Excitebike World Rally Review
Monster Games has pretty much taken up the mantle now as developer of all things Excite-related. After creating the excellent launch-title arcade racer, Excitetruck – the first game to branch the Excite series out of bikes – and following up with the goofy but fairly good Excitebots, the developer has returned to the roots of the series with a pseudo-3D update to the original NES title.
Excitebike World Rally for the WiiWare (1,000 Wii Points) is essentially an expansion of the Excite 3D mode from 2000’s Excitebike 64. If anyone recalls, the Nintendo 64 title (developed by Left Field) featured a perfectly emulated version of the NES title as well as a special one-track sampling of the NES racer redone in full 3D graphics, but with an optional ¾ view ala Super Mario RPG or Sonic 3D Blast. The short-but-sweet “remake,” if you will, was a great deal of fun and the first instance of Excitebike being remade without altering the core 4-lane straightaway racetrack design.
The developer seems to have taken some inspiration from the Excite 3D mode because its recent WiiWare title plays essentially the same – although with much more content and more refined controls.
Excitebike World Rally copies the simple formula pioneered by the NES title – four dirt bike riders race from left to right on a straight track loaded with insane amounts of varying jumps and obstacles while trashing each other along the way – and expands upon it not only with fully 3D levels, backgrounds and bikes (although in essentially a 2D presentation), but with gameplay updates from both Excitebike 64 and Excitetruck.
Like the original title, World Rally’s challenge is to speedily navigate the assortment of jumps and ramps by landing both wheels flat on the terra firma. You’ll have a standard gas button (2 on the Wii remote) and the returning turbo throttle feature (1 on the Wii remote), but if you use your turbo throttle too much your bike will overheat and you’ll fall behind as your bike lags.
Excitebots has slow sales start in April
Someone call Benjamin Jahveri, Excitebots is in rough shape. During the 10 days the racer was available in April, it managed to move just 13,000 copies, according to the NPD. To give some perspective, more mature Wii titles MadWorld and House of the Dead: Overkill were able to move 66,000 and 45,000 units respectively in their first 20 days.
This is purely just our observation, but did the hype machine seem a little weak for Excitebots? We can’t recall seeing much in the way of marketing for the game, but honestly … we don’t get out much.
Excitebots has slow sales start in April originally appeared on Joystiq Nintendo on Fri, 15 May 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Revolutionary: Pure Excitement
Filed under: How-tos, Tech stuff, Controller, Video, Features, Revolutionary
In the summer of 2006, inside the Los Angeles Convention Center, there was a historically long line to get into the Nintendo’s E3 booth and lay eyes and hands on the yet-unreleased Wii and its wares. After finally getting into the booth, attendees were faced with the choice of which long line they’d want to wait in next to play a game. When I got inside the booth and surveyed the selection, my first pick was Excite Truck. Once I’d finally gotten my hands on the controller and made a few laps around the track, I knew this would be a day one purchase for me.
Even after scoping out the upcoming stuff for Xbox 360 and PS3, I was convinced that Excite Truck embodied the true essence of the “next generation.” New gameplay dynamics met vast dynamically changing terrain that stretched beyond what we had grown accustomed to.
So when Disney Interactive showed their new ATV racer, Pure, with vertiginous jumps, wild tricks, and expansive vistas, I thought I was looking at the spiritual successor to one of my favorite Wii launch titles, but a Wii version was not in the cards. At least we have a PC version to hack together a GlovePIE script for and give it the Excite Truck treatment.
Pure’s off-road racing action is so similar to Excite Truck, you may not even realize at first that you’re racing on quads instead of trucks. It’s an easy mistake to make when the lush scenery draws in your attention as you’re boosting off the crest of a sky-high hill and looking down upon the course being rendered for miles before you.
The interaction between the quad and its rider will be of increasing importance as you get a feel for the game. Lean your rider back and the quad will pop a wheelie, which can give you a slight boost. You’ll need to get used to leaning your rider every which way to jump, pull off tricks, and also land, whereas in Excite Truck, you only needed to (unrealistically) tilt your truck to land and gain a boost.
I decided to build this script around PPJoy in order to emulate analog controls for the most responsive steering and leaning.
W = Wiimote.Two //Accelerate
S = Wiimote.One //Decelerate, reverse
One = Wiimote.Up //Basic trick
Two = Wiimote.Left //Intermediate trick
Three = Wiimote.Down //Expert trick
Space and Ctrl = Wiimote.Right //Boost
Q = Wiimote.A //Trick special
A = Wiimote.B //Trick tweak
Escape = Wiimote.Minus //Menu back
Enter = Wiimote.Plus //Menu enter
If abs(Wiimote.SmoothPitch) > 5 //10-degree deadzone for pitch
PPJoy.Analog0 = maprange(Wiimote.SmoothPitch,-75,75,-1,1)
EndIf
If abs(Wiimote.SmoothRoll) > 5 //10-degree deadzone for roll
PPJoy.Analog1 = maprange(Wiimote.SmoothRoll,-50,50,-1,1)
EndIf
Shift + P + I + E = Any.Home //Stop script running
I’ve never been keen on Excite Truck’s gesture-based trick system. It requires more precision and coordination than I am usually able to muster in the heat of a race. Adapting Pure to use Excite Truck’s controls will have you tilting the controller back and forth to lean your rider on his quad. Tilting back before a jump preloads the quad’s shocks, and then tilting forward springs you into a jump, and that essentially constitutes a gesture. But the trick controls are mapped to the D-pad and A button. If you launch with enough height, you can pull off a trick (or series of them), and then must attempt to level out your wheels to land the trick. Before it was a chore to trick, but now tricking is a treat!
Pure may seem like too much of a beast for the Wii to handle, but developer Black Rock Studios has a history of working wonders on lesser-spec’ed hardware. I’ve run the PC version on a high end rig with all the eye candy on and developed a few cavities just from looking at it, but running it on my laptop with just a fraction of the power still delivers satisfyingly sweet results (as evidenced in the video above).
Nintendo has often been called the “Disney of video games,” so is there any good reason why the real Disney of video games shouldn’t support Nintendo’s finest console? Until Pure is announced for the Wii, I urge you to try out this script. With greater depth and better controls, this turned out to be just what I needed to scratch my Excite Truck 2 itch.
Every other week, Mike Sylvester brings you REVOLUTIONARY, a look at the wide world of Wii possibilities.
Did you know Pure is also available for the PS3? Using the SIXAXIS controller might seem like the next best thing to a Wiimote for anyone hungering for a little Excite-ment, but so far very few PS3 games have made motion control feel as integral to gameplay as it is in our favorite Wii titles. Revolutionary: Controller Showdown, Round 2 for a little insight as to why the waggle works better with the Wiimote.
Revolutionary: Pure Excitement originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Wed, 17 Dec 2008 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Mystery title from Monster Games kicks speculation into high gear
Filed under: News
Looks like Monster Games — the folks behind the Wii launch title Excite Truck — are hard at work on a super secret new project for the console, and have been for a long time. How secret is it? So secret, apparently, that they have to turn down their monitors when unauthorized folks walk into the office. Sounds like anything but an Excite Truck follow-up, eh? There aren’t many reasons to keep that a secret. So what could it be? Monster Games only seems to put out racing titles, so we’re gonna bet there will be vehicles and high speeds, but that could cover a lot of ground. Some have guessed that it might be an all-new F-Zero, but frankly, we’re holding out for something that’s really new and not a revival. Not that we wouldn’t enjoy a little F-Zero, but we like new things, too.
[Via The Tanooki]
Mystery title from Monster Games kicks speculation into high gear originally appeared on Nintendo Wii Fanboy on Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Top 10 Best Selling Games
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