497 Words About: Excitebike on Animal Crossing
It’s still fascinating to me that I played Excitebike for the Nintendo Entertainment System(NES) the first time on Animal Crossing for the Nintendo Gamecube.
Animal Crossing is a life simulator videogame in the vein of The Sims but with a more chibi aesthetic. Players could buy a house, grow flowers, buy furniture, design clothes, go fishing, catch bugs, and make friends with the various animal non-playable characters(npcs) that inhabited their town. There were hundreds of furniture items coded into the game which allowed players options to design their personal digital space however they wanted. And at some point the player could get an NES console.
Literally decades before the Nintendo Switch afforded players the chance to “emulate” classic NES games, they included NES “consoles” as furniture items.
There were two ways to acquire them. Players could either win consoles in Tom Nooks Raffle, or buy one from Crazy Red.
There were 19 consoles players could acquire, though an essay published by James Chambers about these games argues there could have been more. I would eventually get around seven of them, but only because I used an Ultimate Codes disc (basically a disc-based Game Genie for specific Gamecube games).
Excitebike was a racing videogame where the player controlled a single sprite who rode a motorcycle across a course that included jumps, hills, speed boosts, and bumps. The game was notorious because there was an “overheat” function that would fill up if the player moved too quickly (or honestly moved at all) at which point the player would pull to the side and wait for the engine to cool. I’ll be honest, I was never good at Excitebike, but I still enjoyed playing it.
I wound up playing the original Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, Balloon Fight, and PunchOut all through Animal Crossing.
It was fun showing my parents these games since they had played them on actual NES consoles, and I recall even getting my Mom to help me with Legend of Zelda which was cool because she never played videogames.
Reflecting on Excitebike on Animal Crossing though is a chance for some meta-cognition. I was playing a videogame inside of a videogame, and at some point I began playing Animal Crossing just to play Excitebike. The emulator system was “breaking the game” because instead of playing the main game I was playing a component of it. I stopped paying my mortgage, I stopped talking to villagers, and I stopped fishing. My digital simulated life faded as Animal Crossing became a tool for playing other videogames.
Playing a videogame within a videogame, and actually playing a videogame just to play another videogame reveals how small components of software can sometimes outshine their original host. Animal Crossing didn’t stop being a great videogame just because I now had NES consoles in my home, but at some point I began to question whether I wanted to live a simulated life, or if I just wanted to play videogames.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
1.27.2025
Like what you’re reading? Buy me a coffee & support my Patreon. Please and thank you.