AeroGauge

AeroGauge was met with mixed reception. The game held a 58% on the review aggregation website GameRankings based on 12 reviews. Chief among the criticisms were the extreme pop up, the absence of weapons and power-ups, the limited variety of tracks, and the excessively high difficulty, with controls that make it difficult to master even basic maneuvers and AI opponents which race so flawlessly that even a single mistake is enough to cost the player all chance of victory. Kraig Kujawa of Electronic Gaming Monthly said the pop-up is "so extreme in places that it can mess you up by inconveniently popping things up in front of you at inopportune times. This adds a little frustration to a game that isn't too much fun to begin with." GamePro remarked, "Aero Gauge looks impressive at first, serving up wickedly fast hovercraft racing in 3D space, tight two-player split-screen battles, and tracks packed with thrilling loops and tunnels that harken back to the arcade classic Stun Runner. Unfortunately, the game's sparse features (a skimpy lineup of vehicles and tracks and no weapons) and serious draw-in problems quickly limit the fun." Kujawa and GamePro, along with GameSpots Joe Fielder, also criticized the music as being dull in composition and grating in tone. Fielder said it "has a tinny, old-school coin-op-type sound, like that of an old Ninja Gaiden machine, and has perhaps the most grating tunes this side of Midway's San Francisco Rush for the N64." However, Kujawa's co-reviewer Shawn Smith found the music catchy, and Nintendo Power said it "keeps you pumped." Nintendo Power also praised the hovercraft physics ("there is a soft, realistic feel to the steering controls similar to flying an airplane in [Diddy Kong Racing]."), but summed up the game as "not as involving as we'd like. Frankly, we wanted more courses, more cars, and more things to do." Game Informer said the game is simply dull due to its overdone concept. Reviews almost unanimously compared AeroGauge unfavorably to its contemporary Extreme-G. Next Generation, however, argued that the game "may not stand up to the speed, multiplayer action, and track diversity of the upcoming F-Zero X (or for that matter, Extreme-G), but considering that it beats Nintendo's cyber-racer to the punch by more than six months, this should help tide over racing fans nicely." Contrarily, GameSpot and GamePro both concluded that N64 owners should stick with Extreme-G as their holdover title for futuristic racers, with GameSpot describing AeroGauge as "just an all-around pretty dull experience." Game Players called the graphics outstanding, highlighting the tracks' visual differentiation. N64 Magazine commented that "zipping through one of the horrible strobing tunnels is possibly the best method ever devised for discovering your susceptibility to epilepsy." AllGame noted how the elevation of the hovercraft changed by holding up or down on the joystick, which went against natural instinct of holding up to move forward.