January '88 April '89
"The fastest newest form of aqua-sport. Fantastically realistic and infuriatingly addictive. Includes an Expert version, a 2-player option, realistic power-drifting, and aqua speed jumps. Carve up your friends over 24 exciting racing circuits...lakes, coasts, and docklands."
What the press said
All courses from the Spectrum Version
Story Behind Jet Bike Simulator
Fusion Retro Magazine : Issue 11
May '20
In this 4 page article we explain to Chris Wilkins the story behind creating Jet Bike Simulator and Jet Ski Simulator - and you’ll learn the differences between them, and why perhaps the first should have been called Personal Watercraft Simulator.
Buy the full magazine here
The summer of ’87 we visited Cotswold Waterpark, near Cirencester, and learnt how to Jet Ski. Clearly, whilst doing this we thought we could make another ‘Simulator’ from this sport. It had a great image and would follow in the footsteps of our Grand Prix Simulator.
This time we decided we would do the Spectrum version too and whilst the gameplay was similar to Grand Prix Simulator we decided to recode the game rather than reskin GPS. This meant the code was a lot cleaner, more efficient and easier to tweak speeds and playability.
We created a course editor and several and then James Wilson at Codemasters produced the rest of the courses featuring Lakes, Coasts and Docks – 24 courses in all.
Codemasters were keen to increase the retail price of their games and came up with the concept of a double cassette case sold at £4.99 (rather than £1.99) called the ‘Plus’ range. This and Professional BMX Simulator launched this range.
A year later the game was modified slightly to fit onto a single cassette and was renamed Jet Ski Simulator and sold at £2.99.
