Summary
The first motocross simulation to take the sport seriously.
The Good
Despite being flightly and humorous, Motocross is a very serious motocross simulation. You can
totally trick out your bike! Modify the fork angle for handling; modify the shocks for handling and traction; adjust tire pressure for friction and to avoid blowouts; adjust engine characteristics from torque-y to pipe-y; you can even modify your gear ratio to match up with your engine for specific purposes (speed, quick acceleration, etc.).
I used to do poorly at the game until I started messing with the bike, and then the game got really fun. You race each track in a tourney twice, which is good because you can use the break before the second round to tweak your bike so that you can take the track better. (If you're patient, you can both preview and practice each track beforehand.)
Hardware support is extremely good; except for a minor speed issue, the game runs on modern PCs even with an analog joystick. It's a bit fast, but still very playable (and is probably the speed they intended the game to run at anyway if it were possible back then).
The best realism factor in the game is "squaring off" -- the technique of leaning hard, putting your foot out for balance, and "powersliding" to take a hard turn. Motocross remains the only motocross simulation I've played (and I've played about 5 or 6) that leaves this capability in the hands of the player; to square off, you quickly flick the joystick back, then forward again. All other sims do this for you automatically, whether or not you want to. You don't always want to, since squaring off is a speed penalty.
Heck, the bike will even stall on you if your revs get below a certain level when you're in a high gear. And you
must switch gears manually; no "auto" in this game.
But the best part is, even with all of these sim options, the game is still
fun to play.
The Bad
The sound support is a bit lacking; there's no music during gameplay (not that you need it, though), but more nagging is that the sound effects are always through the PC speaker even if you have a Tandy/PCjr sound chip (which
is used for all in-game music.
The clipping of bike to track is inconsistent sometimes; you'll occaisionally find yourself totally clearing a mogil on landing, yet you crash the bike.
A track editor would have been nice, but is omitted. (I was about to write that "that's okay because no other racing games in that era had one", but then I caught myself and remembered that both
Stunts and
Stunt Driver had one, and they came out just a year later.)
The Bottom Line
Despite the number of true-to-life simuation options Motocross has, it is still very fun for even casual racing fans and arcade gamers. For an eleven-year-old game, it is still as enjoyable as the day I bought it.
