Format: Advance
Genre: Racing
Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami

Motocross plays basically like excitebike but on a 2D plane instead of a 2.5D plane. An odd little series that somehow managed to survive on really primitive game design. The basic of this game is to hold down the A button to do 3 laps on every course and place 1st to improve your score. Basically it's like mario kart but side-scrolling and motorbikes. The meat of this game comes in the fact that you have tons of NITRO. It lets you get a very short speed burst that can get you some real distance if you use it on a jump. There are also powerups like mines, some type of 2-fire shield, and rockets. As you're playing, your Gas Tank slowly empties out, so you need to pick up Gas Powerups or else you'll game over. There are nitro pickups as well to give you more boosting power. Much like excitebike if you land poorly, you'll crash. The truly odd thing about this game is how much the character creation doesn't look like it fits in the game at all. You've got TJ who's an American guy, a chick that looks like rogue from x-men, and I swear that yulia is from some other game like king of fighters or rumble roses. There's also a robot from japan, dhailism from street fighter, and a bull named Dave. Crazy town, all over. The game itself is pretty lengthy and decent. There's 6 tournaments to win, with about 4 tracks each. Each track takes 3 laps to win. It may sound like a lot, but once you get the hang of it, the game flies by. There are a few unique powerups that I never figured out what they did... and for some reason some cats started following me in some races. No clue what that was about. You don't really need to know anything to win this game, just hold A, nitro often, and land properly and you'll be fine. Each track has a multitude of varying paths you can take, which are all based off of when you nitro off of any of the jumps/ramps. In this way, you might be completely safe from all the missiles the other players are throwing around on the bottom if you're skimming by on the top. Some routes are faster than others, so it's all about figuring out what works. The sound wasn't that impressive, the graphics were decent to good. It was a pretty fun game that I'd recommend for a pick-up-and-play.

All in All, a solid 8 is what this game deserves. It had issues with sound and was kinda short of a game. There were also repeat-tracks in multiple tournaments. The extra powerups were also a bit confusing.