Current Events > Excitebike

(+) Yeah! (+)

It's amazing how early NES games could be so simple, yet so difficult.

You can switch lanes, accelerate, and toggle the bike back and forth to some degree. That's it. Make sure you accelerate at the right moment to jump over the ramps, don't let your bike overheat, and stay out of the way of other racers. The first tracks is a freebie, the second one feels like an earned victory, and then it switches over to Ghouls 'n Ghosts levels of difficult by demanding absolute perfection.

That does take away some of the fun factor that you can't mess up a single time after the second track, but they give it right back in allowing you to design your own track and by offering more realistic goals in winning races set in those original tracks.

It just makes me regret this isn't one that I had access to as a kid. I would've loved to have tricked a friend or a family member into playing an intentionally bad track with nothing but grass patches or multiple consecutive jumps. Even without somebody else, it's fun to torture the CPU racers on sadistically designed tracks.

Best part of that game as a kid was the track creator.

Its simple but very much ahead of its time
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Well, duh.

"Now you're playing with power" wasn't just a slogan.
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Yeah. It's listed under the programmable series rather than the sports series.

It's almost like the NES version of something like Mario maker.

One thing they really should've changed: overheating should've been an automatic game over.

It's impossible to win a race after overheating, so they may as well have made that an auto loss instead of forcing the player to wait out the rest of a race they've already lost.

Its still fun to play.
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Now that I think about it, overheating being an automatic game over would've solved everything.

Like, if you royally wiped out in the first 30 seconds of a race, you could just hold the A button for four seconds to forfeit. No need to play a race you've already lost.

Now i wanna play it again.
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Mr_Karate_II posted...

Now i wanna play it again.

Shame I can't design a track for you. :P

Skye Reynolds posted...

Now that I think about it, overheating being an automatic game over would've solved everything.

Like, if you royally wiped out in the first 30 seconds of a race, you could just hold the A button for four seconds to forfeit. No need to play a race you've already lost.

Games used to be more punishing than they are now.
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I believe I can fly. I believe I can -- No, no, dammit! Don't roll down the hill!

>_<

Skye Reynolds posted...

Mr_Karate_II posted...

Now i wanna play it again.

Shame I can't design a track for you. :P

A remake for switch would be awesome and would make me want to buy one. They could add a share option.
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Yes! Yes! I'm going to make it!

*gets caught in a damage loop*

:'-(

ClunkerSlim posted...

I always thought Excitebike was great. My neighbor had it and we played it all the time. But lately I've been watching some NES retrospectives and many people seem to list it as a bad game. I think even AVGN might have said it's a bad game. But I love it.

Nah, he liked it. It was on an episode of James and Mike Mondays.

They made intentionally bad courses for each other.