Excitebike Belongs in a Museum

In 1985, Excitebike was released in the US as a “black label” launch title. It didn’t *look* all that impressive, but it was technologically notable as well as being generally well-received as fun and easy for all ages to pick up and play.

The game’s simple mechanics let you accelerate, brake, boost, and reorient your racer to maximize your speed. Balance that with preventing your bike from overheating and avoiding obstacles. You’ll crash a lot, but once you get the hang of Excitebike, it feels extremely satisfying.

Excitebike was the creation of Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto. According to Wikipedia, the team he directed on Excitebike would use the same game engine and acceleration mechanic on Super Mario Bros. Most previous side-scrollers saw their protagonists move at a constant speed, but the Excitebike engine allowed players to smoothly accelerate. The effect gave Super Mario its distinctive feel.

At its core, Excitebike is a fairly primitive racing game. The graphics are only incrementally improved over the blocky solids of the Atari 2600, the sound effects are grating and gameplay is minimal. But it has its own undeniable charm and challenge.

Interestingly, the game features a creator mode that allows players to arrange their own custom tracks. As far as I know (let me know if I’m off the mark), this was all but unheard of at the time. The feature certainly provided players with many hours of entertainment than the limited scope of the game would otherwise allow. And at a time decades before Mario Maker and Geometry Dash. Nice work, Miyamoto-san!

Excitebike really was a product of its time, and not just because of the utterly basic gameplay and graphics. When Excitebike was released, gaming culture was starting to lean away from arcades and into gamers’ homes. 

Arcade games were made to be played standing up, killing you every minute or two, prompting you to insert another quarter. Arcade gamers didn’t have time to explore and they certainly didn’t have time to create their own motocross tracks. 

The growing emphasis on at-home gaming allowed designers to create a more casual slow-burn experience where they could poke around and invest time in more than just living another minute and getting a higher score.

As such, Excitebike was one of few games of its generation that was born on a console and ported to arcades later. Several black label NES games shared this lifecycle.

I’ve said it enough times already, but Excitebike was truly a primitive Neanderthal game banging rocks together in a tent made from a brontosaurus ribcage. (Don’t look that up, just trust me it’s probably historically sound, k?) But way back in 1985, it was fairly impressive. And I’m sure players were intrigued by the ability to design their own tracks.

Today, it’s a quick, easy source of racing adrenaline and a really nifty piece of gaming history that, imo, belongs in a museum as much as on a collector’s shelf.

Shadowgate: A Dark and Deadly NES Adventure