Wave Race 64 is a racing video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64.  The game is the second installment in the Wave Race series and was a follow-up to the 1992 Game Boy title Wave Race.

The conception of the game can be traced back to the early stages of the development of the Nintendo 64 console.  While experimenting with the Nintendo 64’s Silicon Graphics technology, one of the programmers at Nintendo created a tech demo that served as an example of the game’s wave programming.   The tech demo drew the attention of Shigeru Miyamoto and he assigned a team of resources to brainstorm and come up with creative ways to utilize the wave programming to create a game for the upcoming console.

During initial development the game was fundamentally different from what would eventually be released.   The development team incorporated high-speed boats that had transforming capabilities, allowing players to switch between a wider more stable catamaran style boat to a more streamline canoe style boat.  A beta version of the game was shown at the 1995 Nintendo Shoshinkai trade show and was compared to F-Zero.  Many began referring to the game as F-Zero on water as the futuristic boats shown in the demo rocketed through courses consisting of canals, rivers, pipes and other areas which resembled a very similar gameplay style as F-Zero.