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Life & Arts

Momma, don't buy your kid a dirt bike

My 8 Bits

Jason Poland

After a dozen years of the most loving and nurturing parenting a legal guardian can provide, even after every possible sacrifice is made for the bettering of their child's future, the one sure fire way to wreck that child's positive development for life is to buy him a dirt bike for Christmas.

By February, Junior will be the biggest Dick in his neighborhood. Tearing up and down the block revving the engine at ear-splitting volumes, he'll drown out barking dogs and protests from the neighbors. The vacant lot across the street will be turned into his practice track, complete with plywood ramps he and the animal-torturing kid next door made. They'll take turns slinging mud on the vinyl siding and you'll wonder where you went wrong. 

The smell of burning rubber, gasoline and mud will seep into your home, he'll grow a mullet, start chewing dip and never look back. If he doesn't mangle himself in a motocross crash before turning 16, he'll only gestate into an even more arrogant piece of trash until he's a guest star on MTV's Viva La Bam jumping his tricked-out bike over a pool of mud wrestling STD-ridden Spring-Breakers. 

Because of your son's outlandish stunts and total lack of self-control, your family's daily shame will be televised in a highly-rated new MTV reality series, Mud Hoggin', and you'll rue the cold Christmas morning he pulled that shiny red bow off his first 50cc. So save yourself the trouble and buy him Excitebike instead.

One of Nintendo's earliest classics, Excitebike is as close as anyone should get to the world of motocross. Any more than eight bits would be too much -- enough to send the player down that spit and mud road of dirt bike racing forever. Each course in Excitebike is a side-scrolling track complete with ramps and obstacles of all design where you can compete solo or with other racers who are as dirty as they come. If you lock tires with another racer, expect a tumble, but if you manage to have them bump you from behind, they'll fly off their bike and lose precious time running back to get on.

Using the directional pad, you can control your biker's tilt while racing and during aerial ramp leaps; so you can pop sweet wheelies and score some hang time to impress all the eight-bit honeys wearing tube-tops in the stands. Just be sure to make a solid landing. Nobody wants to kiss a mud-muncher. 

The A button is for regular acceleration, but B will activate overdrive for extra speed. Watch your temperature meter or you'll overheat and be forced to cool off on the sidelines and watch your opponents whizz past. Arrows on the track will clear your heat meter, so try to hit those and you just might tear past all the lamers and come in first place where you'll pop a victory wheelie because you're such a cocky jackass.

While an excellent dirt bike simulator, Excitebike lacks a simultaneous two-player function, denying you the pleasure of laying the smackdown on your little brother. What might make up for this is a customization mode allowing you to create and save your very own Excitebike track with the entire palate of ramps and obstacles. Some of the high-flying ramps are ridiculous in their own right, and placing ten in a row just adds to the dirt bike absurdity of it all.

So remember kids, stay off the gas-powered bikes and stick with the Nintendo-powered ones. Your mother will thank you.

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