[cannon fires, chuckles] -All right, that’s all I wanted to do.
But I guess I’ll review the rest of it. [rider crunches against the ground]
[jazz music plays] [computer buzzes, beeps]
Well it’s been around 25 years so hey, as good a time as any to talk Motocross Madness!
Developed by Rainbow Studios and published by Microsoft in August of 1998.
High-flying, wheelie-riding, off-road, overly-hyphenated motorbike action!
A dozen bikes and riders to choose from, 16 stunts to perform, 30-odd tracks, plus 8-rider
multiplayer and a track editor to keep the fun going.
As a 12-year-old fascinated by both the X Games on TV and racing games on PC, Motocross
Madness had my full attention back then as soon as I came across the trial version.
And ever since, it’s still the first thing that comes to mind
whenever I think of developer Rainbow Studios.
They’ve had a whole long legacy of course, beginning with their founding in 1986 when
they made interactive documentation software for hotels and whatnot.
And before Motocross Madness, I knew them for games like The Hive and Deadly Tide, two
full motion video shooters with an alluring flair for the dramatic.
But I most fondly remember Rainbow for MCM here, and its awesome big box cover with that
blue-yellow sky gradient and a dude 300 feet in the air about to lose a fight with gravity.
A box that’s become surprisingly difficult to find.
More copies of the games sold in a jewel case instead, through third party discount labels,
or were bundled as an OEM disc distributed with a new PC,
or came included as part of a boxed set like Racing Madness.
Which packed together the holy trinity of Microsoft’s early “Madness” game universe,
from that late 90s period when the company
was dumping cash into making PC games and peripherals.
So maybe you were introduced that way or perhaps you were like me and you just played the free
trial version for like 8 months straight before eventually grabbing a cheap copy on sale.
Whatever the case may be, Motocross Madness found its way onto the hard drives of tens
of thousands of PC gamers.
And when you got it home, inside that impressive big box was... not much at all.
In my copy all I got was this promo disc with a free month of MSN and a bunch of trial software,
as well as the CD-ROM game itself packed inside of a jewel case.
The only documentation is a 13-page instruction booklet packed into the front of the case,
briefly covering the main features and gameplay.
Not a lot to see indeed, and statistically about 40% of you skip this part of the video
regardless so let’s get to the dang game already.
[Microsoft intro animation plays]
After two brief logo animations and a splash screen, you’re greeted with the main menu.
No Motocross Madness-specific intro videos, unusually enough.
However!
After entering your name, just idle a few seconds and the menu itself begins rockin’
out with FMV goodness, featuring the real life riders and stunts
that inspired MCM in the first place.
[dirty dirt bikin' rock music]
As mentioned on the back of the box, these come from a series of mid 90s VHS tapes,
titled “Crusty Demons of Dirt.”
And wow does that take me back, those kinds of VHS stunt and crash compilations of people
being dumb were all over the place back then.
I used to watch tapes with motorcycles, skateboard tricks, skiing and snowboard stunts, monster
trucks, off-roading, and on and on.
No surprise those ubiquitous flicks inspired the developers, too.
Anyway, from here you can start a single player or multiplayer event, peruse the options,
or open an external help file.
Multiplayer is something we unfortunately won’t be going into since the MSN Gaming
Zone service it used is long dead as you’d expect.
And while LAN play is still doable, I don’t have that set up and the only event you’re
missing is Moto-Tag, which is just what it sounds like.
So single player it is then, and you’re presented with four events: Stunt Quarry,
Baja, National Race, and Supercross.
Selecting any one of these lets you play either a single race, a tournament of races,
or a ♪ “practice mooooode.” ♫
With that last one discarding all timers and progression, letting you fart around consequence-free,
with or without AI opponents.
And the game leaves it up to you as to how you wanna play, nothing is too set in stone.
The number of laps, quantity of races, how many opponents, what kind of time limit, which
track you’d like to race in which order.
It’s a lightly structured free-for-all, with no real career and nothing crazy to unlock.
So choose a model for your rider and bike, doesn’t matter much cuz they’re only skins.
And maybe pop into the garage for some exceptionally unexceptional tuning, with three engines and
six vague sliders for suspension and tires.
And with that, it’s time for madness!
[engines revving, rock music blares]
Aw yeah, the classic Motocross Madness experience right here.
Wide open spaces with plenty of hills and valleys providing prime opportunities for
high-scoring stunts and bone-crushing crashes.
At least in this Stunt Quarry mode, which was always the star of the show.
These massive open-ended maps were unlike anything I’d seen back when this came out,
despite the total lack of trees, buildings,
or defining landmarks beyond bits of uniquely lumpy terrain.
It was sparse but it was enough to get me spending hours screwing around going fast,
jumping far, and scoring high.
Or sometimes I just ignored all that and rode around exploring!
It was a map so large that it naturally made you wanna reach the limits, which seemingly
came in the form of these high cliffs barricading you inside the map.
And yet, with enough speed and tenacity, you could actually ride straight up the cliff
walls, which leads to one of my favorite undocumented features...
[cannon fires]
[cartoonish whistling sound] [rider groans in pain]
That good old out of bounds cannon!
A source of boundless joy for anyone who had the pleasure of discovering it.
Instead of an ordinary invisible wall, this unseen cannon at the map’s edge blasts you
off in the opposite direction, complete with cartoony sound effects.
It’s an unnecessary and delightful addition, plus it was a great way to see large portions
of the map all at once and admire that draw distance.
Or the fog, whichever one stood out the most.
Yeah Motocross Madness sure made me happy to have a 3D graphics card, especially since
it won’t even run without one installed.
No software rendering here!
As the box proclaimed, 3D acceleration was required, one of the first games I remember
seeing with such a statement.
But being early to the 3D party also means it’s annoyingly picky
about GPU, OS, drivers, and DirectX versions.
For example, on Windows XP I get nothing but corruption with an Nvidia 8800GTS, it won’t
start at all for me on Windows 98SE,
and Windows 95 will only play with my Voodoo 3 under DirectX 7.
And then it’s still prone to crashing and slowdowns, so y’know.
Anytime I do get MCM working properly feels like a moment worth cherishing, especially
now that I can take advantage of its more premium features.
Things like Dolby Surround sound, which took the already impressive sound effects and gave
it greater depth with convincing spatial effects.
But really, even in stereo the game sounded superb, with real engine sound samples being
mixed on the fly to convincing effect, for 1998 anyway.
Yeah grab some headphones and listen to this:
[engines revving all over the place] [dirt crunching, riders passing by]
Yeah, the way it’s mixed with widened stereo separation and environmental effects really
adds to the wide open feel of each environment, giving it a sense of place that few racing
games did back then.
Makes me actually prefer playing with the music turned off, despite how respectably
hard Mark Stratford’s CD audio soundtrack goes.
[soundtrack goes hard]
Another aspect I can now experience is its support for motion-controlled input devices
like the Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro, the game’s unofficially official controller.
Or at least that’s how it came across considering how much cross-promotion there was, from mentions
of it in the manual, to discs for the game included in the box the Freestyle came in.
The way this pad works is you essentially have two controllers in one, with a digital
d-pad and buttons normally, but motion-sensitive analog controls for pitch and roll, rotating
along the X and Y axis to change directions.
Eight years before the PS3 SIXAXIS, fun stuff!
In theory anyway.
Despite MCM and the Freestyle being literally designed for each other, I find it far less
precise and rather unenjoyable.
And since so much gameplay relies on balancing your rider,
which is controlled by the pitch of the Freestyle?
It’s downright irksome, especially on event types relying on more care and precision being
put into your riding efforts.
On that note, the most forgiving event is Stunt Quarry.
Do whatever stunts you like, wherever you like, within the allotted time and earn more
points than everyone else.
Sweet and simple.
The other three events though are all more reliant on bike mastery and knowledge of each
map, all requiring the clearing of checkpoints in a specific order to succeed.
Baja is my favorite of these checkpoint race modes, with the same open maps as Stunt Quarry
now filled with checkpoint markers to pass through as fast as possible.
You’re free to take any path you wish, there’s no set track exactly.
But there’s certainly an optimal route to discover, as you need to pass each checkpoint
in a predetermined order.
So more than other events, Baja is about balancing your rider and bike using the lean controls,
and paying close attention to the topography to carve out the path of least resistance
for top speed and fewer jumps.
It’s tricky at first but eventually becomes a sort of meditative experience, where the
unmarked dirt takes on a track layout only you can see in your mind, once you’re familiar
enough with each hill, ditch, rut, and drop-off of the terrain.
Then you have National Race and Supercross, and well, these just don’t do it for me.
They never have to be honest, being too claustrophobic and tight with the turns, at least for the
way MCM’s dirt bike physics function.
National Race takes place on the same type of lumpy terrain as before, but limited to
smaller, more traditional track designs.
Only now with immediate penalties if you go off-course or cut past too much track,
teleporting you back after 5 seconds.
So a couple crashes or off-course teleports means you may as well restart the race, since
there’s almost no chance of catching up to the on-rails AI drivers by then.
Same goes for Supercross, which is by far my least favorite.
Like sure, riding inside a stone pyramid or underneath a huge stadium dome is neat, and
hearing the crowd go nuts whenever you wipe out is kinda fun, at first.
But they’re all tile-based tracks that are significantly less interesting to look at.
And again, the way Motocross Madness controls makes it an exercise in frustration to complete
any Supercross event, in any position, much less with a podium finish.
I’ve always preferred Moto Racer when it comes to dirt track racing events like this.
That game’s speed, simplicity, and silly arcade physics model
makes for a much more enjoyable time.
Though I can imagine these tile-based tracks would be better online against real people
making real mistakes, instead of the cybernetically enhanced super-biker AI.
Especially on tracks of your own creation, and this is where the track editor comes in.
This external program lets you build tracks on a grid using a selection of premade tiles
for things like jumps, bumps, straights, and so on.
Think Excitebike in 3D, before Excitebike went 3D on the N64.
Tracks were also easily shared and downloadable online, with Microsoft themselves offering
a selection of 9 courses as free DLC, known as the Holiday Track Pack.
Just a buncha stuff you could make yourself through the track editor,
but it wasn’t nothing!
And being able to download more content for a game at all back then was pretty novel.
And that is Microsoft Motocross Madness, two and a half decades later.
Still holds up in parts, fully falls flat in others.
But to me, the high points are high enough that I can happily go back to it and find
a solid couple hours of enjoyment.
Flying through the air and making your own path through huge sandbox-y stunt maps continues
to be good fun, with or without any successfully-performed stunts.
And the majority agreed as the game reviewed well with customers and critics alike, receiving
positive scores and ample awards from enthusiast magazines and websites.
It was naturally followed up with the also-excellent Motocross Madness 2 in 2000, which upgraded
and added tons of great stuff.
Including TREES to the terrain, ooh fancy!
But even more noteworthy are the spiritual successors by Rainbow Studios, like: MX Unleashed,
ATV Offroad Fury, and the MX vs ATV series.
Built by much of the same dev team using some of the same tech as MCM, and even including
the invisible cannon at the edge of the map!
I was always annoyed the earlier Unleashed and Offroad Fury games were only released
on consoles, but in hindsight it sure made business sense on the publisher’s part.
The various MX and ATV series games sold in the tens of millions, becoming FAR more successful
than any of the Motocross Madness games ever were.
Oh yeah and there was also that goofy reboot with big-headed Xbox avatars in 2013?
Sure it had some fun stunts and kept the out of bounds cannon tradition going, but ehh,
if I recall it was pretty average.
I dunno, there’s still something about the original game’s simplicity and
straightforward/predictably unforgiving physics.
It never fails to induce in me a kind of racing flowstate that’s oddly addictive, and for
that, I say Motocross Madness is late 90s PC gaming gold.
[jazz tunes intensify] [crashing, engine noises interspersed]
And if you dug this retrospective then check out my other videos on PC things of all kinds,
with new episodes always in the works here on LGR.
And lemme know your favorite Rainbow Studios title in the comments,
Motocross Madness or otherwise!
And as always, thanks for watching.