Exciting Excitebike!

Excitebike! It's one of my favorite titles on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Excitebike is a fairly well known title, but I have always felt like this game is under appreciated. Excitebike is a game many do enjoy, but if I had to guess, I would imagine players rarely spend more than an hour playing it.

Excitebike appears to have only 5 courses, but in fact it has 10 tracks total. There are 5 preliminary tracks, which one can select from the main menu, and then there are 5 harder versions of those tracks. The game also has two modes: Mode A consists of just conquering the tracks in the game, but Mode B adds a challenge of finishing the tracks with opposing racers getting in your way. Another feature of the game is unique. It was one of the first games that allowed you to design your own courses.

Feel free to make a track that is entirely small jumps if you'd like! The game has a lot to offer to the casual gamer, but it actually makes for a very tricky and challenging game at high level play.

Off and on for a number of years now, I have been competing for the fastest preliminary track times. I basically only have one serious competitor, and luckily he has been serious about putting up great times for this game. Without his competition, I would not have tried for better times, and probably would have lost interest in playing it. Flyhec is a great gamer and most notably known for his insane button mashing speeds. It's easy to see why he's the Track and Field arcade champion (which requires extremely fast fingers). Here's a video showing just how fast that is:

Advanced Excitebike play involves a few different techniques:

The 1st trick for fast Excitebike times involves bouncing on the front wheel after jumping off the small triangular ramps seen in the above picture. These ramps build unusual bike speeds, and bouncing off the front tire maintains what I refer to as "the fast speed." 

The 2nd trick involves keeping the bike from overheating by conserving your TEMP (temperature gauge). Holding "A" moves the bike at a slow speed, but keeps your temperature low. Holding "B" moves the bike at a fast speed, but you will overheat if you only use "B". However, we've developed a few techniques to avoid using "A" at all. The first is before the race even begins. If you wait to select a track on the track selection screen until the music stops and hold "B" when the race begins, you lower the initial starting temp by a small amount. This is useful for gaining those few extra milliseconds.

The 3rd trick is also related to TEMP conservation. Any time that the bike is in the air, we release the gas entirely. The temp builds up when you are holding "B," and the air gives the opportunity to release "B." You only need to press the gas when you're on the ground, so we take advantage of this. Arrows on the ground also reduce the temp, and it is crucial not to accidentally pass by them.

The 4th, and final trick involves altering your jump lengths. You can shorten or lengthen your jump distance off a ramp by holding "up" or "down" respectively. This is useful for maintaining the fast speeds, while also positioning the bike in between or directly on top of ramps to avoid crashing the bike.

Advanced play is much more complex than casual play and allows for huge and unexpected time gains. Below is my progress on Track 5:

Track 5, standard play:

Track 5, advanced play:

After learning the advances techniques, the game became much more interesting to me, and having a serious competitor allowed me to improve drastically. To this day, I'm still improving my times. In fact, today I managed to best my Track 2 time for a new world record! Track 2 is probably the most boring track in the game, but it's definitely not easy.

Now to improve the other tracks. Wish me luck!