JMT’s Retro Games

Motocross 32X - don’t trust the bad reviews

Posted on April 6th, 2008 by JMT.
Categories: Articles.

I think it’s sad that Motorcross 32X gets universally poor reviews. I think the problem is that nobody took the time to learn the controls. Because once you have the riding controls down, this game is both easy and incredibly fun.

First, I want to make a correction to many of the reviews. There ARE stunts. You perform the “step off” by tapping A and then holding A while airborne, and this gets you 100$. And you perform the “power salute” by tapping UP and then holding UP while airborne, and this gets you 200$.

So back to gameplay. The driving controls have good depth to them. For the time, this was more than other systems had. By pressing UP, you lean forward, and can go faster. BUT if you lean forward when landing off a jump, you’ll nose dive and crash. By pressing DOWN, you pull up on the handlebars, and it helps you clear jumps. Also, you need to hold DOWN to get through those molehills at a decent speed.

Turning is precise. The only problem is if you take too much air right before a turn and don’t land in time to turn, but that’s part of the challenge. Otherwise, your rider turns very easily, which allows you to keep your speed pretty well through the game. And later levels let you take tons of air, and it’s extremely satisfying to go flying off a big jump and remain airborne for a long time, and try to get a stunt or two in.

In fact, I thought it was the coolest thing when I finally hit a huge jump at top speed and flew high enough to see the edge of the horizen come up. Maybe it was a bug, but seeing it makes me feel like I’ve achieved a huge jump.

Now, back to the beginning. It’s true, the only flaw in the game is at the start, when all the riders collide into a mess. However, this also makes the game very easy to get into the top standing right off the bat. All you have to do is NOT hit the gas at the start. Wait a second for all the other riders to collide, and then hit the gas and zip past them. There will be 4 or 5 top riders who miss the collision, and then these will be the top riders you fight against for 1st place.

It didn’t take me more than a few days of playing and nailing down the solid controls, and I could complete the whole season mode. But even after completing it, it’s still total fun to play. I’ve never played a motocross game before or since that is just so much fun. The feeling of air you get from the jumps is second to none, and the tight controls on turning give it that good “Arcade” feel that lacks from some of the later too-realistic titles.

Also, this game should never be compared to road rash. That’s like trying to compare AH-3 Thunderstrike to Desert Strike. They’re just different games. The punching/kicking is mostly useless in this game. Every once in a while you’ll get a good punch in. But it’s a bit confusing because you have to hold the direction pad in the direction you want to punch. Just forget about the punching, and concentrate on the awesome air.

Also, the animation of the ground (which is texture mapped, BTW, it’s not scan-lined like the road rash games, this couldn’t have been done on the Genesis or the SNES) is perfectly smooth, and enables the high speed flying.

I think it’s sad that this game always gets such bad reviews. It prevents more people from being able to see the fun in this simple arcade motocross game.

And the fact that there’s 12 different tracks (each with more and bigger jumps), and 3 different bikes (faster to catch even more air) means you can never run out of fun with this game.

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