Excitebike. Probably the finest racing game of the third generation. It was pretty much ignored since, other than the really crappy Excitebike 64 (which pretty much had nothing to do with the original), but let’s just forget that one. We finally get a full blown remake of the classic on the Wii’s WiiWare, and when I got my Wii back I had to get it right away.

So here’s what I thought of it. Does it stack up with the original, or should we ignore it like with Excitebike 64?

Read on! This will be quite a short read.

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Date of Release: November 9, 2009
Platforms: Wii (WiiWare)

Genre: Racing
Players: 1 player offline, 4 players offline

Looks and sounds
Well the game has a very similar style to the NES title. But it’s all in 3D. Pretty crappy 3D, though. The racers themselves look like Miis with helmets which is lame, the crowds during races look like someone took about 3 minutes to put them togheter and they’re not animated. The motorcycles look okay, though very basic. What is nice here is that, despite looking kinda lame, it keeps it simple and manages to keep the same basic look as the classic. Another nice thing is the areas you race in. Instead of just stadiums, there’s various exterior tracks and background and such. Keeps the game varied.

The sounds are pretty nice. Obviously a few notches up from the NES’. But what I like is that they just re-recorded the original music with different instruments and made it sound really good. The bike sound and such is great, not much to say on it, and it actually has a good use of the Wiimote’s speaker unlike…. most games that use it. With it you get a sound when you do a wheelie, a wheelie jump, and various sounds on landing to tell you how well you landed. Oh, and when you’re about to overheat. Simple but it’s pretty nice.

Gameplay
Have you played the original? Well, it plays pretty much the same. One thing to note is the controls. You have 2 choices: Using the Wiimote to change your angles which sucks, or using the classic NES controls. Obviously the NES controls work a lot better. The basic gameplay is simple. 2 presses the gas, 1 uses your turbo, up/ down make you change from one lane to another (there’s 4 lanes) and left/right change your angle in the ar, or make you do a wheelie on the ground.

Boosting obviously makes you faster. As you hold the boost button, your temperature meter will rise. If it gets too high, it’s basically the same as crashing, though shaking the Wiimote has less effect. You can lower your temperature meter by just not boosting and waiting for it to go down. You can also find arrows on the road, which will reduce the meter to zero. The final way is to make other racers crash, either by hitting their front-end, or jumping on top of them.

The wheelie is a pretty important move. Doing a wheelie at the right time before a jump triggers a wheelie jump, which makes you go further. Doing wheelies while boosting can make you go through mud a bit faster that rolling normally. Wheelies also let you pass over obstacles, both walls and other racers. If you hit walls or other racers from behind or from the side, you’ll crash. While you’re crashing, you can shake the Wiimote to make your motorcycle roll ahead a bit, so when you crash you at least don’t always waste too much time.

After taking jumps, you have to land properly, otherwise you’ll crash. There’s a few angles you can hit the ground at, depending on the slope. Get exactly the right angle, which is the angle in which the ground is, you get a nice landing (for landing straight on flat ground) or a smooth landing (for landing on the right angle in a slope).

What’s new?
The game is pretty much just like the NES classic, but it has a few modifications. First is the number of courses. You have 16 here instead of 5 in the original. It works with 4 cups, each with 4 courses, and you only unlock the next race when you get at least a B rank on the current one. When you’re done, it’s all about tryin to beat your times and S-rank the whole game. Each cup is increasingly difficulty.

Next is the addition of Morph tiles in races. Those add a yellow pick-up on the course. When you touch those, a jump appears just ahead of you. If the pick-up is on the top lane, it’s gonna be a big hill for you to jump on, if the pick-up is on the bottom lane it’s gonna be a ramp that makes you jump much further than normal jumps.

There’s the addition of online as well. It’s really barebones. You can either play with friends, or with random people. The matches will be for up to 4 people, and it’s a race for the best time. Simple stuff, but quite interesting. You can try to see other peoples’ strategies in races and such, it’s pretty cool.

Finally, there’s the track editor. It’s basically the same track editor as the NES version, but this time you can actually save the tracks you made. That alone is a huge improvement. You can also have a few extra parts that you didn’t have in the first game, and morph tiles as well. It works well and it’s fun to have even more tracks. You’re limited in the amount of tracks you can make, but you can always removes ones you don’t like as much.
Oh, and there’s unlockable bike colors if you S-rank everything or do well online.

Overall
This is a must for fans of the original. And for other people… Well it’s just $10, you don’t have much to lose, and it’s great fun. It plays like the original which is great, and it adds a bit of cool things.

It’s also fun to play as a group… despite the game being single-player. Trying to beat other peoples’ times is always fun.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Plays just like the classic
- Adds some cool stuff and graphical effects
- You can save multiple custom tracks
- More tracks
- Infinite replay value

Cons
- Hmm… nothing? …. Okay, I guess they could have taken a bit more time with the graphics… or at least the crowds…

The Save Factor
The game has a starting price of 1000 Wii points, so $10, and I feel that it’s the perfect price for the game. More might be too much, but less would feel too much like a steal.

jobocan Console, Games, WiiWare, retro, wii