Once again, I bring to you another fine comic, crafted slowly and surely by my own hands. I promise that this one is shorter than my last effort.

On Monday, I downloaded the new Excitebike: World Rally game on the Nintendo WiiWare service. As a big fan of the original Excitebike, having first played it in the arcade, I was really stoked about this new title after watching the initial trailer.

The game is basically the original game recoated with a polygonal paint job. The controls are identical to the 8-bit classic, but can be changed to use the Wii Remote’s tilt functions to change your motorcycle’s angle while airborne. Since I’m old school, I of course play with the NES style controls. The only major differences in the new game is the addition of the terrain altering power-up from the ExciteTruck series and the ability to move the angle of the camera. Nothing major or exciting, which is a bit of a letdown.

Anyway, I dove right into the track editor. Why? Honestly, I have no idea. It may have something to do with all those tracks I created back in the day only to have them erased as soon as the power was turned off. Thanks to the advances in technology over the last twenty years, I can now save eight - a whopping eight - tracks in total. I read somewhere that number is actually eight per profile, but I don’t imagine I’ll make that many tracks so it shouldn’t be a concern.

The track editor is very accessible for first timers. The pieces are identical to the original, and even have the same letter code system. With a push of the A button, you can test your track out to see whether it’s ready to go. You can even send tracks to other players, well as long as you entered their sixteen digit Wii system code into your address book.

Speaking of friend codes, the online multiplayer is great. I’ve played it several times and found games relatively quickly. In all my matches, I’ve experienced no lag with all four players playing. All in all, the online mode is a welcome addition to the game.

The only disappointing thing for me is the lack of an offline multiplayer. I get that the game is a horizontal based game and splitting the screen into fours might not work well, but what’s stopping a two player version from being included? Honestly, they made VS. Excitebike in Japan back in the day, so would it have been that hard to emulate that? Even better, why not add a four player split-screen where the camera is positioned behind the players? Sure, landing jumps would be a bit weird at first but it would certainly be better than nothing.

It’s typical Nintendo to finally give us a decent online game only to remove the offline component. Is it really that hard?

- Dover

Dover made a comic, all by his lonesome! Open wide your pleasure receptors, and let in the sunshine.

I bid on a large lot of Dreamcast games from eBay last week, and won the auction pretty easily. Regular readers know that I am an absolute sucker for nostalgia, or at least the acquisition of it. My follow through (i.e., actually playing anything that I own) is less reliable than my too-eager wallet reflex at the mention of anything produced before the advent of the millenium. As proof, I can submit so many things, but for a taste know that I own three individual mint copies of Street Fighter Alpha 2 for the Sega Saturn, one copy in questionable condition, one PlayStation copy (also mint), and even a complete new in box version for the Super Nintendo. Now know that I have never in my life played Street Fighter Alpha 2. It’s a sickness, but at least the disease gives me lots of stuff to look at.

I hit up eBay often for gaming lots for the purpose of acquiring two or three of the games within, and the others usually become duplicates in my archives. I couldn’t begin to count how many obscure Konami, Tecmo, Sega and EA sports titles I have in addition to the more vaunted Treasure, Square, Capcom, and Sierra titles that occupy the same space.

Anyway, today the lot arrived, and with it, another seventy-plus games, most of which I already own. As an (expensive) side benefit to purchasing large game lots, I get to remember old titles or discover ones of which I was never previously aware. For instance, this lot brought with it Magforce Racing. What the fuck is Magforce Racing? Also included was Suzuki Alstare Extreme Racing, a largely unspectacular motorcycle game and one that I did remember (though not well), but Magforce Racing? Apparently, it was published by a company called Crave Entertainment who shifted their focus to budget publishing around the end of the Dreamcast era, if I recall. Was it a budget title?

I have decided not to look it up. Instead, I’ll pop it in and see why this one flew so low under the radar. Hypothesis is either that it was so awful that we all secretly agreed to never again discuss it before collectively wiping our memories as a society of its garbage-ness, or that its generic future poppin’ fresh title scared away all prospective buyers, sinking it so low on the consumer food chain that the only people who ever partook of Magforce Racing were lepers and those incapable of intelligible speech.

Ah. Almost forgot. I bought this lot for Maken X, a competant first-person slasher from overseas; Gunbird 2, the Japanese version of which I already have but assumed that English would be peachy; and Omikron: The Nomad Soul, because I never played it and the wait for Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain is killing me.

Finally, without work for the first time in awhile, this weekend should be awesome.

- Irving