Rally Bike

Met with mixed reception from video game magazines and dedicated outlets that reviewed the game when it launched in arcades and its ports.

• Title — Rally Bike • Developer — Toaplan Visco Corporation (NES) SPS (X68000) • Publisher — Taito NES Sharp Corporation (X68000) • Composer — Osamu Ōta • Platforms — Arcade, Nintendo Entertainment System, X68000 • Released — Arcade NES X68000 • Genre — Racing • Modes — Single-player, multiplayer

• Illustration — Arcade screenshot Rally Bike is a top-down motorcycle road racing game where players observe from above and races across six increasingly difficult stages, along with two bonus stages, all taking place in the United States, with the main objective of crossing the finish line and passing an established number of competitors. Along the way, players must also dodge incoming obstacles scattered on the stages to avoid any accident, which causes a great reduction of fuel. Fuel is a major obstacle of the game as well, as players must refuel their bike by stopping at the filling station, but this will also cause competitors to take advantage, as they never run out of fuel and running out of it results in a game over unless more credits are inserted into the arcade machine to continue playing. On occasions, a helicopter will come and drop an item to the road during races, ranging from turbo (which can be increased a second time by picking up the turbo item again) to helper bikers that guards the players from crashing against rival racers. In the NES version, a shop mechanic where players can buy new parts to improve their vehicle is introduced after completing each race. The title uses a checkpoint system in which a single player will respawn at the beginning of the checkpoint they managed to reach before crashing.

Rally Bike was released in arcades worldwide in May 1988 by Taito. The soundtrack was composed by Osamu Ōta under the alias "Ree". In June 1989, an album containing music from Rally Bike and other Toaplan games was published exclusively in Japan by Datam Polystar.

A Nintendo Entertainment System port of Rally Bike developed by Visco Corporation was first released in Japan on June 15, 1990 and later in North America by Romstar on September of the same year. The NES version does not keep the same stages and backgrounds, likely due to hardware limitations. The title later received a faithful conversion to the Sharp X68000 by SPS and only published in Japan by Sharp Corporation on May 23, 1991, although it contains several minor differences when compared to the original version such as the modified aspect ratio, missing animations, among other changes. A Mega Drive conversion was in development alongside Slap Fight MD by M.N.M Software, but was never released.