Skip to main content

Excitebike: Not that exciting

Excitebike is a beloved NES launch title. It was one of the 30 games included on the outstanding NES Classic. It even has a level in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe! But does it hold up well today?

First the good news: the concept of racing off-road motorcycles (motocross) still works, and the controls are simple and smooth. This alone ensured Excitebike would be a hit in 1985. You hold A to go at normal speed, or B at turbo speed (but don't let the engine overheat!). Tracks have hurdles and rough patches to avoid, as well as speed boosts. When going over a ramp, you press ↑ to tilt the bike up for extra height. When you land, you need to make the bike's tires even with the ground or it will crash and the rider will fly off. If this happens, he scrambles to get back on the bike, costing you several seconds.

Regrettably, there is no two-player mode. You either play solo ("Selection A") or against computer-controlled racers ("Selection B"). Mode A is good for practicing the tracks because you don't have to worry about crashing into other racers. In Mode B you can deliberately knock down the other bikers by turning right in front of them. Both modes are fun, and you can even design a track of your own and then race on it in either mode! Overall, Excitebike is a well designed game.

Now for the bad news. The biggest problem is the game has only five tracks. Just five! That is too few. Oh, I'll just design my own then, you say? You can only save one at a time, and it vanishes as soon as you you turn off the system. Battery-powered saving was still three years away. (Today, of course, you can use save states on the NES Classic or Switch.)

Another weakness of the game is that you don't actually race against the computer-controlled racers in mode B. Rather, they come and go onto the screen at random without continuity. Ostensibly, you need to get at least "third place" to successfully finish a race, but this is a fiction. The "places" are determined strictly by how long you took, with no correlation to the racers.

Worse still, there is no music to go with the five different tracks (they use different color palettes, at least). Adding good, unique music to each track would seriously improve this game!

Don't get me wrong: trying to master the five tracks is fun, but unless you're really into track design, that's all you can get out of this game. Still, because of what it does right, especially judged as a launch title, Excitebike is a fine game.


Grade: C 

Linked Reviews
"It may not be the longest ride, and it’s definitely not perfect, but it’s a classic nonetheless and at least deserves a look."
— Dave Letcavage, Nintendo Life, 7/10

"Everything from the goofily fun intro theme to the cutesy graphics of the racers and the audience made this a flag-bearing title which helped buoy the system in its precarious early existence in the U.S."
— Pat Contri, Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library, 4/5

"Excitebike distanced itself from the pack by offering truly addictive motocross gameplay."
— IGN, #14 of Top 100

"The game remains a landmark NES classic, and a good time even if you’re not much for racing."
— Jeremy Parish, NES Works

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Final Fantasy VI: 30th anniversary

Final Fantasy VI is widely regarded as the greatest of the original six FF games. Its decision-based story events, fully customizable magic system, and gritty sci-fi/fantasy setting set the standard for the series moving forward. The enormous cast of characters and elaborate plot-line built on the promise of FF4 (“Final Fantasy II” in the U.S.), shedding many of that game’s cliches (while sticking with the tried-and-true Evil Empire trope) in favor of something more adult. The game’s villain, Kefka, embodies evil, playing on the sci-fi trope of the person driven mad by experimental technology. Final Fantasy VI begins with an amnesiac girl named Terra (you can change her name, of course). Controlled by a psychic “crown”, she pilots a magic-driven suit of tech armor (called “Magitek”). After forming a psychic connection to an “Esper” (what were called “Summons” in FF4), she breaks free of the empire’s control. A thief named Locke, who belongs to the resistance group known as the Returne
Post a Comment
Read more

Mega Man X: 30th anniversary

Thirty years ago Mega Man X brought Capcom's beloved blue bomber into the 16-bit era, to great acclaim. In a creative twist, Mega Man X (called X for short) is a new robot, not the original Mega Man . As with Super Metroid, Super Castlevania IV , and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past , Mega Man X uses the winning formula of remaking the original NES game but with more and better. Mega Man X, like his predecessor, faces eight robot masters, now called "Mavericks." Instead of "men," they are made in the image of animals: Chill Penguin, Storm Eagle, Launch Octopus, Spark Mandrill (a kind of monkey), Armored Armadillo, Sting Chameleon, Flame Mammoth, and Boomer Kuwanger (a Japanese stag beetle). An opening stage ends with X being defeated by the robot Vile, a henchman of Sigma, who wants to destroy humanity using something called "Reploids" (the Mavericks?). Fortunately, a "Maverick Hunter" robot named Zero jumps in to save X. He encourages
Post a Comment
Read more

Final Fantasy II: The lost "black sheep"

Final Fantasy II, the 1988 sequel, never came to the NES. The "black sheep" of the series, it is inferior to both I and III. A complete English prototype of the game was made but then shelved due to the release of the SNES. This was an understandable business decision, as FF4  is the far better game. The root problem was how long it took RPGs to make it to the West. Final Fantasy II has a clichéd story cribbed from Star Wars. There is an evil empire and emperor, rebels, dark knight, and city-destroying, flying death machine. The protagonists are four young people, orphaned by the empire. The game opens with a battle they can't win, but three of them are revived by one of the game's many NPCs, Minwu, a white mage. He works for Princess Leia—I mean Hilda, the leader of the rebellion (and yes, at one point you have to rescue her from a cell). You choose the names for the heroes: each is a tabula rasa , like in FF1. The girl's brother is missing and doesn't appea
1 comment
Read more