Excitebots: Trick Racing

Excitebots: Trick Racing, known in Japan as Excite Mou Machine, is a 2009 racing video game developed by Monster Games and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It is the fourth game in the Excite series and the sequel to Excite Truck (2006). It features animal-themed robot vehicles and short minigames during racing, such as pie throwing, bowling, and soccer. The game could be bought packaged with or without the Wii Wheel, similar to Mario Kart Wii.

Despite a positive reception from critics, the game was never available in stores outside North America. Nintendo Australia's Managing Director, Rose Lappin has said that Excitebots will not be seeing an Australian release "due to lack of interest". However, Japanese Club Nintendo members were able to exchange points for a copy starting from over two years of the original release date. A fifth game in the series, Excitebike: World Rally, was released in 2009 for WiiWare.

Excitebots is controlled with the Wii Remote horizontally, optionally with the Wii Wheel. Most of the games are played on courses large in size with many opportunities to take meandering paths. The 25 different courses offered are modeled after real locations on Earth. Because of the size of each course, most races are two laps long and offer opportunities to gain massive altitude, perform various maneuvers, and obtain various items.

Each race is scored on a grading system from "D" (lowest) to "S" (highest). In order to obtain a higher score, players must perform various tricks, stunts, complete minigames, and finish the race before the other bots. Each of these tricks yields stars, which are used to determine how well the player did during the race. The more stars collected before crossing the finish line, the higher the final score will be. Examples of some of the methods to obtain stars are: gaining extreme altitude from jumping off inclined terrain, smashing into other bots during high speed, altering the terrain ahead and sending leading bots skyward, ramming into bowling pins, getting various offensive items and using them strategically i.e. bombs, hammers, and swinging on bars including a mandatory "red bar" in each course.

Excitebots featured six-player online multiplayer via the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection as well as local, split-screen 2-player racing. Online gameplay modes included six-player "Excite" races as well as "Poker" races which could be played anonymously or with friends using Nintendo's Friend Code system. During online play, players were able to place bets on themselves with in-game tokens which could be exchanged for unlockable items. Unlike its predecessor, Excitebots did not support the ability to play custom music from an SD card.

Excitebots features many game modes that can be played:

Players were also able to play with up to five other people online with the Nintendo WFC. Options existed after each race to save replays and ghosts and send them to other Wii consoles including their own and attach awards to the ghost challenges. With the discontinuation of the Nintendo WFC, playing online is no longer possible.

Excitebots features a variety of robust racing environments, including some redesigned tracks from Excite Truck. For the most part, they are based on real life locations. The only environment that is not based on a real location is "Crystal Nebula", which is located on a fictional planet and is regarded as the hardest track.