WHAT IS AEROGAUGE?

What is this place?

Keep your eyes peeled.

AeroGauge is a futuristic anti-gravity racer for the Nintendo 64 - one that stands out from contemporary and future competitors in the genre like Wipeout, Extreme-G, Dethkarz, Rollcage [sorta] and even F-Zero due to a particular detail unique to it.


Instead of being stuck steering left to right in most scenarios and only getting air control if launched mid-air by the track, your machines can always fly vertically at all times. There's a drift boost mechanic that allows you to get boosts as well, but your machine increases in temperature with each boost, and depends of your pick how much it does per boost.


...Before we move on further, let me say this.

THIS GAME DOES NOT PLAY LIKE F-ZERO.


People comparing this to F-Zero and coming out disappointed is, and even at the time was, pretty common with how most people would first think that when the words anti gravity racer are uttered. And it's not that F-Zero is in any wrong for that [it's like kart racers and bringing up Mario Kart with how much of a trailblazer it was]...but a lot of reviews and first glances tend to overlook this game as a strange F-Zero knockoff when it does try way more than just that. This is something I even brought up to an absurdly lengthy degree back when I wrote about the game in 2022 [that blog existed before I made the Neocities].


I have more concise ways to remark a lot of what I wrote on that old post with way less words, but one highlight I had pointed there is how IGN back then dismissed it as a cheap F-Zero clone...but the gameplay they uploaded back then looked like this - showcasing one key issue with conveyance the game had: The IMPORTANT drift boost mechanic was never explained in-game...so it was missed by MANY first-time players unless you did your research.


The easily missable sauce and depth to this game, as well as how there's some cool stuff presentation-wise buried within this Nintendo 64 cartridge, is the reason why I wanted to dedicate a section of my website to this game - with how obscure and not very discussed it seems to be at all.


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