Matt's take:

This was one of the first games released for the NES back in 1986, and it's a favorite of many. Not only that, but it invented a genre, and has been copied many times since its N64 update. Players get to control a dirtbike on a side scrolling course. The races are filled with jumps and hazards and riders will have to angle their bike correctly off of jumps and inclines. They can also perform wheelies and knock their opponents rear wheels to bump them off of their bikes and scupper their chances.

There’s also a turbo button, which really opens up the engine and gives a burst of speed. But beware - if used for too long, this boost will cause the engine to overheat. For prolonged periods of acceleration, players can ride their bikes over special arrows painted on the course. These will automatically cool the engine.

Amazingly, the game also allowed the players to create their own tracks, utilizing every hazard and jump in the game. This meant that with a little practice, players could challenge their friends to home-made levels every bit as good as the original ones. All right, the graphics are simple, so putting together a level editor for the game doesn’t seem like such a big deal now, but this was an incredibly forward-thinking move at the time. The bad news was that as soon as the NES was switched off, the track you spent hours on disappeared into the ether. Not so any longer though, as a limited amount of tracks can now be saved to the cartridge.

All this is great news, but I have to inform you that if you’ve not got yourself a re-issue of this before, you’ve missed the opportunity not once, not twice, but thrice! Two of these were potentially in handheld format too, with Animal Crossing and e-reader cards being the guilty party. For those of you who owned an N64, the original Excitebike was also available as an unlockable feature in Excitebike 64.

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Stephen's Review:

Excitebike is basically a side scrolling dirt bike racing game, where the player is able to control the tilt of you bike -- amongst other things. More specifically there are lots of ramps in the game, and you can pull your bike up, or down to compensate for these, and other obstacles while trying not to lose any speed. You also have turbo boost, but if you use it to frequently your engine will overheat and stall.

One aspect of this game that sepates itself from the pack is that it was one of the first games I ever played that had what is now called a level editor. You could edit, and race your own levels. The Classic NES version, has a battery backup which allows you to save these levels, and your high scores as well.

Excitebike was one of the few first generation Nintendo Entertainment System games to sell well throughout the systems life cycle. The reason I believe is for its pure gameplay, it is an arcade racer with a good dose of technique added. This experience has never been duplicated to its fullest extent since, that is why I feel that Excitebike is one of the strongest titles in the Classic NES series, and with the addiction of the save feature it makes it even more intriguing.