I, being a pretty creative person, found myself drawn to this feature again and again. Again, pretty similar to Stunt Track Driver, which I discovered years later. You could scroll from the start to the end of the lap, placing ramps and obstacles to your heart’s content. In Design Mode, you could use an unheard-of ability to actually design a track. The notability comes entirely from one feature of it: “Design Mode”. The thing about Excitebike that makes me bring it up isn’t the fact that it was (technically) a racing game that I really loved. Can you set up for the jump in time to not wipeout, and then correct yourself to nail the landing? In fact, having opponents was even an option that you could set at the beginning if you turned them off, it was just you versus the clock and the triangular ramps. I suppose, in the end, it was really just a timed platformer like all of the Mario games, but with it keeping track of who made it through the course fastest. Where you spend 50 cents betting that you’ll figure out the controls before losing.Įxcitebike was a cool racing game because it was less about racing and more about getting past the obstacles while still making a good time. It was sometimes found in friend’s collections of games, maybe at a relative’s or a neighbor’s, and, in a few select instances, at that bastion of childhood that is slowly fading into obscurity: the arcade. In a similar manner, I was always fascinated by ye olde Excitebike. And you already know how I feel about Hot Wheels Stunt Track Driver, if you can even call that a racing game. The actual racing isn’t that great, but the rest is. Or racing in the Grand Theft Auto series, which is always punctuated with running from the police and maybe, if you’re lucky, blowing up the enemy cars with guns.
For instance, the old Need for Speed: Underground series, which was one third about making an awesome car, one third about drifting, and one third about actually racing (with nitrous and bonuses for looking cool while doing it). There are very few exceptions to this rule, normally centered around the racing not actually being racing–that is, not racing other people. I’ve never been very good at them, I don’t find that they pay off in terms of fun or challenge like other games do, and I’ve never really been able to get into them like I do other games. So, let’s get a few things reminded, for those not keeping score: I don’t like racing games. I have no idea if this relates to real motocross in any way beyond aesthetics.