TASaturday #26: Excitebike (NES)

For the TASaturday #26, we picked a game that NES owners remember (more or less) fondly: Excitebike. The reason we picked up this game is because V.S. Excitebike came out this week on the Wii U Virtual Console in North America, and we thought that now would be as good a time as any to showcase this TAS of Excitebike.

Quite obviously, the TAS below is based on the original Excitebike on NES, and not the Arcade or Famicom Disk System version (V.S. Excitebike), but unfortunately, there is no TAS for these versions on TASVideos.org. That being said, the gameplay remains pretty much the same, so it doesn’t really make much difference in the end!

Anyone who has played Excitebike knows how… peculiar the controls are, and how hard the game can be. Trying to go as fast as possible while avoiding obstacles (including the other racers!) is quite the feat, especially with all those platforms you have to jump with. Indeed, if your angle isn’t just right when you land after making a jump, you will most likely fall and lose some precious seconds.

In Excitebike, going too fast is extremely risky, and you need to be cautious… which seems quite contradictory for a racing game. Which is why today’s TAS is really impressive: going as fast the TASer does is really something, but making all those crazy jumps and landing perfectly each time is not something just any player could do in real life!

Here’s the TAS of Excitebike, by Lord Tom:

For more details about this TAS, please click here!

We hope you enjoyed this TASaturday #26. See you next week!