Excite Truck is a video game published by Nintendo and developed by Monster Games for the Wii video game system. It features malleable environments and tilt-based controls. The game was one of the Wii launch titles in North America. It is a spiritual successor to the Excitebike series (Excitebike and Excitebike 64). Excitebike was released on the Virtual Console service in Europe on February 16th, to mark the European release of Excite Truck.

Excite Truck is the first Wii game to let people select music, in the form of MP3s from an SD card, to be played in the background while they are playing instead of the music provided by the game.

Gameplay

Excite Truck does not use the Nunchuk attachment; it is controlled entirely with the Wii Remote. When first starting the game the player must go through a series of tests or practice runs before they are allowed to play the full game. After finishing the training levels, both single and multiplayer modes are available. The player first starts with three trucks. They must unlock additional trucks by reaching various benchmarks. The game also supports split screen two player multiplayer.

Scoring

Crossing the finish line first is not the goal of Excite Truck, but rather another avenue for gaining stars. Stars are scored for a variety of stunts, and for the player's placement at the end of the race. A letter grade is awarded for each race, corresponding to the number of stars obtained, with the S rank being the highest grade possible. Getting S ranks in all tracks on the regular Excite difficulty level unlocks a harder "Super Excite" difficulty level. Getting S ranks in all tracks on the Super Excite difficulty level unlocks an even more difficult Mirror Mode level.

In single player Excite mode, all tracks have a required number of stars to advance further in the game. The player is not required to finish in first place as long as they gain the number of stars required during the race. Races are timed to prevent players from reversing back across high-star areas and completing the same stunts over and over again.

Winning races

In single player mode, the player receives bonus stars following the race depending on how they placed. These stars are applied to your score before determining if the player has completed the track's minimum score.

In multiplayer races, the player who crosses the finish line first receives a bonus of 15 stars. Additionally, once the first player has crossed the line, a 30 second countdown is triggered for the second player. For each second that the second player has not completed the race, an extra star is awarded the first finisher. If the timer expires, the second player is disqualified with no score.