Matt Small, Andrew Silber, Detmar Peterke, and Ralf Knoesel prove they are masters of water physics and beer drinking.On Thursday night, March 3, 2011, history was made when Hydro Thunder Hurricane developers Matt Small and Ralf Knoesel sat down to dinner with two of the developers of H2Overdrive to eat foods, drink beers, and gossip about the wet, wild world of water racing video games.

Andrew Silber and Detmar Peterke of Specular Interactive were in town for GDC 2011, and agreed to meet with us at Thirsty Bear Brewery in San Francisco.

We were pretty stoked to meet up with these guys. For one thing, as I've said before we're huge fans of water racing games of all shapes and sizes, and H2Overdrive is a primo example of the genre. Detmar actually worked on the original Hydro Thunder at Midway (as did several of the Specular team) and Andrew worked on Offroad Thunder around the same time, so it was awesome hearing about the bad old days of arcade development and getting a little behind the scenes scoop.

For another thing, reading the forums out there you'd think there's this intense rivalry between our two studios -- particularly since Specular has the HT pedigree, and because H2Overdrive and Hydro Thunder Hurricane came out around the same time.

And maybe there is a little element of competition there. But it's the healthy kind that still gives you room to drink beers together and share war stories.

So thanks again for meeting up with us, dudes. We'll definitely swing down to Irvine one of these days for Alco-Thunder Part 2.