The original Extreme-G games for the Nintendo 64 are very much of their era. You drive very fast bikes around futuristic tracks while listening to trance music. Most racing games are aiming to get the player into a particular zone and in the case of these games, that zone is the sheer satisfaction of maintaining high speed without losing any momentum. Going fast is every bit as fun today as it was 29 years ago but is it fair to call either of these games classics, as ModRetro is doing with their double cartridge rerelease?
What’s especially interesting about this multi-cart format is that replaying both of these games so shortly one after the other really accentuates the changes between the two. Extreme-G is very much a game with a strong visual aesthetic and concept that Acclaim pressured Probe Entertainment to get out the door as quickly as possible, since back in 1997, there wasn’t much competition yet for this specific kind of racer on the Nintendo 64. Extreme-G is solid when it comes to its concept of getting into the fast zone.
There’s just not that much to do beyond that. The only unusual structural gimmick of Extreme-G is how the difficulty scales up. Where most racing games opt for individual circuits of four or five tracks, Extreme-G demands the player engage in a marathon mode, upping the ante from four tracks to eight to twelve. Extreme-G also uses a qualifying points system. Which is to say, it’s not enough for you to be able to beat the other racers. You also need to hit a minimum threshold of points.
The artificial intelligence in Extreme-G is unfair. I don’t mean that it’s difficult, I mean that whether or not you’re able to defeat opposing racers is largely luck-based. The weapons, while looking cool, aren’t all that helpful. In practice once another bike gets far enough ahead of you, there’s no catching up to them. The game practically apologizes for these often-arbitrary outcomes by giving you a bonus point if you get a great time on all three laps. On balance, though, once you get reasonably good at Extreme-G, you shouldn’t have any problem beating the Meltdown mode of twelve races.
In other words, Extreme-G is good, but not great. Extreme-G 2 is a clear attempt to rectify Extreme-G’s flaws and add a whole lot more polish. There is somewhat more lore. There are now racers associated with the bikes, although they all have the exact same animations and no apparent personal backstory. The greater plot is about some sort of military testing tournament, which is appropriate given that Extreme-G 2’s most dramatic improvement is with weapons. They matter now, at least on the tracks with the usable ones, and it’s quite satisfying being able to blast a rival away with them.
Unfortunately, Extreme-G 2 has a crippling flaw. The collision detection is much, much less forgiving than it was in Extreme-G. In Extreme-G, hitting a wall will slow you down, and is obviously something to be avoided, but did not generally derail an entire race. Extreme-G 2 does away with this. Hit anything at a funny angle, whether it’s a wall, or a ramp, or even another vehicle, and there’s an excellent chance your bike will either stop completely or even get turned around. Unless you’re capable of perfect play, more difficult courses are nearly impossible, particularly with bikes that have poor acceleration.
This makes Extreme-G 2 a much more challenging game than Extreme-G, which is fair, since Extreme-G was relatively easy and had limited replay value. But what’s frustrating is, that Extreme-G 2 has much more content. Way more unlockables. Way more cheat codes. And the typical player is unlikely to see any of this because so much of that content is gated behind a marathon gameplay mode where you’re only ever one bad race away from failing and having to start from scratch. Sure, you can save scum, fiddle with the options some or find cheat codes online.
That just isn’t satisfying is the problem, when this should all be achievable with the basic settings. I want more stuff because I earned it, and the qualifying points system is particularly obnoxious here because I can plainly see whenever I “lose” that I had more points than the competition! So why am I the only one kicking my bike and falling into the lava like a chump? It’s worth noting that the game’s superbikes go a long way to evening the difficulty curve. A pity the game acts like those wins don’t count. They’re not even as overpowered as the name implies. The main enemy in Extreme-G 2 isn’t the other racers, it’s the unforgiving penalties for collision, and faster bikes are more likely to hit obstacles at a funny angle.
Extreme-G 2 remains the superior game for anything that’s not trance zone racing play. The multiplayer modes in particular benefit a lot from the weapon upgrades. It’s just a shame that the experience is comparably needlessly frustrating in single player mode. Getting bonus points for breaking the sound barrier is much more satisfying than just getting fast times, as was the case in the first game. The way the music breaks when you do this is beautiful. It’s just not as helpful for actually winning as you’d think, particularly as whether it’s even possible to break the sound barrier differs a lot depending on what bike you’re using on which track.
Between the two of them, Extreme-G and Extreme-G 2 have all the elements to be a single, genuinely excellent game, to the point it’s a real shame that this cartridge simply reproduces these games instead of actually fusing them together. Really, the only thing Extreme-G does better than Extreme-G 2 is the more forgiving penalty for collisions, but this is such a big deal I was honestly surprised how much it ultimately dragged Extreme-G 2 down in my estimation. It’s also harder to justify this compilation’s price than you’d think because original Extreme-G and Extreme G-2 cartridges are pretty cheap. The ModRetro box does look pretty cool though.
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