Excite Truck (Wii)

The lowdown:
Every console needs a goodly number of quality racing games if it wants to really succeed and that's not always been Nintendo's forte. Excite Truck though is an attempt to create a game that marries the all out fun of Mario Kart with something, not realistic but at least less obviously cartoonish. Yet again the Wii Remote is used in a completely different way, this time holding it horizontally and rotating it left and right as if it was a steering wheel. The only other controls are accelerate and brake on the '1' and '2' buttons, although you will land better if you tilt the controller up while you approach the ground. Despite this purposeful simplicity it's one of the better looking Wii games, with a huge draw distance and some impressive speed blur effects. It looks the part then, but more importantly it seems to play it too.

Most exciting moment:
A good lick of speed is always important in a racing game but this has got to be one of the fastest racers ever - and that's before you turn on the turbo boost. To make things even worse (better) picking up power-ups allows you to deform the terrain, creating enormous jumps out of thin air that send you flying for what seems like miles.

Since you ask:
The name Excite Truck is a reference to the NES game Excitebike and its N64 update Excitebike 64. Beyond the name and the fact that it is a racing game though the two titles do not appear to have anything else in common.

The bottom line:
Nintendo's first modern racer for years looks like a truck load of fun.-HARRISON DENT