About Holeshot
Holeshot is a free 3D motocross career that you play from the side, in the browser, on desktop, tablet or phone. The camera rides beside the track at bike height, so every ramp face, gap and landing is seen in profile, and the core skill is the one real riders learn first: land with the bike matched to the slope. You are the unsigned rider on No. 27, a stock orange bike, with a mechanic called Dee in the garage. You start with a Practice Ride at Red Mesa and climb five series, from the 125 Rookie Cup to the Supercross Finals, racing five rivals across four lanes of kickers, ramps, tabletops, whoops, mud and more.
It belongs to the lane-and-ramp family of motocross games. The classic NES-era titles gave the genre its heat gauge, its lanes and its jump-and-land rhythm, and Holeshot keeps those ideas. What it adds is a twist on the heat: the turbo is the fastest way round, but it overheats the engine, and the only ways to cool it are a blue cooling strip in your lane or a trick landed in the air. Every jump becomes a choice between a safe landing and a risky trick that buys your next burst of turbo. Around that sit a bike garage, a qualifying lap that decides your starting gate, a Track Builder with shareable track codes and a new generated track every day.
The five venues each have their own light: a red desert mesa at midday, a pine forest in rain-light with dark mud, coastal dunes at sunset, a granite quarry at dawn and a night stadium under floodlights. Your bike picks up mud as a race goes on, and you can wash it in the garage.
How to Play Holeshot
Keyboard
- Ride: hold the right arrow or D for throttle. J or Space is the turbo, which also holds the throttle open.
- Lanes: the up and down arrows, or W and S, move you one lane at a time between the four lanes. You can only change lanes on the ground.
- Lean in the air: the left arrow (or A) leans the bike back, raising the nose. A fresh press of the right arrow leans it forward. Throttle held through take-off does not pitch the nose by itself, and D never leans.
- Wheelie: on the ground, the left arrow or A lifts the front wheel. You need it to skim whoops and rock steps, and to roll over a hay bale slowly.
- Tricks: in the air, hold K and pick the trick with an arrow: left for a Nac-Nac, right for a Heel Clicker. With the Trick Kit 1 upgrade, up is a Superman and down is a Can-Can. Trick Kit 2 adds the Whip: with K held, press left and then right within 0.4 seconds. Trick Kit 3 adds the Superman Seat Grab: with K held, hold up for 0.6 seconds. While K is held the arrows choose the trick and do not lean the bike.
- Pause and camera: P or Escape pauses, and R restarts the race from the pause card. C cycles the camera between near, middle and far.
- Gamepad: A or the right trigger is throttle, B or the right bumper is turbo, and X or the left bumper is trick. The left stick or the d-pad leans, changes lane and picks the trick, just like the arrow keys.
Touch screens
- The left pad leans the bike when you drag it sideways: drag left to lean back, right to lean forward. A quick flick up or down on the pad changes lane.
- TURBO and TRICK sit on the right. Hold TRICK and drag the pad in a direction to pick the trick; the Whip and Seat Grab use the same left-then-right and hold-up moves as the keys.
- Auto-throttle is on by default on a touch screen, so the bike holds the throttle for you. If you turn Assist off in Settings, a GAS button appears.
The race, step by step
- Qualify: in a league event, the first lap is a timed lap on your own. Six riders qualify, and the fastest picks a starting gate first. Gate 1 is the inside lane with the shortest line round the berms; gates 5 and 6 start a bike length back. After you have raced an event once, a Skip to the main button lines you up from your best qualifying result.
- The start: the board stands up, turns sideways, and the gate drops 0.8 to 2.2 seconds later. Open the throttle in the quarter of a second after the drop for the holeshot, a launch with extra speed. Holding the throttle through the drop jams the bike on the gate for a moment.
- Racing: three laps in most events, five for the final Cup race. Watch the heat gauge at the bottom: its last fifth is hatched red, and it pulses once the heat passes 80.
- Results: your event score, stars, purse, landed tricks and the full finishing order. Cash goes to the garage; the score goes to the career total and the leaderboard.
Features
- Heat and air: a turbo that heats the engine, cooled only by cooling strips or landed tricks.
- Landing angle: a real pitch-versus-slope landing check: clean, wobble, crash, a slingshot bonus and a cased-jump penalty.
- Career: a Practice Ride, then five series of five events: four rounds and a final under lights in each series. The last final is the five-lap Holeshot Cup.
- Rivals: a cast of riders with their own numbers and colours, including Jax Rourke, the champion on No. 1 in black and gold, who rides the Finals.
- Garage: five parts to upgrade (Engine, Radiator, Suspension, Tyres and Trick Kit), a wash for the mud, five series liveries (Mesa Red, Pinewood Green, Saltcoast Blue, Quarry Slate and Neon Violet) won on the podium of each series final, a trophy shelf that fills as you podium series finals and a wall map of the venues you have reached.
- Track Builder: sixteen piece types, up to 64 pieces after the start straight, test rides, races against the five rivals and track codes you can copy and paste.
- Daily Track: one generated track a day, the same for everyone, with its own leaderboard.
- Free Ride: ride any track you have raced alone, against the ghost of your best lap.
- Saves in your browser: your career, upgrades and best scores are kept, and Continue picks up at your next event.
Tips
- On the ground you are fastest with the throttle open and turbo only where you can afford the heat. Plain throttle never takes the gauge past just over half.
- Land on the downward face of a jump with the bike matched to it. That is a slingshot and adds speed. Landing short on an upward face or on a flat top is a cased jump and costs nearly half your speed.
- Start a trick early and let go in good time. Landing with the trick still out is a crash, however good the landing angle.
- Switch lanes before mud and sand, or buy tyres. Mud caps your speed at 60 percent of top speed on stock tyres, and sand drags you down until Tyres 2.
- Do not follow too close behind a rider in your lane on the ground. Closing on their rear wheel faster than about 7 km/h is a crash for the rider behind.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the engine heat and turbo work in Holeshot?
The gauge runs from 0 to 100. Holding the throttle warms the engine at 3.5 points a second, but only up to 55, so plain riding cannot overheat you (heat above 55 simply stays put while you keep the throttle open). The turbo (J or Space) adds 15 points a second on the stock bike and lifts your top speed by 28 percent. At 100 the engine cuts out for 2.5 seconds while the bike rolls to a stop, then it restarts with the gauge at 60. Letting off the throttle cools the engine at 8 points a second, and a Radiator upgrade makes each turbo second heat the engine about 14 percent less.
How do tricks cool the engine?
A trick only counts when you land it. Each landed trick takes 0.2 gauge points off the heat for every style point it scored, up to 50 points, so a good trick is worth a few seconds of turbo. Style grows the longer you hold K, and each extra trick in the same jump is worth 25 percent more than the one before. The Whip (Trick Kit 2) and the Superman Seat Grab (Trick Kit 3) are worth more per second than the stock tricks, and flips, available from Trick Kit 2, add 600 style each. A cooling strip in your lane resets the gauge to zero when you ride onto it. The cooling from a trick does nothing while the engine is already cut out, so land it before you overheat.
What is the landing angle and why do I crash?
When you touch down, the game compares the bike's pitch with the slope of the ground. On the stock bike, within about 14 degrees is a clean landing, up to about 29 degrees is a wobble that costs 30 percent of your speed, and beyond that you crash. Each Suspension tier widens both windows by a few degrees, and the Assist setting widens them a little more. Landing on a downward face with a clean angle is a slingshot that adds 8 percent speed. Landing short on an upward face, the flat top of a tabletop or a gap is a cased jump and costs 45 percent of your speed. Landing with a trick still out is always a crash.
What is the rear-wheel rule?
If your front wheel reaches the rear wheel of a bike ahead of you in the same lane while you are closing by more than about 2 metres a second, you crash and the rider ahead carries on. If you are closing slower than that, you just drop to their speed. Landing on top of a rider in the air also puts the rider underneath down, and two bikes side by side are pushed apart. A rival who closes on you too fast from behind can crash the same way. Change lanes before you catch someone.
What is a holeshot and how do I get one?
The holeshot is a perfect start. After the board turns sideways, the gate drops on a random beat 0.8 to 2.2 seconds later. Open the throttle within a quarter of a second after it falls and the bike launches with an extra 4 metres a second and 50 points of event score. Hold the throttle before the drop and the bike jams against the gate for 0.6 seconds. With auto-throttle on, which is the default on touch screens, the launch is handled for you.
How do qualifying and the starting gate work?
League events start with a qualifying lap on your own against the clock. The rivals' laps are ridden by their own computer riders on their own bikes, and the order sets who picks a gate first. There are six gates: four in the front row, from the inside lane to the far lane, and two a bike length back. Gate 1 takes the inside line, which is the shortest way through the berms, but lane hazards on the first pieces can make another gate better. After you have raced an event once you can skip qualifying, and your best qualifying position sets your gate.
What do the bike upgrades do?
There are five parts. Engine has four tiers and adds about 4 km/h of top speed each, from 76 to 93 km/h. Radiator has three tiers, each cutting turbo heat by about 14 percent. Suspension has four tiers and widens the clean-landing window by about 3 degrees each, from 14 degrees to about 25. Tyres has three tiers: they raise your speed cap in mud, and from Tyres 2 sand no longer drags you down. Trick Kit has three tiers: tier 1 adds Superman and Can-Can, tier 2 adds the Whip (hold Trick, press left then right within 0.4 seconds) and removes the limit on rotation so flips count, and tier 3 adds the Superman Seat Grab (hold Trick and hold up for 0.6 seconds). Every tier makes the bike spin 12 percent faster in the air. You buy parts in the garage with the cash from event purses. Finishing in the top three of a series final also wins that series' livery, which you can fit in the garage.
How does the career work, and how are events scored?
After a Practice Ride, there are five series: 125 Rookie Cup, 250 Amateur, Pro Lites, Open 450 and Supercross Finals. Each has four rounds and a final at night. A top-3 finish in a series final unlocks the next series; a podium in the last race, the five-lap Holeshot Cup, completes the career, and a win makes you the champion. Each event scores up to 1,000: points for your finishing position (600 for a win, down to 130 for sixth), up to 250 for style, 100 for a race with no crash or overheat and 50 for the holeshot. A win with 700 or more earns three stars, a win below that two, and second or third one. A re-race pays half the purse.
How do the Track Builder and track codes work?
The Track Builder is on the title screen. You lay a track out after the 30 metre start straight, from 7 to 64 pieces and 1 to 5 laps, in any venue you have reached. The 16 pieces unlock with the career: Flat, Kicker, Ramp, Tabletop, Cooling strip and Berm sweeper from the start, Hay bales, Mud and Whoops with the 250 Amateur, Sand pit and Double with Pro Lites, Step-up, Triple and Rock steps with Open 450, and Rhythm and Big gap with the Finals. Hazards sit on lanes you choose. You can Test Ride from any piece, Race It against the five rivals, keep up to 16 saved tracks and undo 50 steps. Copy Code gives a text code starting HS1-, and Paste Code loads someone else's. A code with a typo is refused rather than half-loaded. Custom tracks pay no purse and never change your career.
What is the Daily Track?
Each day the game generates one track from the date, so everyone gets the same lap: 30 to 42 pieces, three laps and five rivals. The venue turns with the day of the week, and the track changes at midnight UTC. You can retry as often as you like. Your best score of the day, out of 1,000, goes on the Daily leaderboard, and there is no purse.
Does Holeshot save my progress?
Yes. Your series and event, cash, upgrades, scores, stars, best laps and settings are stored in your browser, written at every results screen, every purchase, every settings change and when you leave the page. Continue on the title screen returns you to your next event. A race in progress is never saved, so leaving mid-race starts that event again. New career replaces the career save but keeps your settings and custom tracks. Clearing your browser's site data erases the save.
Does Holeshot work on phones and tablets?
Yes, with a touch layout: a lean pad on the left and TURBO and TRICK buttons on the right, with auto-throttle on by default. The camera pulls back in portrait so the bike stays in view. Graphics quality is Auto, Low, Medium or High in Settings and takes effect the next time the game loads. Holeshot needs JavaScript and WebGL, and it will say so if WebGL is not available.
