Excitebots: Trick Racing
Excitebots: Trick Racing is a video game that consists of 2 releases
Reviewed on April 22, 2009
The level of excitement surrounding these robots is undeniable, even if it's somewhat fleeting.
Read Ryan Davis's full review
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Quick Look: Excitebots: Trick Racing
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Giant Bomb at GDC 2009
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The fourth installment to the Excite franchise introduces players to the ExciteBots and one of the most original, or insane, racing games for the Wii.
Description
A race in session!
The game was quietly unveiled on a Nintendo of America release list, and quickly garnered interest by it's seemingly insane sense of humor. Excitebots deviates from the past games use of contemporary vehicles and replaces them with robotic animals that can transform into cars.
Gameplay
An example of a trick, you have to hit the target with a dart while racing for stars.
Although this is a racing game, the main objective is not to place first, but to collect the highest amount of stars. You collect stars by doing tricks, stunts, minigames, crashes, and your placement in the race. The race is never stopped for these tricks and minigames, and you have to complete them while racing at the same time.
The amount of stars you have dictates how good you are in the game, and you can use them to buy new Bots and colors and icons to your collection.
Online
Playing with a friend.
It can be played with friends you know in real life via Friend Codes or by strangers.
The different modes playable online. Excitebots will find a available game for the player to join, once found the player is given the option to select the "car" that will be driven in a first part during the pre-round then a course that the player wants to race one. Once vehicle and course choses all the players will have to "ready" them selves, once everyone ready everyone gets the possibility to bet stars on themselves (either 0, 100, 500, 1000 or 2500 stars). After the race the number of stars every player bet on themselves will be multiplied by a certain number depending on their final star count after the race. They can also play Poker Race, a modified version of the standard races, but only includes the Poker minigame to determine the winner of the race.
Development
Playing poker during a race.
The game runs on a reworked version of the game engine that powered Excite Truck, allowing for twice as much detail in the environments. It was originally meant to include conventional vehicles like it's predecessors, but they later decided to use transforming robots. The developers explain:
“The original Excite Truck stood out from the crowd because of the unlikeliness of trying crazy tricks with regular trucks that you might see every day. This time, we’re bringing every more insane stunts and tricks. However, when we raced the new tracks with the trucks, we felt that the two elements didn’t match up quite as well as we hoped, and we couldn’t get immersed in the game like we wanted to. So, we really wanted to create an offbeat, unconventional design that no one would find anywhere else and would fit with the wacky action. That’s how we came up with the robot critters.” - Monster Games, Inc.
Reception
The game was met with a positive critical reception, including a 4 stars out of 5 from Ryan Davis of Giant Bomb, an 8.4 from IGN, and an 8.0 from Gamespot. They praised it's fun gameplay, it's sense of humor, and lag-free online play, but lamented the lack of support for Wii Speak and SD card support for music. The first sales report for the game indicated that it had sold only 13,000 units, causing many gamers on NeoGAF and Kotaku to complain about Nintendo's lack of willingless to advertise the game in any shape or form. However, the sales report only counted for the first few days of the game's release, and sales might speed up as time goes on via word of mouth and reviews.
| Game Name | Excitebots: Trick Racing |
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| Themes |
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| Original US Release |
April 20, 2009
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| Original US Release |
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| ESRB |
ESRB: E
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| PEGI |
PEGI: 7+
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