Excitebike
Excitebike | ||||||||||||||||
NES - USA - 1st edition. |
||||||||||||||||
|
Excitebike is a dirt bike racing video game developed and published by Nintendo and released for the NES on 1984-11-30. It also saw a PlayChoice-10 release and was ported to Japanese 8-bit home computers. The game is the first in the Excitebike series. It was reworked for arcade as VS. Excitebike, and again for the Famicom Disk System which included the ability to play 2-player split-screen version and save your custom tracks and scores to disk.
Contents
Personal
Own? | Yes. NES USA loose cartridge. |
---|---|
Won? | Yes. Best time on all tracks in Mode A and Mode B. |
Finished | Mode A: 1990s / Mode B: 2024-03-08. |
I didn't own this game growing up, but several of my friends had the game, and I always enjoyed playing it. What interested me most was the ability to create your own tracks, though I always wished there was a way to save them. My best time on track 5 in mode B is 1:05:72.
Review
4 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 6 |
Best Version: NES
— This section contains spoilers! —
Good
- For a short while at least, the game is a quite fun.
- Being able to design your own tracks is a fantastic addition that more games should have had at the time.
- Requiring the player to not only keep their bike oriented properly, but also manage their heat, speed, and lane, was a good way to make the game more involved.
- I like how the game changes the palette for each new track.
Bad
- Although I like the cartoon characters, most of the game's graphics are pretty weak.
- The music is just a few jingles, and the sound of the overheating engine is annoying.
- The color palette of stage 5 makes it difficult to see the track. It's also a shame that you can't choose from a selection of palettes in the track designer.
- I wish the game actually implemented an AI for the other bikers rather than just throwing them randomly on the screen.
Ugly
- The game is too short. Five stages isn't nearly enough to keep players occupied and track five's best time of 1:06:00 is exceptionally difficult to beat, especially in mode B.
- The game really needs to be a two player game. I understand that a split screen just wasn't feasible on the hardware at the time, but they could have made it single screen and just punished players who fell behind with added time.
- The save and load options which worked in Japan, but not in the USA, should have been removed. They were just such a tease! You actually can get them to work with the Famicom Keyboard and a tape recorder, but they were never released in the USA.
Media
Box Art
Documentation
The Official Nintendo Player's Guide, part 1.
Maps
Graphics
Videos
Play Online
Representation
Strong female character? | Fail | There are no female characters. |
---|---|---|
Bechdel test? | Fail | There are no female characters. |
Strong person of color character? | Fail | The characters don't appear to have a race. |
Queer character? | Fail | There are no queer characters. |
Credits
The original game doesn't have credits, but NES Virtual Console, official sound tracks, and Vs. high score lists help identify several of the developers.
Role | Staff |
---|---|
Executive Producer | Hiroshi Yamauchi |
Director | Shigeru Miyamoto |
Producer | Shigeru Miyamoto |
Programmer | Toshihiko Nakago |
Graphic Designers | Minoru Maeda, Takashi Tezuka |
Music Composer | Akito Nakatsuka |
Audio Programmer | Yukio Kaneoka |
Titles
Language | Native | Transliteration | Translation |
---|---|---|---|
English | Excitebike | ||
Japanese | エキサイトバイク | Ekisaitobaiku | Excitebike |
- MAME code: pc_ebike
Links
- Video Games
- 1984 Video Games
- Video games developed by Nintendo
- Video games published by Nintendo
- NES Games
- NEC PC-8800 Games
- PlayChoice-10 Games
- Sharp X1 Games
- Video Game Genre - Racing
- Media Theme - Powersports
- Software Distribution Model - Commercial
- Video Games I Own
- Video Games I've Beaten
- Video Game Rating - 4
- Video Game Graphics Rating - 4
- Video Game Sound Rating - 3
- Video games which can be played online
- Video games without a strong female character
- Video games that fail the Bechdel test
- Video games without a strong person of color character
- Video games without a queer character
- Video Game Prime Order - Action, Adventure, Strategy
- Game Mechanic - Cheating AI
- Game Mechanic - Ratchet Scrolling