The cute explody ones

The lil Manatee

GwB Presents: Excitebots Trick Racing

Or- “How Nintendo is slowly killing me.”

Invoking happy memories of overheated, pixelated motorbikes through the cleaver use of the word “excite,” Excitebots Trick Racing is yet another in the stable of Wii based racing games. As with (sadly) so many other it relies on the motion controls to drive your animal-looking bots around the smattering of tracks throughout the game.

And that's it. Really, there isn't much more to say, and that's indicative of a much larger problem.

You see, I am a Nintendo die hard. A fanboy if you will. From the launch of the NES I have been loyal to that company that has been in the gaming market for more than 100 years. (Nintendo started as a playing card manufacturer in Japan around 1889.) They've been making games for a very long time. And when they got into the home video game system racket they made many a child of the eighties extremely happy. Throughout the years that followed there had been others, but Nintendo had me first and always.

But during that time I found myself defending my lover. Nintendo wasn't perfect, and they often lagged well behind their competition. Their games weren't as pretty as everyone else, but they usually more than made up for that shortcoming in sheer quality of their games.

The Wii however has been such a mixed bag. Have there been good titles? Certainly. But I honestly believe there have been more absolute failures with this system than any other in Nintendo's history. For every Metroid Prime 3: Corruption we have to suffer through dozens of titles like Excitebots. It saddens me immensly to say this, but it seems like Nintendo's business model is to throw a pot of noodles at the wall and see what sticks.

And that's what Excitebots ultimately is, another noodle on the wall. Not remarkable in any way, something to be played and ultimately forgotten as quickly as it was acquired. It's plain and ordinary. I had wanted so much more of this game. I want so much more from Nintendo. And that kills me.