Super Bikes 3 (Arcade)
Super Bikes 3 is such an unassuming name that you would think it would be found on a generic fake arcade machine in the background of a T.V. show. Once you sit on the large motorbike peripheral used to control the game though, you’ll find yourself heading through stages where you race through a subterranean jungle, dodge a gigantic yeti, and get carried by an eagle to fly across molten lava, and that’s only on a single track.
Super Bikes 3 definitely goes all-in on providing you some incredibly lively and over the top tracks to race through on your motorcycle, although it does try to hide just how many are on offer by splitting them into Easy and Extreme variants. The four track types on offer see you racing through Nepal, Hollywood, Hong Kong, and Tanzania, and while there are definitely portions where you’ll be racing through something reasonable like a city, icy mountainside, or savanna, your attention will definitely be drawn by the abundant explosive action happening all around you. Tanker trucks crashing, animal stampedes, an enormous neon dragon, the sights of the levels are definitely given a lot of love even though it feels like, despite all the visible danger, you’re not really at that much risk yourself. It’s a lot of flash mainly, which makes the Extreme variants not really feel like a step up once you realize this. The giant donut sign that rolls through Hollywood is on fire thanks to an ongoing UFO attack in its Extreme variant and Tanzania swaps in dinosaurs dodging a meteor shower for its own, but you can expect the track to mostly play the same in terms of what you’re able to do. The tracks are also in a sprint format, meaning that the impressive chaos isn’t watered down by having to go through multiple laps of it, but it can make some tracks feel like they zoom by to the point you may want to go back just to do some sightseeing so you can properly notice what you raced by before.
Super Bikes 3 features ten player motorbike races and up to eight cabinets can be linked together for an impressively large multiplayer experience. If you do have game-controlled racers in the fray, this might actually be where the difficulty differences arise, since the game does seem to nudge the computer racers to get an early lead you must overcome and Extreme courses make it a bit tougher. Super Bikes 3 is controlled with a rideable facsimile of a motorbike, the bike set on a platform that is very useful for setting your feet on so you can have some stability as needed. The way you lean the bike does transfer well to the on-screen play, although when you hit a jump and start doing tricks, it can feel like the game is just coming up with its own maneuvers despite you clearly having some degree of control over the choices. Naturally you can’t pull off the backflips and full body twists your rider will do on-screen in real life so some assistance makes sense, and you will land safely no matter what trick the rider goes for. Essentially, tricks are mostly just another element that helps to cement this game’s daredevil presentation for your biker who races without much a care for their safety. For another fun touch, with enough speed you can race into other bikers and practically obliterate them, the bikers eventually joining back into the race but it is definitely satisfying to build up the speed needed to do such damage.
Super Bikes 3 allows you to pick between eight real bike brands as well as select one of ten racers to play as to have some influence on your ride’s control and speed, although there is a bit of a scummy feature included for people who want to pay a bit more to be the better racer. Super Bikes 3 allows you to pay double to play if you want to utilize the “Ultra Faster Bike” variant of your vehicle. Normally in a race you begin with a limited amount of Nitro boosts, pressing a button near the bike’s handlebars causing you to surge forward at high speed with green flames in your wake. After the nitro is up, you can hit that boost button to get smaller bursts of speed with red flames and enough speed can even make you jump in spots that don’t otherwise provide them, but should you pay more for your bike, you’ll get unlimited Nitro boosts for the faster and longer surges of speed. While this will give you an unfair edge should you be in a multiplayer race, surprisingly, the game-controlled racers still remain a bit competitive with this extra boost to your power. It’s hard to look at this feature as anything more than just a way to squeeze some more cash out of a player as a result, it not really an improvement to play and even in hypothetical scenarios like giving a younger player an edge, it’s still making you pay twice as much to accommodate a lower skilled player.
The track layouts are at least fairly effective in providing a range of areas and some decisions to be made beyond when to boost. Jumps are a fairly common feature and you do need to line up well to hit them, especially in areas like the Hollywood drainage ditches where many boosts are placed back to back and you might have to pick ones to skip. Alternate routes are also fairly common, some requiring a sharp eye as you might need to smash through some debris or hit the right jump to be able to take the different path. While you won’t often spend too long away from the pack when the road splits, different routes do have their advantages like easier turns, additional jumps, or a straighter shot forward. Super Bikes 3 doesn’t ask for many hard turns, this rather smart when you consider the bike can only be tipped so hard in a direction to try and influence how tight you could take them, but even once you realize a lot of the “dangers” on a track are really just set dressing, the courses at least provide some meaningful challenge in terms of their shape and the options they present. The final bit of each track does seem to always boil down to rapidly hammering what boost you have left, but at least that is more for a last push rather than something that will change the outcome immensely.
THE VERDICT: Super Bikes 3 does dazzle with the impressively animated chaos going on all around your ten person motorcycle race, but even though the sights don’t intermingle with the races often in meaningful ways, you are presented with effective track designs that offer split paths and plenty of chances to hit jump boosts. The Ultra Faster Bike does feel like a greedy inclusion and the game doesn’t hide the boosts its gives its own bikers the best, but you do get a decent fast-paced racer out of Super Bikes 3 that makes you wish there had truly been eight courses instead of four where they mostly just change the special effects for the Extreme variant.
And so, I give Super Bikes 3 for arcade machines…
An OKAY rating. Being an arcade game and one controlled with a bike peripheral instead of a controller, Super Bikes 3 probably couldn’t afford to let you keep ramming into animals or actually crashing into the destroyed city around you. You need to be quickly moved onto another race, another chance for the player to put in some credits, and an arcade really isn’t the place for perfecting your skills in this day and age. All of the flashy elemental effects do definitely draw the eye though and the tracks are much more interesting for including them, and thankfully there are decent track designs for the over the top background action to appear alongside. The races clearly tipping things against human players to start is clearly an attempt to keep you active and involved, but it also diminishes some of the thrill if you keen to the fact that even opening the race with a nitro boost won’t be enough to get past any of the nine computer racers. You do need to actually handle the course well to earn first at least, despite a good deal hinging on that last stretch where you just hammer boost and hope to lead the pack. The moment to moment racing is effective so it’s mostly the surrounding elements that keep it from being a nice racer to return to, especially with the unusual Ultra Faster Bike option that feels unfair to both other players who join the race and the player who actually pays for it.
More interactive courses and some less artificial difficulty would help Super Bikes 3 stand out more on its own merits, but it feels like it knows what it is. It wants you to see someone race past two giant yetis duking it out or just barely missing a hot air balloon after a jump, but when you’re on the bike yourself you realize those elements are either not really part of the course or you just pass through them unscathed. It is far more interesting than its generic name implies, but funnily enough it does feel like it succeeds mostly as a somewhat standard motorcycle racer. The game tries to trick you with the insane visuals to believe otherwise, but the driving ends up just being well handled peripheral-controlled racing.