Excitebike
Excitebike is classic NES fun. The simple, reactive controls allow for optimal racing efficiency, as the player zips through track after track, sometimes colliding with huge barriers, or cutting off foes and sending them faces first into the dirt. It does, however, come rife with some awfully frustrating inconsistencies and ambiguities, which shall be discussed.
3D Classics: Excitebike immediately sets itself apart from all those prior versions, though, for a couple of major reasons. First, it's free. This 3DS download has been made the flagship piece of showcase software for Nintendo's new portable eShop, and it's been given a month-long pricetag of zero dollars. So if you're reading this before July 7, 2011 and you've got a 3DS system (or if you plan to buy one in the next few weeks, say, because of the impending release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D) then you should waste no more time getting your handheld online, firing up that new eShop and grabbing this fine freebie.
Did you know that Excitebike was one of the first console racing games to come with a track editor? It's true. And it's back, as part of Nintendo's new Classic NES Series, which is devoted to releasing 8-bit NES games on the Game Boy Advance. This port of the original NES motocross game is true to the original, making it a solid choice for nostalgia buffs. It even manages to save your track designs, which is something that didn't work in the original US release of the game. However, if you aren't on a heavy nostalgia kick, the $20 price tag is pretty steep.
The five tracks in Excitebike really don't last long.
Excitebike will no doubt be remembered fondly by older gamers. After all, it was one of the original launch titles for the NES way back in 1985. Some might be dubious and question if a game this old is worth purchasing for the Virtual Console, but worry not — this classic game has somehow managed to retain its appeal. Understandably it doesn't hold up quite so well on the presentation side, but we can forgive that given how fun it still is.
It's a side-scrolling racer, and you must move between four lanes to avoid other bikes and obstacles. There are ramps to zoom up and off, and tilting forwards or backwards while in mid-air allows you to position yourself for a decent landing so that you can keep up your momentum. You can pop wheelies too. The controls are simple: one button accelerates as you would expect, while the other acts as a turbo. Use it sparingly, though, or your engine will overheat.
Excitebike was released as a launch title for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Like fellow NES launch title Wrecking Crew, it is notable for its level design mode, which was groundbreaking at the time. In this game, you control a bike that races through tracks laden with hills and obstacles. Your goal is to get the fastest time possible. You can choose to race alone or with other bikes. Unfortunately, the other bikes merely serve as obstacles, only making the tracks slightly more difficult.
Official Nintendo Player’s Guide, you are so silly: “The techniques used for super jumps, wheelies and blocks are almost the same as those used in an actual supercross course!” I don’t remember anyone at the X-Games ever having a D-Pad strapped to their handle bars, but maybe I just wasn’t paying close enough attention. Or maybe I’m just not extreme enough to understand actual supercross, who knows?
Excitebike for the NES was one of the original Black Box release titles for the NES in 1985, with the series badge “Programmable.” The game allows you to compete in 3 different modes: in a solo time trial, against computer opponents, and on custom user-defined tracks. At its core, despite the inclusion of CPU racers, Excitebike is merely a time trial racer, but it proves to be a decent addition to the NES’s lineup and a welcome break from the over-the-shoulder racers like Rad Racer and Mach Rider (in my opinion).
There are five tracks in Excitebike, giving the game a little variety. As Excitebike is strictly a time trial game, advancing to subsequent tracks requires the player to beat the third place time. Every track sports a different color. There are various pitfalls in each one, ranging from mud to speed bumps. The tracks are generally pretty wide, allowing for an element of maneuverability in evading obstacles. The thing Excitebike is probably most well known for, however, is the numerous ramps and hills on the courses that players can jump off. Making a perfect landing after a long jump is the pinnacle of the Excitebike experience.
The bike can be controlled in a number of ways, all of which feel completely natural. There are two gears: fast and slow. The downside of the fast gear is that you run the danger of overheating. Overheating will force your bike off the track for a second before you can continue. The slow gear is not as fast, but won’t make the bike overheat. Therefore, racing in Excitebike is a constant balancing act between maintaining speed and managing the overheat meter. This turns what would be a fairly dull and generic game into one that requires a little strategy. When it is airborne, the bike can be tilted back and forth, which is essential to landing jumps. If your tilt is off, you’ll crash. You can also hold back to execute a wheelie, which will allow you to pass speed bumps with ease. Although there are a number of strong points to this game, the control stands out as its most outstanding aspect.
There are five tracks in total. To progress from one track to the next you need to finish in the top three against your opponents. Completing the game doesn’t take much practice, but it’s so much fun to play you will probably want to come back and try and beat your best track times.
Sadly there is no two player option, but interestingly the game does include a track editor which offers a bit more long term fun. The Virtual Console release is an improvement on the original, which didn’t let you save your creations. It seems that Nintendo was planning to release a peripheral in the early days to enable this, but it never saw the light of day!
Excitebike is a really simple game. The two buttons are used to accelerate. The B button gets you going faster than the A button will, but it will also generate heat. If your onscreen heat meter fills up, that means your bike has overheated and you'll have to take a quick break to let it cool down. Aside from regulating your engine temperature, you'll also have to make sure you land on your wheels. The five tracks in Excitebike are full of jumps, bumps, mud pits, and other obstacles. Making sure you land squarely on both wheels will keep your speed up. The four-lane track can be ridden alone or with other computer-controlled racers to get in your way. Though there are other racers on the track, your only goal is to beat the clock. You'll have to beat one of the top three times to stay in the game. To be honest, making sure you do that isn't exactly difficult.
The track designer lets you choose from any of the prefabricated pieces that are used on the other tracks. You can drop them in any order you please. As stated previously, the game lets you save your track design, which is something the original NES version wouldn't do, even though it had options for saving and loading tracks in the game menu. These options were left over from the Japanese version of the game; it came as a disk for the Famicom Disk System, which had plenty of free space for your track designs. On the GBA, you can store one track.
Looking back across them all, none of Excitebike's earlier editions has really been that great. The NES version wouldn't let you save your created tracks, because it lost that functionality when being ported to America's NES from the Japansese original. The Excitebike 64 and Animal Crossing unlockables were OK, but you had to buy $50 console games and put in the work meeting their access conditions before you could even get to them. The GBA re-release squished the display area, the eReader cards were a pain to scan through that gimmicky peripheral one at a time and the WiiWare remake -- well, OK, the WiiWare remake was alright.
But 3D Classics: Excitebike edges out even that closest competitor because this new edition has clearly been crafted with quality in mind. It's fully featured. Every part of its package has been given extra polish, making it impressive to the point that Nintendo could have launched it without the month of free access and still seen it post great download numbers.
There are two main gaming modes: Selection A allows the player to race solo against the clock; Selection B is the ultimate dirtbike extravaganza pitting you against bloodthirsty sprites. All of those bikes on the screen come at a price, though. It's not because of framerate issues, which you first might guess -- the game runs smoothly, with complex tracks and nifty animations (riders bounce atop their vibrating machines). Rather, all of these cyclists create a chaotic environment, where there is no indication of who holds what position, and how far ahead the leader is.
Instead of numbers above the riders' heads, Miyamoto took a different approach. Essentially it's a Rally Car race but the track is packed with opponents. It doesn't matter who you leave in the dust, or who you cut off with a deft maneuver. All those other bikers are more like obstacles than opponents. Instead, you are given one qualifying time, which you need to beat in order to advance to the actual Excitebike race. If you win the Excitebike race, you're automatically qualified for the next track's race. For example, to get to the Excitebike race for track 4, you can either win track 3's race, or beat the qualifying race for track 4. There are five tracks in total, and each track's qualifying race is easier than the previous track's Excitebike race. This enables players to skip right to the 5th (final, and very, very difficult) qualifier, if they so choose.
The 3D visuals are the main selling point, and they work wonderfully well. The development team at Arika rebuilt every aspect of the graphics from scratch, rather than just take the NES pixel art as-is. The game has been given an expanded, widescreen ratio to fill the 3DS' upper display and the system's 3D slider inventively bends the camera angle of the action to your desired degree of depth.
That's new. No other 3DS game has taken that approach so far, as most every other game uses that simple slider to just adjust the "intensity" of the 3D effect. Excitebike accomplishes that same goal, but does more at the same time. Leaving the slider pushed all the way down to the off position gives you a flat, traditional 2D Excitebike view (in new widescreen) that already looks great. But sliding it up starts easing in the stereoscopic "wow" factor, while giving you a glimpse at what's been in the background of all these many Excitebike races over the past 25 years -- you see more of the crowd gathered in the seats at the edge of the racetrack, and then, beyond them, an all-new cloud-filled backdrop of sky.
In the graphics and sound department, it's difficult to ask for more than what Excitebike gives. Sure, it isn't much to look at when compared to modern standards, but that isn't really the game's goal. It delivers the same look and sound as the NES original, from the screaming whine of an engine about to overheat to the beeping noise that plays when you complete a lap. The only noticeable difference is that onscreen text in the game looks a little squashed, as the game's aspect ratio had to be changed around a bit to get it onto a Game Boy Advance display.
Overall, Excitebike is a solid trip down memory lane for fans of the original NES game. But is that trip worth $20? Probably not. If Excitebike had been part of a larger compilation of NES classics, it would be much more welcome. Standing on its own, however, it seems like a little more than you'd want to pay for a short burst of nostalgia.
The design-a-track mode stands as probably the most notable feature in Excitebike. However, it is not very intuitive. There is a list of letters ranging from A to S, each letter representing one of the various track pieces; it is difficult to remember which is which. Once a track is completed, it is fun to run through it a few times. Unfortunately, the lack of a save option does not allow the tracks to be saved. Although it is far from perfect, the track editor does add a little replay value to the game.
Like many other games of its time, Excitebike shows its age. Outside of the first track, the game pulls no punches with the challenge factor and can get fairly frustrating at times. The overall lack of music in Excitebike can also be a little off-putting; there’s a little intro theme and that’s it. In-game, the only thing to be heard are the various whirring sounds of bike engines. Unfortunately, this barebones approach was applied to the graphics as well, resulting in the game managing to look very bland despite the colorful tracks. Excitebike, while certainly a fun game, is only really good for a little diversion once in a while, and the lack of depth and lackluster presentation keep it from being something more.
Excitebike features a set of 5 pre-defined courses, which can be raced either solo or against computer players. Whatever you choose, however, the end result is the same. Your finishing rank is always determined based upon your lap time. This should be painfully obvious when you first race against CPU opponents; as soon as you pass the initial group of racers you left the gates with, you will continually overtake more racers. In fact, you can never completely pass the CPU racers, or ever fall completely behind. I wouldn’t even say that Excitebike features the ultimate in rubber banding technology, because that isn’t even accurate; it’s just that there is an infinite number of racers on the track! This isn’t to say that racing against computer players is the same as racing solo – the computer players will continually cut you off unexpectedly and in general make your life much harder – it just doesn’t matter how you finish in relation to them.
On the gameplay front, Excitebike plays the same as it always has. You control a nameless, helmeted motorcycle racer trying to set speed records across an array of courses and must manage your temperamental bike to do it. Its engine is prone to overheating, so you must judiciously balance between its normal A Button acceleration and heat-building B Button turbo settings to keep it from shutting down on you mid-race. It likes to drop its speed severely after a jump off a ramp or over a hill, so you have to use the D-Pad to reposition its wheels in mid-air to match the angle of the surface you're about to land on and preserve your momentum.
Your bike likes to crash, too. So you have to press Left on the Pad to pop wheelies and avoid tripping over low obstacles, and also weave back and forth across the course to keep from running into enemy racers. If you do crash -- and you will, at some point -- madly pressing A and B as fast as possible gets you back astride your ride just a bit quicker.
Excitebike's never been Nintendo's deepest game design. Even a fully-featured version of it like this one won't challenge the best modern racers and can't reasonably be awarded the highest of review scores. Had Arika endeavored to implement more gameplay features like multiplayer (which WiiWare's World Rally first brought us) then a case could be made that the core, underlying game has been enhanced. As it is, this is basic Excitebike -- albeit with a lot of nifty enhancements to the presentation surrounding that core game.
It all makes for drives that are packed with action and non-stop thrills. The rider has a heat gauge at the bottom which is essentially overdrive. Instead of pressing A for gas, B can be used like a nitrous boost of power - but only for a short period of time. If the engine overheats due to excessive stress from boosting, the rider is pulled to the side and penalized a few seconds. This is where the problems start to come in -- time penalties.
With all the mayhem on the track, there are bound to be collisions, mistakes, and miscalculations. However, each misadventure is arbitrarily penalized. If you crash into another bike, you may be penalized one second and hop right back on. But other times it could be as long as three or even four seconds - even though it was the same crash. You could ride a perfect race, and accidentally lean back too far, and be penalized four seconds right before the finish line, when other times you may have just been penalized one second. Further, races can't be restarted. If you make a huge mistake, or feel there's no hope in Hades you'll make it to the end, the only recourse is to reset the game. Aside from the arbitrary penalties and minor interface issues, you'll still feel compelled to hop right back on the bike for some more action.
Sound is used intuitively as the player is notified about the danger of overheating through whiny engine gasps, or how well his machine is performing as it scurries along under its regular power. The game features no music, but I find that this exemplifies the great audio effects, rather than acting as a detraction from the immersion factor of the game. The graphics too are simple, yet effective. It's obvious what type of inclines jumps have, what the dirt looks like, and where the motorists are on the screen. Any more flash than the game's charming simplistic presentation possesses, and there'd be no time to concentrate during the sheer speed.
But those enhancements do add a lot of value, and the biggest of them all comes in the game's Design mode. Excitebike was pioneering in the '80s for being one of the first racing games to ever let you build your own track from scratch. The interface was clunky, though, and saving your hard work has always been a chore in previous versions (if not impossible). Here, the interface has been beautifully upgraded to be much more user friendly, with new navigational assistance, visual highlights and quick button shortcuts all making things easier than ever. Saving courses has finally been made simple, too, with 32 different save slots available for tracks you can given customized names too. Having such commonplace, modern functionality added into this aged design makes it feel like a brand-new experience. It's like an Excitebike designer's dream come true.
The game is ridiculously addictive. Even after coming in 22nd place you'll still want to try again. It's easy to get frustrated by the game's seemingly intense desire on making you suffer terribly, but lying underneath rests a truly enjoyable racing game, that proves video games don't need to have flashy graphics or complex AI to actually be fun. Sure, there are other racing games out there today, hundreds of them. This one may not necessarily be better than the recent stuff, but it's unique, addictive, and demonstrates what gaming is really about.
By Lucas M. Thomas Excitebike's always been a very available game. Ever since it first arrived on the NES around 25 years ago, it's been re-released again and again -- you could unlock it as a bonus in Excitebike 64, unwrap it as a present in Animal Crossing, rebuy it as a Game Boy Advance cartridge or Wii download and even score a set of playing cards that could be scanned through Nintendo's old eReader device to activate it. Excitebike's definitely made the rounds. And now, once again, it's been made available.
3D Classics: Excitebike immediately sets itself apart from all those prior versions, though, for a couple of major reasons. First, it's free. This 3DS download has been made the flagship piece of showcase software for Nintendo's new portable eShop, and it's been given a month-long pricetag of zero dollars. So if you're reading this before July 7, 2011 and you've got a 3DS system (or if you plan to buy one in the next few weeks, say, because of the impending release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D) then you should waste no more time getting your handheld online, firing up that new eShop and grabbing this fine freebie.
Even if you're reading this after July 7, though, you may still want to consider 3D Classics: Excitebike at its normal purchase price of $5.99 -- and that's because of the second reason this version is beating out all its previous re-releases. Actual effort has been put into it.
A new view on an old favorite.
Looking back across them all, none of Excitebike's earlier editions has really been that great. The NES version wouldn't let you save your created tracks, because it lost that functionality when being ported to America's NES from the Japansese original. The Excitebike 64 and Animal Crossing unlockables were OK, but you had to buy $50 console games and put in the work meeting their access conditions before you could even get to them. The GBA re-release squished the display area, the eReader cards were a pain to scan through that gimmicky peripheral one at a time and the WiiWare remake -- well, OK, the WiiWare remake was alright.
But 3D Classics: Excitebike edges out even that closest competitor because this new edition has clearly been crafted with quality in mind. It's fully featured. Every part of its package has been given extra polish, making it impressive to the point that Nintendo could have launched it without the month of free access and still seen it post great download numbers.
The 3D visuals are the main selling point, and they work wonderfully well. The development team at Arika rebuilt every aspect of the graphics from scratch, rather than just take the NES pixel art as-is. The game has been given an expanded, widescreen ratio to fill the 3DS' upper display and the system's 3D slider inventively bends the camera angle of the action to your desired degree of depth.
That's new. No other 3DS game has taken that approach so far, as most every other game uses that simple slider to just adjust the "intensity" of the 3D effect. Excitebike accomplishes that same goal, but does more at the same time. Leaving the slider pushed all the way down to the off position gives you a flat, traditional 2D Excitebike view (in new widescreen) that already looks great. But sliding it up starts easing in the stereoscopic "wow" factor, while giving you a glimpse at what's been in the background of all these many Excitebike races over the past 25 years -- you see more of the crowd gathered in the seats at the edge of the racetrack, and then, beyond them, an all-new cloud-filled backdrop of sky.
New storm clouds make mud-covered Track 4 more ominous.
On the gameplay front, Excitebike plays the same as it always has. You control a nameless, helmeted motorcycle racer trying to set speed records across an array of courses and must manage your temperamental bike to do it. Its engine is prone to overheating, so you must judiciously balance between its normal A Button acceleration and heat-building B Button turbo settings to keep it from shutting down on you mid-race. It likes to drop its speed severely after a jump off a ramp or over a hill, so you have to use the D-Pad to reposition its wheels in mid-air to match the angle of the surface you're about to land on and preserve your momentum.
Your bike likes to crash, too. So you have to press Left on the Pad to pop wheelies and avoid tripping over low obstacles, and also weave back and forth across the course to keep from running into enemy racers. If you do crash -- and you will, at some point -- madly pressing A and B as fast as possible gets you back astride your ride just a bit quicker.
Excitebike's never been Nintendo's deepest game design. Even a fully-featured version of it like this one won't challenge the best modern racers and can't reasonably be awarded the highest of review scores. Had Arika endeavored to implement more gameplay features like multiplayer (which WiiWare's World Rally first brought us) then a case could be made that the core, underlying game has been enhanced. As it is, this is basic Excitebike -- albeit with a lot of nifty enhancements to the presentation surrounding that core game.
But those enhancements do add a lot of value, and the biggest of them all comes in the game's Design mode. Excitebike was pioneering in the '80s for being one of the first racing games to ever let you build your own track from scratch. The interface was clunky, though, and saving your hard work has always been a chore in previous versions (if not impossible). Here, the interface has been beautifully upgraded to be much more user friendly, with new navigational assistance, visual highlights and quick button shortcuts all making things easier than ever. Saving courses has finally been made simple, too, with 32 different save slots available for tracks you can given customized names too. Having such commonplace, modern functionality added into this aged design makes it feel like a brand-new experience. It's like an Excitebike designer's dream come true.
Excitebike's Older Model Years
Classic NES Series: Excitebike Review
Excitebike 64 Review
Excitebike: World Rally Review
The Verdict
3D Classics: Excitebike offers a surprising new degree of depth for a game we've seen again and again for over two decades. If this kind of fresh perspective is an indication of what future 3D Classics re-releases will bring to other vintage hits, this eShop brand will definitely be one to watch. So download it right away, for free, if you've made it here before July 7. And even if you've missed its first month of release, still consider it for purchase at just under six bucks. Excitebike's been very available through lots of different versions over the years, but 3D Classics: Excitebike is the best edition this game's ever gotten.
Here is a good example of a game which doesn’t need flashy graphics or sound to be fun. The controls work like a dream and popping wheelies over hills still makes us feel like Evel Knievel, even over 20 years after its original release. Excitebike is easily still worth a look today for just 500 Wii points.
Gameplay: You race against a timer no matter what, and the landing physics can be a little wonky at times, but overall the game is at least dependable. This gameplay isn’t going to win any major awards, but it can be a fun distraction.
Sound: The sound here can get kind of annoying. The constant whine of your engine can become tiring, but the simple yet catchy music during the none-race moments is classic.
Nostalgia X-Factor: I played a fair deal of this game as a kid, but certainly not as much as others. I seem to remember being able to jump so high that you came up on the bottom of the screen, but I can’t reproduce it for the life of me – so clearly I don’t have too much residual memory of the game.
Worth Playing: It’s a decent game, and as one of the original Black Box games it’s worth at least trying. Not too much to write home about though, and you can quickly exhaust all of the game’s pre-defined content. Fortunately though, you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of money to pick it up; these carts are very prevalent.
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