Let me be perfectly up-front and honest: I only bought this game to complete my collection of in-game bumper stickers for Samus’s ship in Metroid Prime 3.

Ok, that’s not actually true, but learning that it was one of the few games that would do that gave it a blessing of sorts, like it was a game that maybe was worth looking into. It was reading opinions of the game from other people that convinced me to pick it up.

I’ve never played Excitebike—why would I, it’s a NES game—so I didn’t have expectations. Good thing too, because despite nominally being a continuation due to the name they don’t have much in common. You can maybe see some similarities with the courses found in Excitebike 64, but the whole focus of this game is not really on the racing. The goal is to reach a given star value for each track; coming in first does give you a healthy score bonus, but the main thing to think about is the sicknasty jumps and crashes you can do.

You get stars for drifting, air time, tricks, smashing other trucks, even for wiping out in a cool way; these crashes also give you a chance to return to the track with a boost, so crashing isn’t discouraged in this game. This is a fun decision as there’s less punishment, and this attitude is necessary due to the control scheme.

Yes, apart from a continuation of the Excitebike series, this is one of those early Wii games that wanted to use the remote in a different way. In this case, tilting to steer and do spins is the only control method, with turbo boosting activated by holding any D-pad direction. As you might expect, it’s a bit imprecise, but the track design and the crash recovery mechanic make it perfectly manageable and even quite fun.

Some precision is required to hit the powerups, which come in two kinds: one that’s essentially Mario Kart’s star item, and the more common one which instantly shifts the terrain. This is a very cool idea; mountains will rise or valleys form in a matter of seconds, giving you a sweet place to jump and throwing off your opponents. Seeing the map geometry just change like that is fascinating, considering the whole game pursues a realistic look. The tracks are a little fanciful, with holes blown in the Great Wall of China and such, and the physics are most definitely wild and arcadey. But the trucks and tracks are aesthetically very much in the real world.

So the core mechanics are fairly solid, but the star requirements can make getting through the cups very challenging. Clearing a course after several attempts gives satisfaction, but if you want to unlock stuff you need S rank in every track, which I found just impossible so gave up. This left the game feeling a little short on content. There’s a nice challenge mode which gives you specific goals like jumping through rings or smashing other trucks in an arena, but they’re so few. I really ran out of things to do. The environment types only number a handful too. Still, for the small price I found it I got enough value here.

The question of its worth though is muddied by its sequel, Excite Bots. From the brief footage I’ve seen it looks like the same game but improved, simply superceding this one. It’s the same mechanics but the trucks and courses have more personality, there are more trick options, the graphics look a bit better, there are more modes to play. I’d recommend getting that… if you can find it. Still, this was a bit of fun while it lasted. Tearing through a course is pretty “exciting”.