It was only my sense of duty as a game journalist that led me to slip Excitebots: Trick Racing, Nintendo's latest first-party release, into my Wii last night. I had little personal desire to play what looked to be a kart-racing game that had robots shaped like animals and insects transforming into cars capable of throwing darts, playing poker, and spinning around bars in a silly sort of vehicular gymnastics. How could such a ridiculous premise possibly bear the fruit of good gaming?

But it does.

It took mere minutes for me to be won over by Excitebots' bizarre melding of off-road racing and sports and games such as soccer and bowling. It turns out there's something about launching a robot car off a huge hill, having it grasp a bar and rotate round to pick up speed, then letting go and gliding through the air, capturing butterflies in mid-flight and depositing them in goliath-sized flowers that's just plain fun. I played for three hours straight. 

Trying to make sense of the why and how of Excitebots is about as difficult as attempting to explain what it is that makes it so compelling. It is what it is, and it just happens to be really fun. Still, I'll have a go.

I think the key is that Nintendo's developers understand the chemistry of games in a way few other designers do. They seem to somehow inherently know that the reaction consequent in mixing element A (in this case, a cartoon-like racing game) with just the right amount of seemingly contrasting elements B (Transformer-ish robots) and C (pastimes like poker and baseball) will be wonderfully entertaining.

It helps, too, that Nintendo programmers clearly have the best understanding of how to implement the Wii's motion-sensitive controls. Using the Wii remote as a steering wheel in Excitebots is terrifically intuitive. The same cannot be said for most other Wii racing games I've tried (the only exception I can think of is Mario Kart Wii—another Nintendo-made gem).

That Nintendo's studios have the time and budget required to toss in plenty of habit-forming extras, such as seamless online play, the ability to create and share your own challenges with friends, and scads of unlockables, doesn't hurt.

The flood of half-cocked games made by companies scrambling to cash in on the Wii's massive install-base that I've tested over the last couple of years have put me on the verge of writing off Nintendo's standard-def, motion-sensitive gaming experiment as a failure. Then comes an unexpected and wonderfully fun first-party release like Excitebots: Trick Racing, and suddenly I find myself enchanted with Nintendo's svelte white console all over again. I'm not sure what Shigeru Myamoto and company are serving their underlings in the company cafeteria, but I think they ought to start dishing it out for their third-party developers. 

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I need a PAL release of this game now