate the whole style of the game, but we couldn't even get that far on it."

In an attempt to break the deadlock, Christiansen and Granov resorted to tracing manga books in Chinatown, putting the traced characters into wetsuits, and submitting the results. That approach was dismissed as being too old. Frustrated by the lack of direction and continuous denials, Christiansen eventually began looking for other work and joined Disney Interactive.

Christiansen stated that he does not believe any of his direct contributions ultimately made it into the finished version of Wave Race: Blue Storm. Despite leaving before the game shipped, his art director ensured he received a credit. Final character illustrations were later handled by Yusuke Nakano, who created polished 2D images based on the production art and models.