Excitebike netplay

[Magicantian]

Has anyone ever tried playing a simple game like this on netplay and seeing the level of competitiveness?

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCZWfmO66oc

[P]

You mean using an emulator that supports netplay? Can't say I have, I don't play a lot online gaming.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCZWfmO66oc

They missed the best part of that trick! You can go so fast, you glitch the scrolling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmOUeCqvkTI

[P]

Haha that's fantastic! Looks like Captain Falcon in his younger days, maybe this is how F-Zero started.


I guess the game increases speed by some factor when you hit a jump so the faster you go the faster the increase.
So to get as fast as possible you simply increased the number of jumps with that trick?

[Magicantian]

I think it can be a lot of fun, i dont remember much about 1 player or 2 but i think cutting the back end of a tire to your competitor on speed runs can be trivial.

[P]

The game is single-player only disappointingly enough. One of the computer bikers has the same looks as the player but blue colors and is also the only CPU biker that needs to run to his bike when falling badly just like the player, indicating that this was supposed to be player 2 at some point in development. As a kid I always had a hope that there was some way to enable him as the second player but there is none AFAIK.

Even the arcade version Vs Excitebike is single-player only AFAIK (but it has a jump-over-lorries bonus game which is very fun).

Only the FDS version (also called Vs Excitebike) finally has a split-screen 2-player mode added with the blue biker as player 2. But it also has very different BGMs including the removal of the unforgettable ME played on the podium (with win/loose variants) and title screen. But it allows saving designed tracks to the disk and even transferring to another disk.

The gameplay pretty much requires split screens for the 2-player mode. Excitebike was supposedly the first continuously scrolling Famicom game so they probably hadn't figured out how to split the screen yet, I guess that's why there were no 2-player originally. The FDS has hardware that makes splitting easier, but it is possible in any cartridge game as well as seen later in Spartan X and SMB where the status bar doesn't scroll with the rest of the background thanks to a particular trick (involving sprite #0).

[Jedi Master Baiter]

One of the computer bikers has the same looks as the player but blue colors and is also the only CPU biker that needs to run to his bike when falling badly just like the player, indicating that this was supposed to be player 2 at some point in development.

Oh wow. I never noticed that. You're talking about the turquoise color one, right?

I've always noticed that the player falls upward and the CPU players fall downward. CPUs also always stay with their bikes when they fall so they never have to run to them. Yet sometimes you'll catch up to a biker (who supposedly crashed offscreen) running toward their bike. So only the turquoise one does that? I find it amusing crashing into them.

I didn't really think anything special of that turquoise biker; I was more curious why there were two bikers that were the same purple color without distinction.

My guess as to why they didn't make it two players alternating would be that they thought that would have made no sense seeing as motocross has multiple racers at once and taking turns would be a severe gut punch to players.

By the way, here's another cool glitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnGgmt7BDa8

[P]

Yeah turquoise and light-blue, since his bike slides to the bottom of the screen due to his status as a CPU biker he has to run across the track and you can actually run into him and fall off your bike (which also pushes him back a bit so he have to run longer). This can't happen to you since you always falls outside the track (but you can make a fool of yourself by falling right in front of a camera).

Fun trick: you can run faster when falling off by mashing the A-button. I don't think this is mentioned in the manual. Nintendo reused this trick in Wave Race 64 when you fall off the waterscooter.

But I just noticed using emulators that all bikers uses the exact same metasprite (as shown here), only the palette is different. To me it always looked like the two purple/white bikers wore a weird hat instead of a helmet, probably due to the purple part of it bleeding more on a CRT with RF/composite than the lighter colored helmets of the other two bikers. Also the black stripe on the motocross outfit is hardly visible on the darker purple ones than the two lighter ones so I've never really noticed it before, I've always thought they used totally different sprites.

So, the only things that makes the turquoise biker unique is that he has to run to his bike when falling off and the fact that he has a different palette from the other CPUs. I guess that weakens my childhood theory that he was supposed to be player 2 a bit. But him being used as player 2 in the FDS version still kinda supports the theory a bit me thinks.


Ah that's a cool bug. I suppose it somehow bypasses the check that you are on the final lap because you run so fast and then just keeps going forever. The bug that it starts using letters after running out of numbers is very common in games (like the "minus world" bug in SMB) since the routine that increases the lap number probably just grabs the next symbol found in order in the pattern table, which often happens to be the letter A after 9, then B, C, D etc and eventually it runs into the tile graphics. I had this bug myself in my first Famicom Pong game I programmed after getting a score higher than 9, it was kinda neat to see.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

Yeah turquoise and light-blue, since his bike slides to the bottom of the screen due to his status as a CPU biker he has to run across the track and you can actually run into him and fall off your bike (which also pushes him back a bit so he have to run longer). This can't happen to you since you always falls outside the track (but you can make a fool of yourself by falling right in front of a camera).

Hmm, I wonder... What if we hacked it so the player's bike falls to the bottom? Maybe you can get hit by bikes, too?

Fun trick: you can run faster when falling off by mashing the A-button. I don't think this is mentioned in the manual. Nintendo reused this trick in Wave Race 64 when you fall off the waterscooter.

I've always known this and found it a funny mechanic seeing people play and mash buttons to run back to their bike. Wait--Wave Race does this? I don't think I've ever known this. It would've been nice if ExciteBike 64 had a feature like this instead of instantly putting you back in the bike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af_3PSv-XoI

Ah that's a cool bug.

You like that? You might like this better: https://youtu.be/pW-npyjx7oA?t=580

[P]

I'd guess that all bikers works by the same collision rules so they would crash if they ran into the turquoise biker running to his bike, but I wonder if the running player works the same way. Pure speculation though.


Yep Wave Race 64 does this, I've always thought it was a neat reference to Excitebike!


Oh that's just crazy, I'm not sure what he did though? Did he hack the game to increase the track number far past the real tracks so that the game just fetches some random data when drawing the obstacles (like the minus world in SMB)?

[Jedi Master Baiter]

I forced the player's bike to fall downward to see what happens: You cannot see attachments on this board. Looks like the other bikers go right through him.

Oh that's just crazy, I'm not sure what he did though? Did he hack the game to increase the track number far past the real tracks so that the game just fetches some random data when drawing the obstacles (like the minus world in SMB)?

This looks far more interesting than the minus world. It looks like the course is generated on the spot.

[P]

Interesting, thanks for trying it out and sharing it.

[Jedi Master Baiter]

While on the subject of hacking ExciteBike, I wish I made this: https://youtu.be/mzUczHYm07A?t=12

[P]

Haha ouch his head must hurt. At least he won!

[TurtleKirby1234]

Fun trick: you can run faster when falling off by mashing the A-button. I don't think this is mentioned in the manual. Nintendo reused this trick in Wave Race 64 when you fall off the waterscooter.

This quote has legit saved my life