You wait for ages for a motocross title, and then two come along at once. One with elastic physics in Elasto Mania, the other Excitebike 64 for the Nintendo 64, a sequel to 1984's Excitebike.
I don't recall ever having played Excitebike, and I've certainly never played Excitebike 64, though I do own it. If I can get around to owning a working N64 to go along with it, that'd be great, but until then, I'll just have to run its bits and bytes through an emulator.
After bouncing around the weird world of Elasto Mania, a more traditional, more grounded motocross experience is probably what I need. Let's see if Excitebike 64 offers it.
Fun Times
There are a number of modes available in Excitebike 64, with more locked away, revealing themselves when you're good enough. I headed into the Season mode to start with, tasking me with placing first on the points table after five races.
Not knowing what my rider should be skilled in, I chose 'Jumpin' Jim Rivers, who is as average as they come, and decked him out in red, because red is obviously the fastest colour. With no training at all, I was ready for the novice level Season to commence.
As you might expect, the A-button accelerates your bike and the analogue stick turns it, but you'll soon notice that this isn't quite moving as you'd expect. Turning is helped by a press of the shoulder button, which tightens your turning radius and allows you to look like a motocross rider trying to navigate a corner, and not like a bumbling idiot grinding along the track walls.
The feeling of these physics - like Elasto Mania, come to think of it - should be experienced firsthand. It's hard to describe. On the one hand, I want to say that it captures the feeling of motocross riding, in that you both dig into the dirt and can get bogged down in it, as much as you can glide across the surface like there's no friction at all.
On the other hand, I want to say it's awful, and that you will hate getting to grips with it. You will turn, then you'll turn tighter in a bit of a panic, then you'll wobble somewhere and you'll be facing the wrong direction entirely. You'll understeer, you'll oversteer, you'll not steer at all. It'll feel like you're wading through mud, and then suddenly encounter no resistance, and for a brief moment, it'll feel really good and then you'll lose whatever you had again.
Frustrations
While we're on this downward trend, let's talk about crashing. It is a fact of motocross that you'll crash, be it into a haybale or another rider. You might land awkwardly, you might catch a bump in the road, you might just get caught in traffic. Whatever, it happens.
In Excitebike 64, it happens too much. You can be idling along and another rider will land on your head, putting you out of action for a few seconds. You can be turning a corner when another rider clips you. You could simply make a mess of it and ride into someone, but sometimes, whatever the situation, it'll be the other rider who stacks it, and not you. Telling who will come off worse from a collision is seemingly only a certainty when there's only one rider involved.
With that in mind, perhaps, there is rubberbanding at play to keep the pack somewhat together. It's not terribly obvious, but boy did I need it to stand a chance, especially after coming off my bike every ten seconds.
Two points from two races is not a championship winning performance. I'm not out of the running, but I'm not really in it, either. Consistency is the key, but that assumes you're consistently good, and I'm just not getting the hang of these bike physics right now.
The courses are a mix of indoor and outdoor circuits, and while they look basic in some respects, they don't do too bad a job at selling the idea of a motocross championship taking place. I'm pretty sure I even recognise some sponsors from the world of motocross, so it certainly seems like a fair bit of thought has gone into the look and feel of this title.
Just when you think you've got the hang of it, it slips from your fingers, again and again, and again.
After a horrid start to the fourth race, I somehow made my way into first place - thanks, rubberbanding. How would I mess this up? I'm going to mess this up, there's no doubt about it, but the how could come from anywhere. Right here? Trying to corner, being too early, hitting the advertising boards.
The next lap, a few corners later, a backmarker that has only just spawned in this lap to make it more difficult, so far as I can tell, is slowly making his way around the track in front of me. How can this possibly go wrong?
One more race. Impossible for me to win the championship, but it is definitely possible to come last, so let's avoid that by doing something - anything - with some degree of suc-nope!
I'm going to get lost in the desert and be done with motocross.
Further Fun Times
It just so happens that Excitebike 64 has a randomly generated Desert map that dots ten checkpoints around the place and has you race against others to get from one to the other, in whatever fashion you want. I was not expecting this at all, and love the idea of having nothing to crash into for miles and miles.
Alright, after a first crash 4 seconds in, then there'll be nothing around for miles and miles...
The smokestack in the distance marks the checkpoint, and you've got to be right on the nose to tick it off. There's no map or anything to indicate where the next one is until you've crossed one off, so approaching with any kind of strategy didn't really happen.
One thing the desert allows you to do is to explore the turbo button. Your bike has a temperature gauge, and you can increase it through normal engine use, or increase it further by hitting the turbo button to get a boost of speed, which feels great going up a sand dune, allowing you to sail over the desert and land gracefully on the other side.
I never found out what happens when you overheat, though. I assume it's bad.
The desert is remarkably empty. For most of the run, I was chasing down whoever was in first place, and it wasn't often I could ever see him, beyond a giant arrow pointing him out. Were the other riders not here and the checkpoints not important, I could see myself just riding around this place having fun with the controls - no crashing and no corners, after all. The odd bit of nature can get in your way, however.
I was genuinely warming up to Excitebike 64 now and was hunting down whoever it was in 1st place for the longest time. Even when you couldn't see him, or the route he was taking to each checkpoint, I thought he'd have it in the bag, always seeming to be those few bike lengths ahead of me.
But it wasn't to be. I found 1st place, somewhere, somehow, and even found some of the other riders. What they were doing here, I don't know. I assume some of the checkpoints are reused. Hoping not to ride straight into any of them, I scrambled towards the smoke for a surprise victory.
Spurred on and now in the mood, I tried my hand at the season mode again. Would the wind be with me? Have I found the zone?
Final Word
I don't think I found the zone - you can see how easy it is to make mistakes and take soil samples, but I had more success and had a better time with Excitebike 64. Not a brilliant time, but a better one.
The controls are still too annoying to get my head around. There's a certain finesse needed that I'm obviously lacking, and while there are tools like tight turning, turbo boosts and rubberbanding to help you out, it can feel like you're either fated to win or lose.
The extra modes sound interesting, as they include some remakes of the original Excitebike, as well as a stunt mode of some sort, a track editor to play around with and even motorcycle football, but I just can't get the feeling of this games' physics out of my head, and that may always put me off trying to unlock the good stuff.
If one good thing has come of Excitebike 64, it's that it reminded me of my childhood, playing Championship Motocross Featuring Ricky Carmichael for the PlayStation 1. It's a better game, but it didn't make the 1001 list. Maybe because it didn't have a desert. Maybe it wasn't a better game at all. Maybe my memories are warped with nostalgia. I'll have to play that sometime soon.
Back to Excitebike 64. It's not bad. It's not excellent. You'll hate it, but when you pull off a nice run, you'll feel great. There will be smiles, there will be moans, and some of you will like it more than the rest of you. There are a lot of modes to play around in and it'll keep your interest for a little while at least.
But that's about all. Give it a shot.
Fun Facts
Inspiration was taken from Wave Race 64, and when you think of the two games side by side, you can sort of see it. You might even argue you can feel the waves beneath your bike...
Excitebike 64, developed by Left Field Productions, first released in 2000.
Version played: Nintendo 64, 2000, via emulation.