Gaming Hacks

Drive a Physics-Crazed Motorcycle

Ah, Elasto Mania; bouncing around on shareware motorbikes was never such fun.

It’s fortunate that, in writing this book, I’m allowed a tiny bit of self-indulgence to point to some of my very favorite things to grab for free, exploit, and hack. Let’s face it, what normal book includes an entire hack about a crazed two-wheeled shareware game with super-addictive gameplay, a laughably cheap upgrade price to unlock the full package, and an insanely dedicated community? That describes the infamous 2D time-based motorcycle game Action Supercross, created by Balazs Rozsa, and its better-looking pseudo-sequel, Elasto Mania. The latter is so good, it deserves a hack of its own just as much as DOOM or Unreal does.

Introducing the New Bike Ballet Flava

The description for the Windows game Elasto Mania can easily apply to its less pretty DOS predecessor, Action Supercross. It’s “[a] motorbike simulation game based on a real physical model.” Could it be that simple?

The basic gameplay of Elasto Mania is as simple as it is bizarre. Drive your rear-wheel-drive, slow, bouncy-physics motorbike around a crudely drawn level, collecting apples by touching them with the front or back wheels of your bike and touching a flower to complete the level. The object of the game is to complete each level in the fastest time possible by accelerating, braking, and rotating your motorcycle to hop, skip, and jump around sometimes puzzling courses. You lose the level if your rider’s ...