I’ve come to the conclusion that Excite Truck is one part F-Zero GX, two parts Super Off Road, one part Project Gotham Racing and a dash of Pilotwings, all mixed together in a big pot with liberal application of the Photoshop motion blur and lens flare tools.
Today, I finished all the Silver races, will at least B ranks in everything (actually, I got one S rank too), and then attempted the Gold races. And passed all them too (with another S rank!).
Platinum, though. Well. That doesn’t seem to be quite so easy. At all.