'Excitebots' Impressions - First Racing Game With Robot Frog Pie-Throwing?

I just played the new Wii game "Excitebots: Trick Racing" for 10 minutes. It's one of Nintendo's oddest games yet. Impressions below:

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Nintendo's April Wii game "Excitebots" is so bizarre that I'm tempted to let some video I captured of it speak for itself. But in lieu of having that clip ready for you yet, let me try to explain the madness:

"Excitebots" is a sequel to Wii launch game "ExciteTruck," improving the graphics of that original but retaining the arcade racing formula. Players race around outdoor tracks trying to get the most extraordinary run possible. They attain this by driving through rows of trees, mashing their turbo boost, performing extreme jumps, activating power-ups that deform the terrain of the race track, and so forth.

How "Excitebots" differs from its predecessor is in the nature of what you are racing.

Gone are the monster trucks. They are replaced with robot frogs, beetles, grasshoppers and other mechanical creatures you can choose to control. As they approach the starting line, these robots transform, from walking robots to vehicles, and the race begins.

The player manages little of the transformation these robots are capable of. Instead, they control steering and acceleration, racing in a normal, though in this game -- though "normal" involves driving through "Mario Kart"-style pick-ups that put a pie or a dart or a baseball bat in a robot vehicle's grappling arm, the better wit which to smack a clown or some other suddenly-appearing target. Successful slapstick actions like these earn the player stars. The player with the most stars -- even if they don't finish the race first -- wins.

There are momentum-shifting mini-game moments. Sometimes your racing robot is forced to stop mid-race and swing around a pole for added momentum (you have to swing the controller at this point). Sometimes a power-up on the screen transforms your robot back to an invincible biped, forcing you to run him ahead on the track. "Excitebots" presents racing at the most absurd level I've seen in games.

The game supports two competitors for local multiplayer and up to six over the Internet.

Here's a key section from the game's newly-released fact sheet:

Special powers/weapons/moves/features: Just as in Excite Truck, drivers can hit blocks
that morph the terrain before their eyes and create ramps from which players can launch
mega-jumps. Players can aim for and swing around boost bars or open presents that
unleash a variety of wild items, such as bottle rocket boosts or clacker mouths that chomp
on other racers to slow them down. Players also can activate in-race mini-games
including:
• Soccer: Drive into the soccer ball and attempt to hit it into the goal.
• Bowling: Drive through the pins and attempt to get a strike.
• Darts: Line up your bot and let the dart fly. Try to hit bull’s-eye in the distance.
• Clowns: Hit the clown in the face with a pie by throwing it at just the right angle
and speed.
• Sandwiches: Drive through the ingredients in the proper order to make a delicious
sandwich.

Do you know of any other game that features high-speed robotic racers combined with
bowling, poker, clown faces and sandwich making? Didn’t think so.

Nintendo had people try the game today using the Wii Wheel as the controller. It can be played just with the Wii Remote as well. The game had me laughing throughout my 10 minutes playing it. I don't know if the comedy power-ups will get old, but the return of the solid "ExciteTruck" racing formula bodes well for this game. It ships in the U.S. on April 20, published by Nintendo and developed by Monster Games.