I can't tell you enough how happy I am to have you here!
To summarize our situation - it's Friday night and it's Video Game Week. What does that mean, you ask? It means that it's either late Friday night or fairly early Saturday morning while you read this, a fact that causes no consternation on my part. I've certainly spent my share of time dinking around online while waiting for good things to happen. Even less derisively, there's no harm in spending a weekend night in - eff you for thinking otherwise. Life is what you make of it, and no one says you have to be out at a trashy bar in order to really experience the weekend. You wanna sit quietly, all hours of the night and read? I'm cool with that. Hell, I'll recommend books and dissect the author's perspective until the sun comes up. You just need to tell me when to shut up so you can sleep. Point is, I want you to enjoy your day. But at the same time, here we're looking at old games! The forgotten and downtrodden, the neglected and loved, the old games no one plays anymore! So what do we look at in the brief time I spend writing on a Friday evening, between cocktails?
Excitebike, kids. Excitebike.
I don't know what it is about this game. There's something so simple and gratifying about it that scratches the subconscious itch in a way that just zipping through it mindlessly can't do...a pleasure that's derived from hitting the jumps and popping wheelies just so, like a mofo. I loved this game.
Released in 1985 (1985!!!) in America, the game is of the simplest concept - just hold A to accelerate, B for turbo and use the d-pad to lean forward or back and don't get greedy, lest you overheat or tumble. Your little racer hurtles towards the finish line, engine chugging away as you hammer down on an intricately timed pattern of A&B button turbo bursts. There is such a simple nature to this game that it almost could have preceded the NES. I look back on it fondly as one of the first games I was ever given as a kid, I think from my Aunt Sue for my...man, my fifth birthday? That can't be right, can it?
Regardless, I love Excitebike. There is a certain zen nature to the game - just hold A and you could win. Sure, it might depend on your ability to level off your jumps and landings, but it was feasible to win simply by driving straight on and not using any turbo boosts. In the design of the game is a certain element that is intrinsic to the idea of control and enjoyment, that the player uses their hands to experience the ride and get a bit of a vicarious buzz. Twenty-some years on, I still love to fire up a running version of this game and bleed a bit of adrenaline in the slightest way.
In a move of staggering genius Nintendo released this as one of their 3DS games for FREE, so go and download it now and see what you missed so long ago. I'll check in with you tomorrow to see what you've missed in the intervening years.
