April 9, 2015
Excitebike is a classic game for the NES, one I grew up with and have fond memories of, especially of the built in Level Editor which was amazingly fun at the time. The original NES version has been re-released many times, on Virtual console, on the 3D Classics range for 3DS, on Animal crossing as a hidden NES game, even on eReader cards!
It also had a few sequels which I take a look at in the video.
There was an odd title for the SNES released exclusively for the Satellaview attachment (Basically a modem that let you download games over a sattelite connection) It starred the Mario cast of characters and sported some very colourful graphics, unfortunatly it never got released on cart which makes it impossible to (legally) play it today…
The first true sequel was the much more realistic Excitebike 64, with some very cool bike physics for the time and some challenging gameplay. It had amazing graphics and when combined with the expansion pack it even allowed for high-res textures!
The Excite series skipped the Gamecube and went straight to the Wii with two entires, first there was Excite Truck which is probably my favourite in the series, I’ve completed it 100% with an S Rank on every stage… Yes I was a bit addicted to it back in the day!
Those lucky folk in the US got a sequel to this called Excitebots which looks crazy, unfortunatly it never got a UK release and has been on my “to import” list for a while…
Another Excitebike game on the Wii came in the form of a wiiware title called World Challenge, this is pretty much just a simple update of the NES game with some new areas and much improved graphics, the core gameplay is almost identical, save for the fact that you can now angle the bike by tilting the wii remote, i’m just glad they kept the level editor!
The most recent sighting of the Excitebike franchise came in the latest DLC for Mario Kart 8 with the inclusion of an Excitebike themed stage, set in an arena, its a pretty fun level with plenty of jumps and a cool remix of the soundtrack.
Thanks for reading and enjoy the video!