VS. Excitebike, 1984 Nintendo (20 From 1984 #20)
14Hey everyone! Hope you had a fantastic Halloween, and welcome to my 20 From 1984 series (and a cool opening time capsule)! We start with #20 and an early entry in the Nintendo VS. arcade cabinet library-- VS. Excitebike! This followed the home port and thus was a little bit different-- on the home port (Famicom/NES) you could create your own tracks; you can't do that here but it's still very tough and you get not only a couple extra tracks (for a total of 7, and the last repeats) but a bonus stage too! The basics of this game are that you play a solo track and a competitive track, not necessarily paying much attention to beating the other racers but you need to rank among the top 5 times for that track. If you fail, it's game over! Your bike has a temperature gauge that heats up if you use the TURBO button to drive faster. Not only will a gauge at bottom center fill up with red but the engine will whine; you need to either lay off the TURBO and just use the ACCELERATOR for a while or look for an arrow strip on the track to reset the temperature (VERY handy!). Overheating will force you to pull off the side of the road for a few seconds-- very costly! The track is mostly made up of various sizes of jumps.. when airborne you can pull the bike back or tip it forward to lift off and land safely and quickly; you can also tip back to wheelie on the ground, but pulling back too long will tip you over! Collision with a fellow racer will also knock you over, though you can use your rear tire to knock out their front tire and send them spinning-- but don't worry about passing the other bikes; they are clumsy and will fall on their own accord. You just need to focus on finishing as quickly as possible. Any collision with a racer or tipping over/landing badly will throw you off your bike; you need to bash the buttons to return to your bike quickly. If you can manage to rack up a good score in this game (the high score list is pretty unfair!), you may be able to earn extra tries in case you don't qualify among the top 5 times. The bonus rounds come after every 3 races and you just jump as many vehicles as you can in the time limit. Very tough, but engaging early VS. Nintendo game. See you soon with game #19 folks, and hope you enjoy my 1984 time capsule! Bustin' makes me feel good!