The game is focused around the Mariner's trimaran, which the player moves around a 3-D world, shooting enemies on personal water crafts called Smokers. It is a form of 3D shoot 'em up, similar to that of the All-Range Mode in Star Fox 64. The objective is to keep the Smokers from grabbing Atollers placed around the playing field. To keep them from being captured, the player must shoot the Smokers using the L and R buttons on the Virtual Boy's controller while moving around with either of the two directional pads. Like all other Virtual Boy games, Waterworld uses a red-and-black color scheme and uses parallax, an optical trick that is used to simulate a 3D effect. Multiplayer functionality was originally advertised for this version of Waterworld, but the Virtual Boy's link cable was never released, and multiplayer was not implemented in the final release.
Waterworld for Super NES was released in 1995 in Europe by Ocean Software. It was only released in PAL territories, but an NTSC version had been scheduled for release in December 1995, and given a lengthy review in that month's issue of Nintendo Power. The game was played from an overhead/isometric perspective with the player controlling the Mariner's boat on the ocean. The point of the game was to destroy the Smokers' boats and dive for sunken artifacts, at which point the game switches to a side on perspective so that the player can directly control the Mariner underwater.
Genesis
A Sega Genesis port of the Super NES version was also produced by Ocean. Planned for release in Europe in fall 1995, it was never distributed. A complete version of the game was eventually leaked on the net.
Saturn
The cancelled Sega Saturn version of the game was to feature a 3D virtual ocean with a dynamic surface. It began development in late 1994.
Jaguar
The cancelled Atari Jaguar version was announced in early 1995 and planned to be released in the same year.
3DO
The 3DO version was announced in 1995 an planned to be published by Interplay.
PC
In April 1995, Interplay Entertainment announced that they had garnered the rights to make a Waterworld game. The game was developed by Intelligent Games and published by Interplay. It was released for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows personal computers in 1997. It is a real-time strategy video game. The game contains 25 missions. In the game, players play as a War Chief and lead a taskforce of 2 to 14 men depending upon the mission. The main objective of the game is to amass enough hydro, food, weapons, and critical information to successfully evade the "Smokers" and revert the inundated world to its former glory.
Reception
Waterworld received predominantly negative reviews. GameSpot gave the PC version a review score of 4.5/10. The Virtual Boy version gathered particularly negative reviews for its poor gameplay and graphics. Sir Garnabus of GamePro panned it for having slow controls, bad collision detection, and the same enemies and victims in every level. He also criticized the lack of any backgrounds apart from the sunset, saying this mutes the 3D effect. Dave Frear of Nintendo Life claimed that the game was "crap", adding "with severely flawed visuals it can’t even gain points for impressing technically". The author of The Ultimate History of Video Games, Steven L. Kent, considers Waterworld to be the worst video game of all time. Seanbaby called Waterworld "the most horrible thing to ever be put inside a Virtual Boy".
