What happens when you take modern motorcycle racing and throw it into the future? According to Probe Studios, you get Extreme-G, a supersonic race to the finish on heavily armed rocket-powered hyperbikes.
The races are blindingly fast and put a lot of focus on weapons, which range from the bikes' built-in energy weapons that get recharged each lap, to the pick-ups that include missiles, mortars and a massive shockwave emitter. And some more odd things too.
The game has all the usual racing game modes, plus a couple of weapon focused ones: the single player Shoot 'Em Up mode where players destroy moving targets over 3 laps of a track, and a multiplayer Battle mode where there's no track, just an enclosed arena and a lot of weapons.
And on top of all that, a pumping electronic soundtrack.
The second game was rereleased on Steam on May 2, 2017. The first game is playable on Nintendo Switch Online's Expansion Pack service.
Extreme-G provides examples of the following tropes:
- After the End: The implied setting of the first and second games.
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: The Enemy Chatter in XGRA will often start smug and dismissive of you, but if you press the attack or otherwise shoot someone who's heavily damaged, then they will become much more panicked and often beg you to stop.
- All There in the Manual: Guides and the
developers suggest all the humans went into space, got bored, and created Extreme-G as a motorsport. This possibly went away by Extreme-G 3. - Announcer Chatter: The Continuity Reboot XGRA had two announcers that would make quick taunts and quips to each other while describing the upcoming race. Also, while racing your coach/pit chief will either praise you, encourage you, or berate you based on what position you are in when completing a lap.
- Artificial Brilliance: In XGRA destroying a rider won't take them out right away. Instead their bike will burst into flames and keep going for a few seconds. If the reacer is still in front of you they will try to make sure that you crash into their burning wreckage to cause major damage.
- Artificial Stupidity:
- In XGRA there is a glitch during race replays that causes your racer to repeatedly slam and grind against the walls of the track until it destroys itself, regardless of whether or not you even won the race.
- This same glitch can also be found in Extreme-G 3 (at least in the gamecube version) on Megalopis-7. If you're on the left side of the road after the ramp shortcut, you're at risk of having it happen to you just before the long climb to the finish.
- Awesome, but Impractical: In Extreme-G 3 during season mode it is possible to upgrade the engine of your bike so much that you can easily outrace the competition and just outright plow through the sound barrier mere seconds after crossing the starting line, but crashing or colliding with racers or walls is either severely damaging or will instantly kill you.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: A weird in-universe example in Extreme-G 3. Advancement in the career mode isn't won with championship points or races won, it's earned with how much in winnings you can earn from race to race. Don't the organizers sound just so interested in the prestige of one of the world's fastest motorsports?
- Deflector Shields:
- Take damage from weapons, can be recharged with a special pickup in the first game or a designated repair/recharge area in the second and third games. In the fourth game you must pick up enough powerups to be able to select a full shield restore, but you can also rely on automatic recharge.
- In the first game, outside of Battle mode you can't be destroyed. Instead, if your shield is damaged, you slow down more when you're hit by weapons. Which damages your shield more. The lower your shields, the more you will be slowed down.
- Expy: Some of the bikes resemble the bikes of AKIRA.
- Enemy Chatter: In XGRA attacking or being attacked by an opposing racer will have them taunt you in some way. It changes based on their/your current status (Near-death, just started, etc.) and how long the attacks have gone. Some riders may even hold a grudge the whole race until it ends or one of you is destroyed.
- Energy Weapon: The bikes in the first game all have one of three types of these built in that can be used until it runs out of power, which gets recharged every lap. There's a laser, and two different types of Ray Gun, "Pulse" and "Excel". In Extreme-G 2, they all share the same chargeable blast that, at higher levels, can bounce off walls and automatically aim toward enemies.
- Fictional Sport
- Interface Screw: In Extreme-G 3, getting hit by an EMP blast won't cause you any damage, but it will cause your bike to spasmodically switch weapons for a short period of time.
- Kill Sat: The "Deathstrike" power up in XGRA locks onto a single target, and nets an instant kill.
- Life Drain: The Leech weapon in Extreme-G 3 allows you to steal shield energy from the first opponent it makes contact with.
- Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The Nintendo 64 version of Extreme-G has a "Special Edition" in Germany that came with a music CD.
- Macross Missile Massacre:
- In the first game, you have packs of up to five dumb-fire rockets or homing missiles which can all be released as fast as you can tap the weapon-fire button, and you also have four-pack multi-missiles (dumb-fire), which fire four missiles at once.
- The second game no longer features the dumb rockets from the first game, but increases the biggest multi-missile pack to six missiles in one shot. As for the homing missiles, you usually only need four to destroy another bike.
- Extreme-G 3 tried to keep to this with their spin on dumbfire rockets, unless one counts two rockets at a time as a salvo.
- In XGRA the rocket main weapon has this function for its 2nd and 3rd upgrade levels. The 2nd level unloads a small salvo of dumb-fire rockets, while the 3rd level unleashes a barrage of homing-missiles.
- More Dakka:
- The "railgun" you can pick up in Extreme-G 2 has the fastest firing rate of any weapon in the game and automatically targets a nearby enemy. Almost makes up for it not being an actual railgun.
- In Extreme-G 3, every bike is armed with a machine gun by default, and one of the purchasable weapons is a rear-turret.
- In XGRA, the vulcan cannons and particle cannons start off with fairly high firing rate, but each kill you get upgrades the weapon, which increases both damage and, of course, fire rate. Finally, combine this with the Double Hit/Weapon Overclock powerup to double the firing rate on top of this.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: All bikes have a threatening-ish nickname, though many of them verge on cheesy.
- Product Placement: XG2 and 3 have Storm keeping track of the time. For reference, this is a watch company based in Britain.
- Sdrawkcab Name: The name of the mirror tracks in Extreme-G 2 are written this way.
- Simple, yet Awesome: Extreme-G 3 can be won one of two ways: invest in weapons and blast your way to the front, risking destruction, or if you can't get the hang of tracking targets at those kinds of high speeds, just buy the boosters and engine upgrades early and do last-minute sprints to the finish line.
- Stuff Blowing Up: A lot of the pickup weapons are missiles, and those that aren't often explode in some way anyway. Epitomized with the Overlord secondary weapon in XGRA. In short: A mortar-launched mini-nuke.
- Wacky Racing: Futuristic RC bikes blowing each other up in a bunch of ruins. The sequels make them manned and rocket-propelled.
- Weaponized Exhaust: The Flame Exhaust, which gives a speed boost while also burning anyone behind the racer using it.
