It’s infuriating and amazing at the same time. Hit a hill in the wrong place, slightly tangle with another rider, will see him perform the most hilarious of forward roles (please do not try this at home). Sometimes falling off, as Evel is prone to doing.
Excitebike is fast, and the first times you try out the tracks, this combined with the not-knowing-what-comes-next of it all will mean that you’ll be on the edge of your seat. Graphics and sound aside, why is this game a classic. Barring the bike, it all sounds a bit like Space Invaders although parallels between Evel Knievel (there, I said it) and the outer limits have been drawn. The vroom of the 8-bit is as genuine as anyone can hope for and has been copied in 8-bit games since. How does it sound? Like you’d expect a 1984 NES to sound. The tracks have single-shade backgrounds with a few textures and remaining colours used to give the ramps a 3-D effect (it’s all about the foreground). Two frames of animation is your lot, but it’s functional. Your character (I’m going to call him Evel) looks like a cross between ET, the predator, and a white Corvette, which I’m sure was the look Nintendo was going for.
I was two years old when it came out! Compared to anything the 2600 churned out, this looks amazing. Graphically it doesn’t wow compared to a lot of retro games but you need to consider that this is a 1984 NES game. You can even design your own track but I’ll come to that later. If you’ve never heard of it, Excitebike is essentially a motocross game with five different tracks where you can race against the clock or against umpteen other petrol heads.
I kid, it’s because this game is insanely addictive. If the name alone doesn’t get you excited then nothing will… I first played this on a dodgy NES compilation cart a friend of mine obtained from Mayalsia or somewhere similarly exotic and the other titles on it were largely ignored. Seeing as we’ve just taken a look at the NES Classic Mini on the January Podcast, I thought it only right to revisit one of its titles and a game I haven’t played in about twenty five years – Excitebike.
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