Platform	NES
	Genre	Driving Simulation
	Publisher	Nintendo
	Points	500
	Rating	8 / 10

Review

Excitebike was released September 6, 1986 and was part of the NES Programmable Series. Programmable didn’t mean writing lines and lines of code on your keyboard only to find you missed a “140 goto 110” half way through which made the entire program redundant. Programmable meant it had a track editor built into the game which was a revolutionary achievement at the time, and this is also included in the Wii edition.

Excitebike is a motocross racing game where, scrolling from left to right, you had to jump over ramps, dodge oil slicks and change lanes to get the best advantage over your opponents. However the mechanics of the game aren’t as simple as that. In Excitebike you have the ability to shift your weight on the bike using the left and right arrows on the D-pad. The reason for this is while in the air you need to shift your weight in order to get the right trajectory or line yourself up to land in the correct position. If you lean too far back you land on your back wheel, slowing you down. If you lean to far forward you’ll land on your front wheel causing you to crash and leave you frantically mashing the buttons to make your man run back to his bike. “Is that all!?” I hear you cry! No it isn’t because not only do you have to make sure your weight distribution is right but you also have to make sure you are not pushing your bike so hard that it overheats.

The controls are simple, A is accelerate and B is boost. Simple acceleration will bring your heat level to a comfortable level and will maintain it. Only when boosting for too long will your heat level rise to ‘Overheat’ level causing you to have to stop and wait for your bike to cool. The controls and ideas behind this game are what inspired the creation of Excite Truck on the Wii and although extremely simple, it takes some skill to time your boosts and angle your landings in order to win the race.

The game consists of 3 modes; Selection A is racing against the clock on your own, Selection B is what seems to be a 4 player race, until you realise that you’ve passed the green racer at least 3 time and you haven’t done a lap yet. Selection B adds more fun to the game adding the element of surprise from the other racers, and also supplying a comical moment or two when you manage to run over a downed opponent running back to their bike. Each of these two modes has just 5 tracks but the difficulty within the races is exponential from 1 through 5. The final mode is the previously mentioned Design mode which allows you to create, save and load your own tracks. The editor is extremely simple, but so is the entire game. You have the option of placing 19 different items in a line in whichever order you wish, and when you’ve placed the end ramp you can chose how many laps to race. Once you’ve created a masterpiece you can race the course you’ve just made in a Selection A or Selection B type race.

Unfortunately, Excitebike is only a single player game, which is a shame as multiplayer would have worked really well. Although there isn’t a massive sum of content within Excitebike, the addition of the track editor and the fact you are racing against the clock, means you want to improve your time over and over again; giving long life to a simple game. Excitebike is a brilliant, simple pick-up-and-play game for all the family and for just 500 points is a must have…even if it’s just to see where Excite Truck came from.