Excitebike is a 1984 motocross racing game, designed and directed by Shigeru Miyamoto for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and its most important legacy is not a sequel. The smooth side-scrolling engine his team built for it was used to make Super Mario Bros. the next year. That is why Mario accelerates from a walk to a run instead of moving at one speed. Excitebike is the reason.
Two Buttons
The game itself is simple and precise. You control a motocross rider from the side. The A button accelerates. The B button is a turbo boost that adds speed but overheats the engine if you hold it too long, forcing an immobile cooldown, unless you drive over the arrows placed along the course to reset the temperature. The directional pad shifts lanes and, in the air, shifts the rider’s balance.
That last part is the game. Land square on both wheels and you keep your momentum. Land badly and you lose it, or crash. Every jump is a small physics problem, and the whole race is a chain of them.
Two Modes
Selection A is a solo time trial. Selection B puts computer-controlled riders on the track, and they will happily knock you off your bike. The goal in either is to finish third or better in a preliminary race to qualify for the Excitebike championship. It is a structure with no fat on it.
Where It Went
The game was ported to arcades for the Nintendo VS. System the same year and to the Famicom Disk System in 1988. It was one of the best-selling games on the NES in North America, the first in the Excite series, and it has been re-released on the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console and the Nintendo Classics service. A PC-8801 and Sharp X1 port, published by Hudson Soft in 1985, exists as well.
Why It Still Plays
Because the feel is right. The engine-heat mechanic forces a rhythm of boost and rest that keeps you thinking, and the landing rule rewards the kind of small, exact timing that modern racers rarely ask for. A race takes a minute. A good race takes a minute and feels like an achievement.
Where It Falls Short
There is not much of it. A few tracks and two modes were plenty in 1984 and are thin now. The computer opponents are obstacles rather than rivals, and once the timing is learned the game has little left to teach.
The Verdict
Excitebike was a critical and commercial success, and it deserved to be. It is a small, sharp game whose best idea grew into the most important platformer ever made.
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