Excitebike

Overview

The Excitebike franchise covers only the Excitebike games in the Excite franchise. The franchise consists of the two main games: Excitebike and Excitebike 64. In addition, there have been two spin-off games: BS Excitebike Bun Bun Mario Stadium (which came in four downloadable installments) and Vs. Excitebike (part of Nintendo's Vs. Unisystem). The franchise is a dirt biking racing franchise, many of which include a track editor. The first game was released in 1985 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The game made several standards for future games in the Excitebike franchise (as well as the entire Excite franchise), including overheating and a track editor. The game was later released on many other platforms, including Famicom Disk System, NEC PC-8801, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, and in Animal Crossing as a collectible (and playable) NES game.

Excitebike 64 later came out in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. The game was the first in the entire Excite franchise to be in 3D. Unlike Excitebike, which had the player racing on random tracks for no ultimate goal, Excitebike 64 had players racing on set tracks to unlock more events. In addition, Excitebike 64 featured a track editor (although it was completely different from Excitebike's, seeing as how this game was in 3D). Excitebike 64 had unlockable bonus games as well, including a redone 3D remake of the original Excitebike (although it was still side-scrolling).

The two spin-off games: BS Excitebike Bun Bun Mario Stadium and Vs. Excitebike were much less known than the other two games. BS Excitebike Bun Bun Mario Stadium (also known as Mario Excitebike) was released in four downloadable parts for the Japanese only download service on the SNES attachment called the Satellaview. It was essentially Excitebike with Mario characters, and no track editor. Vs. Excitebike also had no track editor, but it differed in mode selection, and was released in arcades based on Nintendo's Vs. Unisystem hardware.