Excitebike: World Rally

This week, I was fully expecting to follow up on my previous post with more impressions of Metal Gear and Castelian on the NES, but that didn’t happen.  Why not?  Excitebike: World Rally happened.

I want to take a minute to give a quick shout out to this game.  It was released the same week as New Super Mario Bros. Wii, so I think it got somewhat overlooked.  I know  I was interested in it, but forgot all about it in the wake of Mario.  Now that I’ve finally downloaded it, I’m hooked!

This is a fantastic little update to the original Excitebike.  It’s got 16 different courses spread across four different cups, a great online component (with a very active playerbase, it seems), a track editor, and lots of new bikes to unlock.  The single player experience goes by pretty quickly if you don’t try to get S-ratings on each race, so take your time and savor it.

Any retro gamer who’s a fan of the original Excitebike (and let’s face it, who isn’t?) should get this game for WiiWare.  You’ll be hooked (oh, and don’t fall for the temptation to revert to classic NES-style controls — the tilt controls really work well and are a lot of fun).