Moto X Rides Again: 1994’s Lost SNES Racer Hits Switch on October 16
“A game is only late until it ships, a bad game is bad forever” – Somebody said once.
In that case, Moto X is now a ripe (over-ripe?) thirty-two years past due. It’s not just old enough to drink and get killed in battle, but it’s pretty much “hit the wall” and is finally ready to settle down…
That’s enough of the forced metaphors.
Developed by the British studio Software Creations for publisher Trimark Interactive, the dirt-bike racer was completely finished in 1994 and prepped for release on the Super Nintendo. Then the game was shelved harder than a Leonardo DiCaprio girlfriend on her 23rd birthday. This Friday, publisher Piko Interactive is finally dusting off Moto X and bringing it to the Nintendo Switch for $5.99 (digitally, derp).
Moto X was the work of Software Creations veteran Ste Ruddy (the Commodore 64 port of Bubble Bobble to his name), with assists from the Pickford brothers (Steven Joseph and John Andrew). It was actually the second attempt at the game: an earlier 1992/93 version that mixed elements of Excitebike with Sega’s arcade racer Power Drift but was canned before Ruddy rebuilt as a more focused racer.
Even after Moto X was finished, however, Ruddy himself admitted that it lacked depth when compared to other games that the SNES was putting out in 1994, with Super Mario Kart and Donkey Kong Country setting the bar as its contemporaries.
After almost three decades sitting in the vault, Piko Interactive, the preservation-minded publisher behind several similarly rescued retro titles, pressed it onto actual SNES cartridges in 2023. Now Piko has ported Moto X to the Switch, keeping the original 1994 build intact: three skill levels, five tracks plus a bonus level per level, 250cc, 550cc and 750cc bikes, obstacle-laden tracks, mid-race powerups, and a two-player split-screen multiplayer mode. It also has a heavy metal soundtrack by the late, great Geoff Follin (Silver Surfer, Equiniox), which gives Moto X a strong selling point for chiptune enthusiasts.
The $5.99 price tells you exactly what this is: a curiosity, priced like one. Nobody is pretending that Moto X is a lost masterpiece. It’s a period piece, but at just six bucks, it’s a low-threat impulse buy for interested retro fans.
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