Rank Up! - Excite series

The Rank Up! train chugs along, and this time we are checking out the blistering fast Excite series. Rank Up! is no stranger to the SPC faithful, but for those unaware, this segment is where I rank several items in a series from least favorite to most favorite. It's as simple of a concept as you can get! Still don't understand? Why not read on? You're sure to get the gist of it. But first, what games will I be ranking up this go around? Note: The arcade version of Excitebike is not listed as machines are hard to find.

Excitebike (NES)
Excitebike 64 (N64)
Excite Truck (Wii)
Excitebots: Trick Racing (Wii)
Excitebike: World Rally (WiiWare)

Originally released in 1985, Excitebike roared and revved its way onto the Nintendo Entertainment System with motocross-styled gameplay, side-scrolling intensity, and plenty of crashes and spills for the masochist to adore. It would be over a decade for a sequel to happen, and it would bring the series into three dimensions with Excitebike 64. Two generations later, Nintendo would swap out the bikes for trucks in Excite Truck. Then, several years later, swap out trucks for bots. For a series that will get your pulse pounding, the Excite franchise is the ticket.

5) Excitebike (NES)

The originator, Excitebike on the Nintendo Entertainment System is a racer unlike many others. You can choose to play in two ways: 1) by your lonesome against the clock, or 2) against several CPU racers. Either way, there are only so many times you can do either of this tasks before boredom sets in. There is a track creator, but this suffers from two problems (two seems to be a popular number here): 1) the amount of pieces available is limited, and 2) you cannot save your creations on the NES version. (This changed with the 3D Classics iteration on the 3DS.) What you are left with is a title that may have been exciting back when it released in 1985, but it is now an ancient relic and a reminder of how far the series has really come.

4) Excitebike 64 (N64)

The nineties were rad and all, but the 00's brought us a new 3D Excitebike in Excitebike 64. Racing against five other opponents through one of twenty indoor or outdoor motocross racetracks, jockeying for position, and pulling off mad tricks were but some of the activities you could do in the game. Who didn't love a rousing game of soccer while riding aboard motorbikes, or climbing up an increasingly steep mountain as you aim to reach the top? Sure, crashing was easy to accomplish (especially for the timid), but that doesn't stop Excitebike 64 from being a stellar entry in the Excite legacy.

3) Excitebike: World Rally (WiiWare)

Taking the idea of the original NES Excitebike and giving the game an isometric view, Excitebike: World Rally (for this month only is available for North American Club Nintendo members for a small coin fee) gave players a letter grade depending on their time on each race, set across the world. Places like Canada, London, Japan, and Mexico were just some of the exotic locales players could virtually visit. By tilting the Wii remote, you tilted your motorbike to land correctly off of slopes to keep your speed high. How else will you get those record times? I greatly enjoyed my time with World Rally with the Wii points it cost me, so getting the game (up until April 30) with Club Nintendo coins should be a no-brainer! Download your copy of this game today!

2) Excite Truck (Wii)

Excite Truck launched with the Wii back in 2006. Seems so long ago, doesn't it? And while most of the spotlight shined down on a little known series called The Legend of Zelda, I had just as much pleasure playing through the insane racing experience known as Excite Truck. These trucks certainly packed a wallop as they were heavy suckers, able to slam into other opponents and send them flying. Introduced to this game was the concept of earning stars for your driving performance. Of course, winning netted you an abundant amount of stars, but doing tree runs (driving through narrow paths lined by dangerous tree hazards), doing incredible aerial acrobatics, and other sensational stunts earned you great accolades as well. The terrain deformation which changed the ground when you passed over a certain icon could send your adversaries soaring if they were unfortunate enough to be racing in front of you. Excite Truck keeps on truckin', and for that I award it with the number two spot.

1) Excitebots: Trick Racing (Wii)

Those of you who know me could smell this game coming from miles away as number one, couldn't you? I gush over this game at every opportunity I get, so why not gush over it now? Excitebots: Trick Racing is an absolutely manic experience. And I mean that in a positive way. It released to no fanfare, but I will forever be trumpeting its stellar gameplay and entertaining online. Where else can you win a race overall by kicking field goals, scoring soccer goals, flipping ten times around a vertical bar, collecting the ingredients to make the fabled Super Sandwich, gathering a handful of butterflies, and creating colossal crashes? I am drawing a blank, and you are probably too. Then there's gambling stars online in races. You can bet up to 5,000 per race, and if you win, you can earn up to five times your bet. You can even play a game of poker as you race. The zany nature of the game is unmatched in the arcade racing genre, and I can only hope Monster Games is working on the next installment despite the low sales (good idea letting no one know about the game, Nintendo).

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Okay now, be honest. Who saw number one coming? How would you personally order the Excite games? I almost forgot all about the WiiWare game. How embarrassing would that have been? Anyhow, please express your opinion on this edition of Rank Up! in the comments section!

Top Ten Under-appreciated Wii Games

Nintendo's Wii was the most dominant console this generation, but it really wasn't future-proof. Its graphical power was outperformed by both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 right out of the gates. Nonetheless, with its selection of casual titles and innovative motion control (so popular that the competition created their own solutions), the Wii sold strongly for about four or five years. Now we are at a stretch where sales have dwindled down, and the game selection is slowing to a crawl. For every Super Mario Galaxy, Smash Bros., and Mario Kart is a game that is overlooked and under-appreciated. This list is my attempt to enlighten Wii owners on games they may have missed out on. These are titles that either did not sell to their potential or were overlooked completely by nearly everyone.

10) Wario Land: Shake It!


Wario returns, but this time he's ditched the biker attire, the micro-games, and donned his familiar purple overalls for this console iteration of the popular Wario Land series. In every level there are a trio of treasures to find (entirely optional), bags of money just waiting to be shook loose-- performed through shaking the Wii remote, and a myriad of missions to attempt to complete such as reaching the goal in a set amount of time, not getting hit at all throughout a level, or collecting a certain amount of gold. The levels are cleverly designed both in how Wario reaches the treasure room to how he has to quickly race back to the goal soon after. The mellow soundtrack offers some memorable melodies as well. Wario is back, and he means business.

9) The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces


Take to the skies in one of many customizable fighter planes as you dogfight above enemy fortresses, dams, cities, and mountain ranges. Utilize motion controls to pilot your plane (the nunchuk is used as your throttle in this setting), or opt to use regular ones. The game features 20+ missions that have you protecting a friendly, taking down an enemy target or series of targets, or taking out as many fighters as possible within a given time frame. Containing massive amounts of customization, mission variety, a superb score, and intense dogfighting, The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is great for the pilot in all of us.

8) Muramasa: The Demon Blade


Play as one of two characters in Muramasa: The Demon Blade as you venture across a perilous countryside, through forests, rough waves, and icy mountains, collecting cursed swords. This is all in an attempt to accomplish your task before the sinister Shogun has his way. Combat flows elegantly and effortlessly as you ward off soldiers, skeletons, giant krakens, and other mythical beasts. The true star of the show, however, are the gorgeous graphics. Hand-painted and never losing their luster, the worlds of Muramasa: The Demon Blade come to life with colorful backgrounds with objects such as blades of grass wafting in the wind and sensational scenery. This is one game that deserves a chance to shine in HD if only for the aforementioned visuals.

7) Go Vacation


Vacation, all I ever wanted. Vacation, had to get away. You will be able to get away with Go Vacation-- even in these cold fall and winter months. Participate in one of over fifty activities with over 100 different variants. Explore Kawawii Island's four unique resort areas: marine, mountain, snow, and city as you discover new activities, find new friends, and unlock new content. Create your own villa with furniture you collect from your various excursions on the island, and invite up to three other players to explore the island with you. Whether you're surfing, scuba diving, skydiving, hurling snowballs, riding horses, or inline skating, there's an activity for everyone in Namco Bandai's Go Vacation.

6) Endless Ocean: Blue World


Take a dive in Arctic seas, South American rivers full of piranha fish, and Caribbean oceans in this globetrotting adventure to find treasure within ancient underwater temples and tunnels. Interact with the aquatic wildlife-- just be sure to avoid those sharks! Discover buried treasure, make friends with a helpful dolphin, and hop online with a friend to explore the dank, deep depths of the ocean together. While the option to import custom soundtracks from the original Endless Ocean is gone, the Celtic Woman soundtrack is surprisingly poignant and pleasant. If deep water makes you anxious like me, then why not take a virtual tour of the many waterways of the earth with Endless Ocean: Blue World?

5) We Love Golf!


From Camelot, the makers of Mario Tennis, Mario Golf, and the Golden Sun series comes this Capcom-published take on arcade golf. With eight wacky, regular courses and three short courses, a cavalcade of characters and Mii support, online play, and the ability to unlock Capcom-related costumes such as Apollo Justice, Ryu, and Arthur from Ghost 'n Goblins, We Love Golf! is a golf bag packed full of content. The intuitive controls offered rewards for terrific timing, and the course design itself was challenging enough so the game never felt too boring. Couple all that with another sensational soundtrack by Motoi Sakuraba (Tales of, Star Ocean), and you have one mighty golfing game.

4) Klonoa


The floppy-eared wonder returns with this Wii remake of the PlayStation One classic, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile. With updated vibrant visuals and new modes, Klonoa's very first adventure shines brightly. He'll have to overcome perilous platforming challenges, grab enemies with his Wind Bullet and use them to launch himself to higher ledges, and solve intriguing puzzles to reach the final showdown with the being that threatens the very existence of Phantomile, a land made up of dreams. This all concludes with an out-of-nowhere heart-tugging ending that will touch even the most cynical with a hole in their heart.

3) Sin and Punishment: Star Successor


Taking place in a far away future, Sin and Punishment: Star Successor pits players against an increasingly more powerful enemy force. You'll point your Wii remote at the screen, picking off foes of low-level scrubs, mid-level forces, and big-time bosses taking up a sizable chunk of the screen. Up to two players can trek through the relatively short campaign, racking up multipliers to increase each others' score, and then hop online to add their scores to an online leaderboard. Those who missed having a console Star Fox this generation will find a lot to love about this substitute. It's the type of game that was a one-in-a-million shot to ever have been translated as the original S&P sold an atrociously pathetic amount of units in Japan. Regardless, Star Successor can now be found within bargain bins for less than twenty dollars.

2) The Munchables


Ranking at number two on my list comes The Munchables, a Pac-man meets Katamari Damacy type game. To progress through levels, your Munchable much gobble up lower level monsters than your character is currently at. As more monsters are munched upon, your creature grows, allowing him or her to digest larger enemies and advance to otherwise unreachable portions of levels. Boss battles have you eating a monster made up of grapes, broccoli, and chocolate, and the game features eight worlds of multiple levels to go through. For a colorful adventure that supports poor eating habits, there is no better alternative to a zany game than The Munchables on Wii.

1) Excitebots: Trick Racing


Sent out to die with no marketing whatsoever by Nintendo, this excellent arcade racer isn't so much about coming in first, but coming in first and doing so in style. At the conclusion of each race, the player with the most stars (earned by performing tricks, reaching high amounts of hang time, crashing into other vehicles, kicking field goals, catching butterflies, etc.) is the victor. Excitebots will have players purchasing new vehicle types such as squid, mice, lobster, ladybugs, frogs, and many more. The locales are numerous and have racers slogging through marshes, through dusty deserts in Mexico, and through wintry forests in Canada, to name a few. Online play has racers betting a set amount of stars and competing with up to five other players. For a game that will give you such a bang for your buck, Excitebots: Trick Racing is top of the heap.

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Hopefully the following list provided you with some ideas of games that you may have not known were available. The Wii is an interesting console as it has the most niche games on it in comparison to the competition. Whether you're teeing it up in We Love Golf, soaring the unfriendly skies in The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, or tricking out to rock music in Excitebots: Trick Racing, these under-appreciated treasures demand your attention.

Excitebots: Trick Racing (Wii) Review

Here we are with the sequel to Excite Truck. I don't usually crank out a review this fast, but you know when I play a game twenty hours over four days, there's something addicting here.

I'm so excited! I'm so excited! ...I'm... so... scared!

Way back when the Wii hit North American shores, a cult classic launched with the system, too. Sure, it was greatly eclipsed in interest by a brand new Zelda game, but Excite Truck was one fantastic arcade racer deserving of respect. This time around, developer Monster Games (NASCAR: Dirt of Daytona, Test Drive: Eve of Destruction) has ditched the bulky four-wheelers with bots resembling something out of Transformers Beast Wars. The end result is Excitebots: Trick Racing for the Nintendo Wii, and it's one heck of a ride.

Racing is just half of the equation in Excitebots. Hence, Trick Racing. Sure, getting first place is optimal, but you have to do it in style. You don't win races solely by crossing the finish line in first place. With Excitebots the goal is to earn as many stars as possible, and they're readily available by performing a plethora of tasks. In the single-player mode, you start out with the School Cup, a set of four races which can be chosen at will. Clear all the tracks in a given cup to unlock the next which features another set of new races to complete. Each track has a minimum amount of stars needed in order to advance, but to unlock the two bonus difficulties you'll need to shoot for far more stars in each track than the bare necessities.

Each race has you competing with five other bots.

So how do you save up stars? Essentially-- anything and everything. In Excite Truck there were much fewer ways to generate stars to your total: wreck other vehicles by plowing into them, performing aerial spins, running through a swath of trees, and drifting, for example. In Excitebots, there's so many more avenues when it comes to accumulating stars. There's several mini-games that play out directly within each race. You can knock a soccer ball into a giant net as you make a turn, slam into a set of bowling pins, smack a football through the goalpost for a field goal, timing your swing in order to hit a home run, and many more. Any game where you can fish, chuck a cream pie into a clown's face, and bang a tambourine in time to "Shave and A Haircut Two Bits" while you race is in an entirely different dimension of awesomely nuts. There's no shortage of times where you'll grin from ear to ear-- perhaps even unknowingly-- as you play through the game alone or with friends.

Partly a reason for that is the much larger amount of personality put into the game. No longer are you careening through curves with massive monster trucks. Instead, you're controlling a bot-- each of which is based on an animal or insect. Each bot has different racing stats and multiple forms. You just drive over an item to temporarily change forms. Your bot can rise up on two legs, marching through dense forests without any fear or smashing with a forceful kick any rival that dares stay in your way. In this form your bot can grind along rails as long as it maintains its balance. Alternatively if the air is more your thing, your bot can glide through the air, collecting butterflies-- five stars per insect-- as your bot slowly floats back to the ground. Of course, you can't just mess about trying to collect stars either as crossing the finish line first awards 50 bonus stars to your total-- usually the amount between an "S" and an "A" ranking. Apart from the Excite modes, there's also several rather challenging mini-games and an entertaining racing take on poker to round out the single-player package.

Trick = earning stars
Racing = placing first

Tracks are really well-designed, and they span locales from cactus-covered Mexico and ice-infested Finland to Fiji, Guatemala, Canada, among others. One track you'll be speeding over stone walls in China while the next you'll be soaring towards an ancient Scotland castle. There's always one great racing line in order to rack up the most stars, and the fun part is tracking that line down for yourself. There's multiple routes, hidden shortcuts, and out-of-the-way areas that may take longer to go through, but they also reward a multitude of stars. Passing through golden icons will not only unveil mini-games or item boxes, but they may also alter the terrain. A hill could rise giving you access to a high pole shortcut you would otherwise not be able to reach. There's so much exploration in each track that you'll want to keep playing through them over and over until you find the right racing line to take, trying to run through it flawlessly.

Soccer... Bowling... If Egypt has shuffleboard,
then I've found a place for my parents to retire!

Even if you don't achieve your prized "S" rank in a race, each and every race that is finished puts your collected amount of stars into a bank of sorts. Not only can these stars be used to purchase new player icons and trophies, but they can also be spent on new bots and paint jobs. Something that's irksome is that when you buy a paint job such as blue, it's only unlocked for the bot you bought it for instead of for everyone. This means having to invest in colors for everyone. Not only that, but after you race with a given bot for a set number of races, you'll earn a special paint job for that bot. Actually, you'll earn the right to buy that special paint job. Either that or get twenty-five "S" ranks with that bot. Case in point, it's a very lame way of padding the length of the game for someone who wants to purchase a cool paint job for their favorite bots.

Thankfully, you don't have to earn stars exclusively in single-player mode. Excitebots allows for up to six players to race online. You can race with friends or against total strangers. Matches with strangers run smoothly and without a hint of messiness. Players start the session by selecting any of their unlocked bots, select a track to race on, and then bet stars-- anywhere from 0 to 2,500. The race selected is randomly chosen. Meanwhile, if anyone enters the game while the match is still being played, they'll be able to watch the race to its conclusion, and then join in. Depending on the player's place, they'll win a multiple of zero to five times their bet, up to 12,500 plus stars earned while racing. It's a much easier way of breaking the bank, but it's only good for online. Those without an internet connection to their Wii won't be able to gain currency anywhere near as fast. Another blow to offline Excitebots enthusiats is that the local multiplayer is for some reason limited to two player split-screen without any AI. For those without online, that there could be a deal-breaker.

All those nights at the local bar have
finally come to fruition for the frog bot!

Like Excite Truck, Excitebots uses the Wii remote to steer held horizontally as if you were playing the old Nintendo Entertainment System. It worked well with Truck, and it pleases me to say that it works even better with Excitebots. The steering is much tighter, and you hardly ever feel that you're not in control of your bot. The 2 button is used as the gas, and the 1 button is used for braking. The d-pad when pushed uses your bot's boost in order to speed up as long as the button is held down. However, if the boost meter stays full for a second or two, your bot will overheat, making it slow down considerably until it rejuvenates. Either let off the boost to allow your bot the time to recover or drive into a pool of water. Boost management is just part of the strategy involved when racing in Excitebots.

There's plenty of context-sensitive parts of races where you'll have to perform a gesture or repeated movement with the Wii remote in order to nail the trick. Each bot comes with a tail that can grab onto the plethora of poles found throughout the game's twenty tracks. When you start spinning from the pole, you'll get a small Wii remote prompt that shows when you thrust the Wii remote forward. Nail the motion correctly, and you'll get jutted forward with an immense boost of speed. Thrust too soon, and your bot will start flying towards the ground out of control. You'll then have to carefully turn your bot with the Wii remote so it lands on its wheels and recovers. The only real definition of waggle that Excitebots features is when you crash and need to respawn. There's also red bars that are used in almost, if not, every track in the game. These require you to match your movements with the Wii remote prompt on the screen. In this case, you roll the Wii remote (buttons facing the ceiling) like you're turning a crank, faster and faster, until you automatically boost forward. While these can interrupt the frantic nature of races, they have a great benefit which is an easy ten stars each time they're utilized.

Poker Race nets stars by making hands.
This mode is also available online.

A common complaint with Excite Truck was that the music was horrible. At least with that game it supported custom soundtracks, so if you didn't like the music you wouldn't have to listen to it. In Excitebots, you do. There's no custom soundtrack support. While Truck's music was rather grating, the music in Excitebots is much more relaxed, light-hearted with no "butt rock" included. Composed in part by Metroid series composer, Kenji Yamamoto, the soundtrack's mileage will vary with most listeners. As for the visuals, Excitebots is quite the looker. The color palette is colorful and vibrant, and the draw distance is impressive as you can see individual trees as far to the horizon with no pop-up. Everything chugs along well, too, with no slow-down of any kind.

Excitebots: Trick Racing blew by my expectations. It's a game that came out of nowhere, had little buzz, and is one of the best arcade racers currently on the market this generation. The speed is fast, the action is high, and the absurdity of it all is absolutely abundant. If you've ever wanted to knock one out of the park, kick a field goal, catch a shark, and hit a bullseye all the while putting the pedal to the metal, then Excitebots: Trick Racing isn't just right for you, it's right for every Wii owner.

[SuperPhillip Says: 9.25/10]