Nintendo Announces Excitebike: World Rally for WiiWare

[Valigarmander]

Nintendo Announces Excitebike: World Rally for WiiWare

Nintendo used its dedicated Wii channel to its potential today, unveiling a new sequel to a classic and beloved franchise. The announcement trailer (above) is for Excitebike: World Rally; surprisingly, the game is already set for release on November 9. A short video shows off its 2.5D look, and the announcers also stated it will include a track editor and optional motion controls. The announcement also came with a nice treat for Excitebike fans, in that the game will include online multiplayer support, most likely in a similar fashion to Mario Kart Wii.

More details are said to be forthcoming, but given that it's going to release in a few weeks, we don't have long to wait to find out more for ourselves. Check out the trailer above and let us know what you think of the new look.

Online play? Hell yes.

[Metal Mario]

I might actually buy this. Never understood what the big deal about the original Excite Bike was; the bikers moved slower than molasses in January.

[Luigiman7]

Meh. Never really liked Excitebike.

[Marilink]

Nice! I loved Excitebike, I'm really excited about this.

[Metal Man]

Originally Posted by Metal Mario

I might actually buy this. Never understood what the big deal about the original Excite Bike was; the bikers moved slower than molasses in January.

Click to view video.

This should be more your speed, then!

[Metal Mario]

^Now that's what I'm talking about. Why doesn't my NES copy of Excite Bike zip along like that?

[Antisocial]

Track editor is yay.

I love how Nintendo follows trends of their old games like this.

[Cosmonautical]

Awesome. They honestly should've put a track editor into ExciteTruck, that would've given the game a lot more oompth. Or at least a better multiplayer mode than regular VS.

[Valigarmander]

Excitebike World Rally Preview for the Wii from 1UP.com

When Excitebike: World Rally showed up in our offices a few weeks ago, it was one of those rare but pleasant surprise occasions on which Nintendo dropped off a game with no real preamble. No one had heard a word about the game's existence, and we had no idea what to expect from it. So, curious to learn more, everyone crowded around the TV to see what it was.

"I wish this had been the N64 Excitebike," said Ray Barnholt as he watched the game in action.

"You want a remake of the N64 game? It was OK, but this is so much better," I said.

"No," he said. "I mean I wish the N64 game had been this."

That's because what World Rally turned out to be is a faithful update of the original Excitebike for NES. Not just a remake with 3D visuals, but a full sequel featuring new tracks, new abilities, and a few new features. Unlike Excitebike 64, it plays with a fixed, overhead perspective rather than an over-the-shoulder camera, and the graphics are decidedly game-like rather than the more realistic dirt-racing style the series adopted on N64. It's unquestionably an Excitebike game rather than simply a racing game that has some Excitebike-like elements.

But of course, World Rally would never have worked on N64. The deliberately regressive visuals wouldn't have flown ten years ago, when everyone was clamoring to push the limits of 3D. The simpler viewpoint would have been regarded as dated. And the arcade stylings of the action would have caused gamers to balk at paying the $60 going rate of N64 carts.

Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times -- or, at the very least, times in which a combination of nostalgia, a newfound collective appreciation for classic game styles, and the existence of inexpensive downloadable delivery formats for bite-sized games have combined to make it possible for developers and publishers to revisit best-selling classics of previous generations without feeling any pressure to push up against the bleeding edge of technology. World Rally is Excitebike, with no pretense or excess. You play as a guy on a dirtbike on a four-lane straightaway, racing against other cyclists; you try to hit accelerator chevrons while avoiding rough patches and puddles of water. And, of course, you can catch crazy air by leaping from wedge-shaped ramps.

Don't take that to mean it's just a spruced-up graphical facelift for the NES game. While World Rally is definitely patterned after the original Excitebike, it offers a ton of extra features to set it apart from its predecessor. For one, there's competitive racing, something originally only offered in the Japan-exclusive release of Excitebike Versus. In a shockingly un-Nintendo-like move, head-to-head racing is only available online; presumably the fixed camera and rear-shifted, isometric view precludes split-screen play, but the ability to race friends (or, more to the point, your Friends List) over the Internet should more than make up for the setback. As in the original Excitebike, World Rally has a track editor to allow custom-made races; unlike the NES game, though, you can actually save your creations and even share them.

World Rally isn't exactly a tiny game, either. While standard races work just as they did in the NES version -- you're racing against time rather than trying to place -- it has a Mario Kart-inspired cup and track system, with tons of new locations and other secrets to unlock by beating each track's target time.

Best of all, though, the game makes great use of the Wii Motion Controller. While everyone gathered around the TV for that trial playthrough shuddered at the prospect of motion controls in something that plays just like an NES game, I decided to give them a quick try for the sake of fairness. To our amazement, the simple use of the Wii remote isn't simply unobtrusive, it actually makes the controls better. Racing still works with the D-pad and an accelerator button, but you can tilt the Wii remote to affect the pitch of your bike: rotate counter-clockwise to lean back and clockwise to press forward. Jumping was always the trickiest part of Excitebike, and the analog smoothness of the motion controls makes it intuitive -- it became second nature before the end of the first track. The game praises you for the quality of your landings, which is a big help in gauging your use of the remote. It's a small, detail, but it's a great use of a unique Wii feature (at least for now) to unobtrusively improve on a classic design.

In fact, that's probably the best way to describe World Rally: An unobtrusive improvement on a classic design. Everyone here was initially interested simply because we all have fond memories of the NES original, but we stayed interested because it does such a fine job of adding new features while sticking to its roots. Nintendo should be launching World Rally via WiiWare soon, and assuming it launches for a reasonable price -- say, $10-15 -- it should be a no-brainer pick-up... not just for old Nintendo fans, but for anyone who enjoys great pick-up-and-play entertainment.

Check the link for screenshots.

[Valigarmander]

The game's been released on WiiWare in North America now. You can get it for 1000 points ($10). It comes with online play and a full track editor.

Damn, I need some money.

[Jesus]

If you thought excitebike was slow on the NES, try M&Ms racing on the Wii. It says crap like "WARP SPEED" or "BREAKING SOUND BARRIER" when they are obviously going slow as hell.

[Luigiman7]

It's a WiiWare game?

Damn, I need to pay attention to what i'm skimming.

[Valigarmander]

1UP's Retro Gaming Blog : An Excitebike World Rally Developer Q&A

Admit it: You overlooked Excitebike World Rally. It's OK, you're forgiven. Lots of people did. The game hit right in the thick of the fall release season, and most Wii owners were too busy salivating over New Super Mario Bros. Wii to notice this WiiWare-based update to the original Excitebike. Now that the dust has settled for the year, now might be a good time to give it a look. World Rally perfectly captures the style and spirit of the NES fan-favorite, but it adds a few new elements to keep things interesting—a perfect example of how to harness the power of retrogaming for justice.

Monster Games president Richard Garcia and Nintendo's Hiro Yamada were kind enough to respond to my queries, so thanks to them for their time.



How did you come to be the developers on this game? And why go with the style of the original Excitebike as opposed to the more modern-styled Excitebike 64?

Monster Games Inc. (MGI) and Nintendo made two Excite franchise games consecutively – first, Excite Truck and then Excitebots: Trick Racing. These two are “spin-offs” of Excitebike and their game play is quite different from the original NES Excitebike.

Around the time when Excitebots: Trick Racing was launched, we started to hear speculation such as: “Maybe the next collaboration of MGI and Nintendo will be Excitebike?” That speculation proved correct as MGI pitched the idea of a comical-touch motorbike game with the same kind of driving view as seen in Excite Truck and Excitebots: Trick Racing. They started prototyping that idea. Nintendo took a look at the prototype and felt that in order to showcase the fun of motorbikes, we should head in one of two directions – one is to go for a more realistic motorbike feel, the other is to return to the original idea of Excitebike.

We both felt that going for a more realistic motorbike feel would be like doing a remake of Excitebike 64, but Nintendo was wondering if a remake of it would still be enjoyable in the current Wii market.

After some discussion between MGI and Nintendo, we decided to do a prototype of an upgraded version of NES Excitebike with better controls and more fun game play. Iwata-san and Miyamoto-san reviewed the prototype that MGI came up with and Nintendo finally decided to give it a go for the revival of NES Excitebike. That project was eventually named “Excitebike: World Rally.”

I can't help but notice that despite the similarities to classic Excitebike, World Rally has some definite differences, like the isometric camera perspective. Can you talk about the thinking behind some of these changes?

We wanted to approach this project with a clean slate and take advantage of the new abilities of the Wii: the 3-D graphics, the motion controls and the availability of Wi-Fi play. We wanted to be able to enhance the game play in ways that were not possible with the original hardware. So we were able to do things like use a 3-D isometric view to give the player a better playing perspective. Or use a fully 3-D physics system to give better collisions. In addition to making the game look better, we were also able to make the game more intuitive with the improved motion controls.



I'm surprised by how well the motion controls work—they actually make the game more fun than classic Excitebike. Can you talk a bit about how you came up with that particular control scheme?

First of all, thanks very much for your compliments!

We tried many control schemes during the development of the game. Of course, we have the original “classic” controls, but we wanted to see if we could improve those controls using the new abilities of the Wii Remote.

We started with the idea of controlling lane changes by tilting the control left/right. This worked, but people playing the game had trouble matching that movement to the isometric view. By starting over, we came up with the idea to treat moving the Wii Remote as if you were actually moving the bike. This meant that tilting the controller left/right could be used to adjust the angle of the bike while in the air and that lifting the “front” of the controller would cause the bike to do a wheelie. To our surprise, this was very intuitive and worked really well. We immediately decided to make this the main control scheme.

By the way, the original tilt control scheme is in the final product. We won't tell you how to get it, but you should discover it by playing the game for a while.

Why go with WiiWare as opposed to a full retail release, or even a DS/DSiWare game?

After releasing two retail games, both MGI and Nintendo were interested in making a more casual WiiWare title for players to easily download and play. Also, we wanted to bring Wi-Fi play to the many WiiWare users who already have access to the Internet. The combination of those two factors made WiiWare a natural choice for this project.

World Rally is the only Nintendo-published game I can think of to offer online multiplayer only. Why is there no local multiplayer? After all, Excitebike Vs. for Famicom managed to include the same fixed perspective and still let players go head-to-head.

You’re exactly right! In Vs. Excitebike, you could play local two-player mode with horizontal split-screen. (You must know your games really well given that the game was launched only in Japan as a Famicom Disk System game!)

We wanted to add local multiplayer to this game as well. But as you can see by playing the game, the player can jump so high that they leave the screen for a while. If we split the screen horizontally, the player can jump off the screen for an even longer time whenever they do a big jump. We couldn't split the screen vertically, since it is important in this game to see down the track to plan your moves. Instead of being fun, split-screen was just stressful. We finally decided that it would be best if multiplayer gaming was restricted to Wi-Fi mode.

Was the progression through tracks and locales deliberately patterned after Mario Kart? Why use that particular format?

It’s funny, but we’re afraid that we didn’t base the design off Mario Kart. We’re surprised that you are asking about it since we didn’t think of copying that particular format at all.

We based our game structure on our earlier titles, Excite Truck and Excitebots: Trick Racing. In those games, you earn grades and progress from Bronze Cup to Platinum Cup as you get better. In fact, the rules are practically the same. We also based the tracks on the locations from our previous games, especially Excitebots: Trick Racing.

What was your ultimate goal with World Rally?

Well, our plan was two-fold: to offer new players the opportunity to play a classic game and to give old fans the chance to play an up-to-date version of a favorite game with new tracks, Wi-Fi play and better controls.

However, we really didn't have an “ultimate goal,” as you are asking. We'd be glad if even one more player would continue to enjoy this game even for a few minutes each day, finding excitement in simple game play while racing with friends or those you've never met. If that becomes true, we'd say we've achieved our ultimate goal.

[Metal Mario]

I might be getting a Wii Points card for Christmas. If I do, I'll download this.