Let's Get Excitebike!

Nintendo invited The Freshman and Jake The Snake to meet with motocross rider Brian Mason and play the Big N's newest version of their 8-bit hit, Excitebike. Little did our heroes know, they'd soon be going on a little ride of their own.

Nintendo invited The Freshman and Jake The Snake to meet with motocross rider Brian Mason and play the Big N's newest version of their 8-bit hit, Excitebike. Little did our heroes know, they'd soon be going on a little ride of their own.

A Ride Up Memory Mountain
Nintendo and Left Field Productions sponsored a bit of a field day on Monday to show off Excitebike 64, the latest version of one of the best (and one of the first) games on the original NES. The theme of the day was transportation; the GamePros flew to Ontario, California, rode in a minivan to Glen Helen Raceway in San Bernardino, and silently eyed the motocross bikes as they considered their task for that afternoon - to sit astride one of those roaring engines of death and go big in the raceway parking lot.

It all started with a presentation by Left Field, Excitebike 64's developers. Having done a handful of sports games in the past, including NBA Courtside, Left Field are no strangers to the N64 and its peculiarities. For Excitebike 64, they had planned to produce a more realistic motocross sim, along the lines of EA Sports Supercross 2000, but they decided to go another way with it. It seems Shigeru Miyamoto (creator of Mario, Zelda, and more or less everything else Nintendo's done that's worthwhile), wanted to revive the old Excitebike franchise, and he thought Left Field's game would the perfect way to do that. So Left Field dropped some of the randy sim elements, inserted massive heaps of fun, and created Excitebike 64.

Get Some Air Onto It
The original Excitebike was just a straight track with jumps, climbs, puddles, and other obstacles. Your job was basically to get big air while trying to be the first to the finish line. The new Excitebike 64 looks to capture that simple fun under the disguise of a 3D motocross racer with all of the N64's bells and whistles. Challenging courses range from realistic indoor supercross tracks to outrageous outdoor circuits that bring to mind San Francisco Rush or Beetle Adventure Racing. Simple controls are meant to keep gamers from getting bogged down in physics that real motocross riders spend years to master. It looks like Nintendo's trying to insert some new blood into a genre that is already crowded with mediocre games, and so far, it seems to be working.

Get Up Onto That Thang
With the required journalistic work all out of the way, it was time to separate the men from the boys. Ironman motocross rider Brian Mason and his team were there to fulfill everyone's need for speed. Out came the motocross bikes, and puh-dump went the GamePros' hearts as they watched the 20-year-old dirt-bike star fly over hills and jumps that would make lesser men cry home to mama. We had images of ourselves sailing over the steep hills and biting it hard at the bottom. But knowing no fear, the GamePros sidled up to the motocross bikes and 4-wheeled ATVs to bravely tackle the wild flatness of the raceway parking lot. Spectators looked on with awe as Jake The Snake manhandled the 125cc dirt bike through the loose, dusty sand. That awe turned to pity as The Freshman wrangled a 4-wheeler over a twisty beginners' course. Basically, the GamePros got a good feeling for how hard motocross racing really is, and reaffirmed their joy in having jobs that don't require a helmet.

Stay tuned to this site for more on Excitebike 64 as the first reviewable versions roll into the GamePro offices later this week.

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DoubleUp

Excitebike 64........ damn, that was a while back. That's kind of why I like looking at these old articles.

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