Post Description

Excitebike: World Rally updates the classic 1986 release with fresh visuals and a new presentation, but leaves much of the gameplay alone. The result is a simple fun action racer that doesn't stray far from what the original design accomplished. And that's also its downside. 

The developer of Excitetruck and Excitebots, Monster Games, has recreated the game that inspired those designs. Excitebike: World Rally is a direct conversion of Excitebike from the NES, but instead of 8-bit sprites and backgrounds, the team built out 3D characters and environments and kept the style as minimalist as possible. The game looks pretty spot-on in its rebuilding of the classic, but it also looks pretty sharp in the Wii's widescreen progressive mode. 

Excitebike was more of an action game than it was a racer, and the single player is still the same way: navigate through the side-scrolling tracks and its hazards all while weaving through slower-paced computer racers. You're not trying to beat these opponents – you're trying to cross the finish line in the shortest time possible. Every goof up is precious seconds off the clock, and with this design every millisecond counts: if you don't score the minimum time possible you can't move onto the next race. And extra bikes are unlocked if you manage to cross the line with an S-ranked time, so you'll need to get a grasp of what keeps your speed up in Excitebike.