RETRO REBOOT | Excitebike (NES)

Not that it needs to be said, but Shigeru Miyamoto is a genius. I don't even have to speak about the cleverness of the Pikmin series, or his cancelled "Project Giant Robot" Wii U exclusive (yes, I'm still absolutely livid that never came to fruition), but most of the Nintendo's black box era games. Simplistic by modern standards, these games showcased a lot of ingenuity and robust game design with minimal resources. This is precisely why it's fun to pop in Excitebike and just have a go at it for like a good hour or two.

Released in 1984, Excitebike was one of the Nintendo Entertainment System's launch games. It serves as the fundamental backbone most NES games were developed with, notably the smooth engine that would later be used for the production of Super Mario Bros. in 1985 in dictating Mario's ability to accelerate on command, rather than automatically.

This was one of the first games we rented back in the day, and as a four year old, I thought this was the most challenging title I had played. Mostly due to genuine physics being applied to how you landed your bike. All I did was fall all the time. So I resorted to trying to design courses used to trip up my brothers and cousins. It's more than just a racer, it's the perfect building block for aspiring video game designers and programmers.

The graphics do a great job of catching the eye. Your red and white biker is complimented perfectly by the contrasting colors of the courses, ensuring you stand out. Even when racing against the purple opponents, nothing gets lost. There can be some clipping when too many racers are on the screen, which is typical with a lot of Nintendo games.

In Designer Mode, you have 19 different hurdles to choose from, and I could get pretty creative with what you have to work with. It's too bad the Famicom Tape Drive Recorder didn't see the light of day outside of Japan. The concept of saving created material was very ahead of its time. It would take a few years later in games like Mario Paint to see the idea come to fruition. Even environment builders would later come back in the Super Mario Maker series, highlighting how many of Nintendo's concepts for game design have remained with them throughout the decades. Not to overly glaze them or anything, but they're the only developer/publisher that thinks this way.

Excitebike controls very well, and does exactly what it needs to do as a racer; it's responsive, smooth, and intuitive. As mentioned, the concept of momentum in a video game may seem pretty alien, though some games like Asteroids and Joust took full advantage of it. The ability to control it on the fly, however, makes Excitebike a standout for the time. When hitting the ramps and sticking your landing on two wheels becomes a science, it feels like I worked to earn that. Falling sucks, but I felt myself crashing and burning less.

Again, more Big N glazing here, but this is a bonafide way of blending arcade-style gameplay with savvy mechanics that gives it such high replay value; I always feel like I want to try and beat my original score. It's astounding that something like Trials Fusion just got too hard stay fun, despite being inspired by the same idea, yet this 8-bit engine can retain its amusement without the bells and whistles (which is a shame, because I was a pretty big Trials Fusion fan initially).

This is textbook gaming experience, and a title that highlights Shigeru Miyamoto's knack for integral direction and software architecture. The original Excitebike has always been a staple for Nintendo, despite being ultra-long gaps in the years before a sequel would come into being on the Nintendo 64, which was also pretty decent in its own right. It's something that didn't particularly need to be a franchise to warrant its success, and that's sometimes a concept that has gotten lost over time. Even Nintendo has fallen victim to that, lately.

The memorable music (of which it has only a handful of themes), the gameplay, the course design, and the deeper strategy that exists within it shows that even the most linear concept can stay entertaining for decades beyond.