In the early days of the Wii there was a lull in releases between launch day and around 7 to 12 months later when the games started really coming out. During that lull Excite Truck released and crashed its way into my heart. It became one of my favourite arcade racers and after just revisiting Excite Truck again it still is.

Excite Truck just feels so good. It is simple. Hold the Wii remote sideways and turn it to steer. Press 2 to go and 1 to stop. Press A to reset your truck and press any direction button to boost. The motion controls here work well for driving as the game was designed around them. You have to steer your truck left and right on the ground but then also use them in the air to tilt up and down to control the jumps height and length. They are also needed for spin tricks. You can do 360°s that can be chained together. Boost is unlimited although your truck will over heat if it is used too much but it can be cooled by water. If you hit boost right after leaving a jump you will boost jump. Jumps can be chained and perfect landings are rewarded with boost. You can do stupidly big jumps, massive drifts, smash into other trucks, pick up ‘POWS’ to get invincibility plus boost and hit ‘!’ pickups to morph the terrain ahead which throws the trucks in front and opens up new paths and jumps. Then there are rings to jump through, tree runs (driving very close to trees) and such a brilliant sense of speed. Even crashing will get you a star for score and to recover you mash 2 and boost back into the action.

Excite Truck is just go, go, go; keep speed up, keep getting boosts, keep hitting jumps. It is a bunch of simple things put together to make something really fun that is easy to pick up but a little tricky to master. When you boost jump high up into the air and fly over 500 metres the music goes quiet. You’re just floating back down to earth, while trying to line up a perfect landing, with nothing but the sound of the wind and your truck. Just this wonderful moment and then crash you hit the ground, the boost hits from the perfect landing and the music roars back in. And it’s just… fuck yeah! Excite Truck is this constantly, this constant rush in short bursts. It is fun and nonstop rewarding.

Excite Truck has achievements and tracks what you do. You get an achievement for every super air, drift, rings, tree run, etc and when you get enough of them it gives you a trophy. There are ranks to earn for every event and your times will be recorded too. The game will record things like your longest jump and drift and a pop up will appear letting you know you beat it. There are unlockables to earn which are new trucks, icons and paint jobs. Excite Truck relentlessly rewards you during races with sounds, visuals, stars and more speed and after the races with these progress markers, score, rank, time and new trucks. It has you always wanting more and trying to better yourself.

There is a bit more to it than just simple thrills as well, this is a score based racing game after all and S ranks can be pulled off without finishing in first. Getting to the front and staying there isn’t really always the best, you only want to be first right at the finish line. If you get out in front why not pull yourself into a tree for a point and then be back in the pack. Now you can get more points again as you smash and throw the other trucks. When you see the ‘!’ for morphing the track ahead slow a bit or speed up to maximise the trucks that get thrown and try to boost as much as possible without overheating. There is a bit of strategy and risk/reward here and there is a bit of depth for the curious too. You can build score more often than may first appear. If you swerve off course and fly up a hill jumping way to the side you will bounce off the invisible barrier (that becomes visible when close to it). Do it right and at the right places and you come back towards the track. You just got a super air plus spins out of nowhere. Why not launch yourself off the side of a hill and clip a rock to reach for the sky. Anything is a jump with boost and the right attitude. Tree runs can be found more often with the right amount of bravery. There are cuts to find to shave off time and don’t forget to hit water whenever possible so you can keep boosting. Maybe playing with the boost while sliding will help you get some extra long drifts. How much of this can be crammed into a single lap? Searching out scoring opportunities and creating your path through each track is really worthwhile. The score, time and skill ceiling here is a little higher than what many might first expect.

There is a solid enough amount of content and modes to enjoy. Excite Truck starts you off with a tutorial and then you can enjoy Excite races, Versus and Challenge. Excite races are your regular races where you are trying to win plus score well to get S ranks. There are a decent number of events, mirror mode unlocks at the end and it increases in difficulty pretty well as you progress. Versus is the split screen multiplayer mode. Challenge is made up of three parts. Gate challenge has you racing against time and trying to pass through increasingly narrow gates. It builds and tests your handling. Ring challenge involves jumping through rings and will improve your jumping and aerial control. The last one is crush challenge and it’s kind of unique. You roam around the open maps the tracks are set in hunting down and smashing into other trucks. It is fun, improves your vehicular violence abilities and gives you the freedom to explore the locations.

Excite Truck’s visuals and presentation is just what you want from a fun, over the top, off road racer. The trucks look great and there is a good variety of them. They break apart and deform well during crashes with chunks and wheels flying off. The track locations are varied and the tracks look great too. They are colourful and easily readable so you always know what direction to point your truck in even at high speed. There is so much going on in them too and you often have two set paths to choose from when tearing through. There is weather; rain, storms, lightning and snow and crazy stuff like fires, twisters, volcanoes erupting, explosions and rock slides. As I already mentioned you can morph the terrain while driving through it as well. While Excite Truck won’t be mistaken for a PS3 or 360 game it is a good looking Wii title. Combine all this with the intense racing, score chasing, excessive sound effects and fun music and it is an enjoyable, compelling assault on your senses. If you’re not keen on the game’s music or you just want to change you can play your own from an SD card as well.

So what isn’t great about Excite Truck? Well there’s a few small things and I wanted just a little more. The motion controls can be finicky for pulling off spins and it would have been good to see more tricks. The sound effect played for POW pickups gets obnoxious, a larger soundtrack would have been nice and the trucks engine/exhaust sounds needed more punch. I wish that the challenge mode was bigger and better, that there was four player split screen instead of just two and that there were more than six trucks per race for more chaos. The final events are actually just one race but at least it is cool yet I still wanted another difficulty level and more races above this. The worst thing about going back to Excite Truck though is the reminder that Nintendo doesn’t do this anymore. Seriously Nintendo, were the hell is a new Excite Truck/Bike, 1080°, Wave Race and a proper F-Zero? An Excite Truck released today could be bloody fantastic with online multiplayer, leader boards for everything and maybe with the social and collaborative progression stuff lifted straight from Driveclub.

Excite Truck is simple things done really well that come together beautifully. There are some minor issues and it just needs more and to be pushed further. But most of the time I had a smile on my face and had to keep on telling myself just one more race. It is a must own Wii game and I strongly recommend it to fans of arcade racing games.

8.4/10