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| GENRE |
| Racing |
| DEVELOPER |
| Nintendo |
| PUBLISHER |
| Nintendo |
| NUMBER OF PLAYERS |
| 1 |
| CONNECTIVITY |
| No |
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Excitebike
When I was ten years old, my brother's friend would come over with his Nintendo collection, and we'd waste many a sunny afternoon vegged out in front of the TV, hypnotized by colorful 8-bit worlds. After Super Mario Brothers 3, the game I remember best was Excitebike. One might well wonder why a simple motocross game could leave such an indelible mark on my psyche. It was because of a feature that I had never seen before (and that I've rarely seen since) in a video game: The power to create your own custom experience with a full track editor. But now that the game's been revived for the Classic NES series, it's time to take a good hard look at whether or not those fond memories are really justified.
visuals
Excitebike looks flawless on the GBA; you really have to be looking to find where they cheated to squash the game into the new aspect ratio. For their own part, there's still a certain charm to the isometric 3-D visuals used to bring the tracks to life.
audio
Sounds are pretty bland -- you'll mostly be listening to the dull thrum of your engine, interspersed with the exaggerated "BOING!" as you go over the jumps. Some unforgettable ditties play in between races.
gameplay
There are two main gameplay modes, Selection A and Selection B. In Selection A, you'll face each of the game's five courses in turn. Moving on to the next track is as simple as beating the "third place" time in each track. No matter which track you choose, you'll start out in a "qualifying course," where you must race a simpler incarnation of whatever track you chose before you qualify to take on the real deal. Selection B plays exactly the same, except that AI opponents litter the field. Their only purpose is to be moving obstacles, as you don't actually race against them; your object is still to beat the "third place" time. In spite of its simplistic appearance, Excitebike requires quite a bit of skill and planning in order to perform successfully at it. Each course offers a wide variety of crazy hills, jumps, and obstacles, and to keep your momentum going through all of them, you'll have to learn what angle to keep your bike at as you take off and land. Sometimes it's better to use a jump to gain height, and other times it's better to go for distance. Either way, you'll have to make sure you land on both wheels, or you may take a spill. There are also two types of thrust: Normal and turbo. The more you use turbo, the more your bike heats up; abuse it, and you'll overheat, wasting precious seconds. You can cool off quickly by running over a "cool zone" on the track; taking advantage of these is the key to success. But the most welcome feature in Excitebike is the track editor. With almost no effort, you can make an infinite number of custom tracks, greatly extending the game's value. Are the premade tracks not exciting anymore? Design your own and fill it with all the dirty tricks you want. Really love those super jumps? Put together a track that's nothing but super jumps. Your custom track can be played in either Selection A or Selection B mode. A save slot has been included, so Excitebike fans can finally save their best times and a single custom track for later reference. There's also a Sleep Mode which you'll probably never need.
multiplayer
N/A
overall
Excitebike is a cute game just to fool around with, especially because of its level editor, but it ends up kind of shallow. It's not bad, but it doesn't quite have the same charm that it did when I was ten years old. It's recommendable to anyone with an interest in the classics, but otherwise, you can afford to skip it.
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