Turborilla is a company known for biking games, particularly those from the Mad Skills series — Mad Skills BMX and Mad Skills Motocross. This game we shall be covering is from the latter series, and it’s now available for iOS and Android devices alike.
Praised by real-life motocross raisers and boasting a wide range of features and realistic in-game physics, Mad Skills Motocross 3 is the latest installment in the popular series, and it also features different PvE and PvP racing modes, hundreds of tracks, realistic sound effects, and a promise to “challenge you like no other racing game can,” because as the description also stresses, motocross is “not supposed to be easy.” You can also customize your bike and your character in various ways, and the folks from Turborilla regularly update the game with new tracks and new events.
Mad Skills Motocross 3 is not an easy game to play, although picking up the basics seems simple enough at first. But before you head off to the tracks and see how well you can do against your first set of AI opponents, we suggest that you check out our comprehensive Mad Skills Motocross 3 guide, which includes 13 tips mainly designed for beginner and intermediate players.
However, if you’re an expert player, you might also learn something new, or remember something that you might have forgotten along the way. That said, do keep on reading if you want to win more consistently and improve your best times!
1. The Basics Of Mad Skills Motocross 3
While we can consider Mad Skills Motocross 3 to be a casual game, it has much more depth than what you may think. No, it doesn’t come with real-life bikes nor does it come with real-life motocross racers, but each Career Mode race against AI opponents, starting with the tour of Germany, features your user character racing against four other riders on a fixed course — we say fixed to differentiate them from the “procedurally generated” courses where every whoop or other obstacle is random.
Each of your bikes are rated based on their power, as shown on the qualifying screen before each race, but you don’t need to worry about any qualifying times — the race starts with all five riders at the starting grid, and your opponents won’t start moving until you hit the green button on the left side of the screen. That pertains to the gas pedal on your bike, with the red button on that side allowing you to hit the brakes if needed.
On the right side, you’ll see an up arrow and a down arrow; you will use these buttons to shift the balance on the tires of your bike. Tapping on the up arrow lets you do front flips in the air, while tapping on the down arrow lets you do back flips — hitting these buttons while your bike is on the ground/on a surface simply allows you to steady it, or to perform a wheelie.
For each of these races, you will be given three tasks, or challenges, to complete, and that will serve as the basis of your reward — the more challenges you complete, the more coins and Reputation you will earn. Coins are the game’s common currency and can be used to upgrade your bike, while Reputation allows you to increase your player level. You have the option to double your reward at the end of a race by watching an ad video.
And speaking of options, these tasks are, for the most part, optional — in order to earn a reward, you will need to finish in the top three, or a podium finish in other words. Failing to finish in the top three will nullify whatever rewards you may have earned by completing the challenges, so it’s important you aim for this each time you race in Career Mode.
There’s no need to worry, however, if you fail to make the top three, as you can always replay the race until you complete all of the challenges, and you can still win coins and get more Reputation in repeated replays, as long as you’re on the podium. (There’s also a button on the right side, located above the up and down arrows, that allows you to instantly restart the race. This is very helpful in the event that you crash, which may happen quite a lot, especially during your first few hours of play!)
In addition to coins and Reputation, you can also win gold, which is the game’s premium currency, though we shall be discussing how you can win more gold a little later on in this guide. But for now, we can tell you that Career Mode will likely be the mode you will be accessing most of the time in the early goings, as this is clearly a great way to earn the various currencies in the game and increase your player level, as well as farm for all the resources we have mentioned so far.
2. Don’t Try Too Hard To Complete All Three Challenges
As we mentioned when discussing the basics of Mad Skills Motocross 3, the important thing when racing in Career Mode is having a podium finish. That means you shouldn’t try too hard to complete all of the three challenges (as seen on the left side of the race screen) in one go. As the rewards for each task are one-time rewards for the first completion, you can simply focus first on getting that top three finish, and if the challenges are too difficult, you can save them for replays, and, if you have to, complete them one at a time.
For example, performing a certain number of front flips or back flips during a race can be quite tricky, and even if you pull it off successfully, you could lose some ground against your opponents. Meanwhile, finishing a race with a certain number of seconds of time in the air is quite easy and can be completed organically.
That means you can complete the latter challenge first, then go back to the other ones when you redo the race. You can replay races at any time you wish, even once you’ve achieved completion for that race or for the entire tour, so don’t put too much pressure on yourself.
3. It Seems Every AI Racer Finishes With The Same Time
Aside from the fact that the tracks in Mad Skills Motocross 3 are not randomly generated, another thing that we noticed stays the same for each replay is the final times of each of the AI riders. This can come into play during races that include a challenge that asks you to win the race by so many seconds.
This particular challenge can be hard at times, but by taking note of the second-placer’s final time, you will have a better idea of how to go about things during the replay, and if it requires you to upgrade your bike in order to win by a bigger margin, then you should go ahead and make those tweaks, as they’re called.
And with identical times for each replay comes identical outcomes — you may notice that the other riders will go for a flip at the same place and either succeed or fail, with that outcome remaining the same across the board for each replay. Likewise, you may notice one rider or two mounting a big rally toward the end, and always at that same point in the race. By taking note of these events and tendencies, you may have an easier time adjusting your strategy the next time you give that race a try in Career Mode.
4. Master The Art Of Steadying Your Bike After A Flip Or A Wheelie
As you may have surmised after reading the first few tips, you won’t exclusively be doing straight-ahead motocross racing in this game. There will be times when you will need to flip your bike, and other times, you may be asked to do a wheelie, which is riding exclusively on the back or front tires/wheels of your motorcycle for a few seconds.
This would usually be part of a challenge, but there may be also times when doing a flip is necessary to gain enough momentum and add more speed once you land, as opposed to simply getting some airtime and hanging in the air for a few seconds, which could slow you down after your landing.
That means you should master the process of steadying your bike by hitting the up or down arrow at just the right time. This won’t be the easiest thing to do at first due to the fast pace of the races, but you should be able to figure it out and master it once you’ve played Mad Skills Motocross 3 for a while. (Steading your bike after a wheelie is especially hard, so this is something you might want to prioritize in future races!)
5. Whip It!
After completing all the qualifying races in Germany, you won’t just unlock the Canada races in Mad Skills Motocross 3 — you will also be able to whip your bike in the air, as the game will notify you once you reach this stage. Most of the time, you’ll need to whip your bike in order to complete some of the challenges, but otherwise, they do not improve your speed and do not allow you to gain additional airtime — they’re just there for additional style points (figuratively, of course, not literally), and to give you something else to do while you’re in the air.
Although it may seem simple when the game is showing you how to whip your bike, the process itself is substantially more difficult; it takes more than just swiping your finger left to right, from the gas pedal to the lean forward/lean back buttons and back. First off, you’ll need to do it slowly, and keep an eye on the biker icon on the gas pedal — you’ll know you’re doing it right if the icon moves forward while you’re swiping left to right.
That means you’ll need to perform the whip right after the jump; doing it a bit too soon or too late will result in the biker icon staying put while you perform a standard back flip. In order to make a proper landing, you will also need to whip backwards — this can simply be done by swiping right to left until you’re at a point where you can make a safe landing.
Once again, whipping your bike won’t speed it up or help you gain some ground, and if anything else, it will negatively impact your time, at least by a bit. But if you’re aiming for full completion, you’ll need to do it every now and then, and do it right!
6. Beware Of Straight And Downhill Surfaces
One thing that makes motocross so unique from other types of racing is how it can be so counterintuitive. While in most types of racing, the straights are where a driver is normally on easy street and has lots of room to overtake other drivers and build up their speed, that’s not the case in Mad Skills Motocross 3. In fact, you’ll notice that it’s the straight surfaces, mainly those that go downhill, that are deceptively tough to navigate.
Most players may actually find it easier to be airborne than it is to ride down a straight, downhill path, and that’s because you may notice your bike involuntarily doing a wheelie, even if you’re not coming off a few seconds of being airborne. This even happens at times when you’re accelerating from the starting line — your bike will automatically tilt backwards as you’re going forward, and that will Invariably result in a spill unless you’re quick enough to lean forward and reverse the momentum.
Truth be told, we’re not 100 percent sure why this is the case in the game, but since the physics is meant to be realistic, it is what it is — what may look easy at first is actually the most difficult, and you’ll need to be alert in order to avoid an unwanted crash!
7. Complete The Daily Goals
If you want to earn more coins and Reputation apart from what you get in the Career Mode races, you should complete the Daily Goals, which you can access by tapping on the “24h” button on the top part of the screen, next to the bike icon. Here, you will view the goals you have for the day, which reset each day, at 9:30 a.m. ET, and need to be completed, quite obviously, within the next 24 hours before they reset again.
These would normally be things you can accomplish by organically playing the game, though it does help to view your Daily Goals so you have an idea of what to focus on during your next race — for example, the game may ask you to beat three Qualify races in Career Mode, compete in Championship mode, or complete five back flips and/or front flips. These will reward you usually with 45 Reputation and 20 coins, and if you complete all your Daily Goals, you will get a bonus reward of 50 Rep, 25 coins, and 5 gold coins.
One important thing to keep in mind when trying to complete your Daily Goals — unless you finish the race where you’re trying to complete the goal, whatever you did during that race will not count. For instance, if you’re trying to complete the 5 back flip goal and are able to do four back flips during a race before you restart it, those back flips will NOT count! We’d say this is understandable, because if you’re able to game the system in such a way, completing the dailies wouldn’t be as challenging as it should be.
8. Earn More Gold By Completing The Achievements
We’ve told you how you can earn more coins and Reputation, but how about those Gold Coins? This is the premium currency and it can be very helpful in saving some time for part upgrades — that is, of course, unless you overuse your gold and rely too much on instant upgrades instead of waiting.
For one, you can level up with the Rep that you earn, but since that won’t give you too much currency, you can focus instead on completing the Achievements, which are similar to goals — only they’re long-term and do not have a set deadline. You can view your achievements and redeem your gold by tapping on your helmet avatar on the top of the screen, then tapping on the Achievements tab at the bottom.
What Achievements can you complete in order to earn more gold coins? These may run the gamut from completing so many back flips and front flips across multiple races (again, you’ll need to complete the races in order for the flips to count) to registering so many seconds of airtime. Easier Achievements won’t get you too many Gold — the ones we mentioned are only worth 3 Gold each.
But the more difficult or time-consuming Achievements may be worth 10 Gold or more, and that’s where the “optional” challenges won’t become that optional anymore. For example, you can get 10 Gold for the Germany Sweep Achievement — that’s completing all qualifying races in Germany and all the challenges in each of the races.
It’s not just gold coins that you can earn by completing the Achievements — you can also collect special gear sets — the Global Sweep, which means completing all the races and all the challenges in all the countries available in the game, will reward you with the Full Thor Gear Set. We’ll be explaining gear in greater detail later on in this guide, but we’d say it’s a nice little reward (considering the gear is not available by default) for 100 percent completion in Mad Skills Motocross 3.
9. Make Sure To Upgrade Your Bikes Regularly
As you complete more races and, consequently, more countries, you will unlock rarer and more powerful bikes, but for the meantime, you will need to focus on the bikes you currently have, starting with Bike 1 and Bike 2, which you will respectively be using mainly in Germany and Canada. You can equip and un-equip any of your available bikes at any time, but in between races, you’ll want to put your regular and gold coins to good use by upgrading them — you can access the bike menu by tapping on the button with two bikes on the top of the screen.
There are several parts of each bike that you can upgrade, namely Plastic, Handlebar, Engine, Exhaust, Suspension, Tires, Wheels, and ECU, and upgrading these parts will have an effect on your bike’s Total Power, Speed, Acceleration, Handling, Traction, and Weight — for example, upgrading your Engine will improve Total Power, Speed, and Acceleration, while upgrading the Bar improves Handling and Traction and decreases Weight — for each stat, higher is better, except for Weight, where you’ll want to decrease it to improve other stats such as Handling and Traction. You will be able to see the stats that will improve and by how much before you perform the upgrade.
Bike parts all start out as Common and can be upgraded to Rare, Epic, and eventually Legendary status, and you can either use your regular coins or gold coins to upgrade them. Using the former will require you to wait some time before the parts are delivered and available to equip, while using the latter instantly delivers the parts and lets you equip them immediately. You can also watch an ad video to reduce the delivery time, typically by 20 minutes, though there’s a good chance you will have more than enough gold coins at some point, allowing you to perform your fair share of instant upgrades.
Which parts should you be upgrading before the others? Eventually, you may end up upgrading all your parts, but if you should choose, we would suggest focusing on the Engine and ECU, as these usually have the same effect on Total Power, Speed, and Acceleration, as well as Suspension, which results in an increase in Speed and Acceleration but also improved Handling, and your Handlebar, which reduces Weight while also improving Acceleration and Handling.
10. Customizing Your Bike And Your Character’s Appearance Is Purely Aesthetic
Apart from upgrading your bike’s parts, you can also change its appearance by tapping on the paint bucket icon in the Bikes menu — once there, you can choose from a variety of sponsors and paint schemes and change the color of your bike’s livery, as well as its individual parts. Will this do anything to your bike’s performance? The short answer to this question would be “no.” It’s the part upgrades that affect your bike’s different stats, But if you’re merely changing the color of your engine, handlebar, or whatnot, that, naturally, won’t do anything to your Total Power, Handling, Speed, or Acceleration numbers.
This does help change things up and breaks the monotony of racing the same bike and seeing it look the same in each and every run, but other than that, don’t expect any boosts to any actual attributes. Likewise, you can also choose between a two-stroke or four-stroke engine in this section, but interestingly, that won’t do anything to your Total Power, Speed, and Acceleration, as you may think. It’s just another cosmetic change along with the new paint colors for the different parts.
On a similar note, you can tap on the rider on the top of the screen, which is where you can update your rider’s gear, meaning their helmet, gloves, jacket, pants, etc. You can also choose from a range of different sponsors and color schemes, but that won’t result in any statistical changes either.
Everything here is fully cosmetic in terms of its impact, and that also applies to the sponsors/gear sets that can only be unlocked by completing a certain country, or all the locations in the game. That means if you’re able to unlock the Thor gear set for completing all the countries, races, and challenges in Mad Skills Motocross 3, all stats will remain the same across the board.
11. Compete In The Country Championships
Once you’ve completed all the qualifying races in a given country, you will qualify for its championships, which do away with the AI-controlled riders and are essentially tournaments involving human players, each of which are handicapped in a certain way — for example, in the Germany Championship, you can only use Bike #1, and there are only two tracks in which you can compete in, with a maximum of 100 players allowed to take part in the championship.
There is also a buy-in fee for each championship tournament — for Germany, you’ll need to pay 60 coins in order to get in — as well as a top prize in both regular coins and Reputation. (Germany’s top prize is 750 coins and 425 Rep — that’s quite a lot, especially for the latter, and a great way for you to level up!)
Like the other events in the game, country-based championships are limited-time events, but unlike those others, these last only four hours long before they end. That means you only have so little time to set the best possible time in each of the two tracks and rise up the rankings in order to get the best possible prize in terms of coins and Rep. In addition to that, you will only have a maximum of three minutes to beat your previous best time in each of the tracks — you will need to pay some coins in order to get more time.
Given those limitations, the best thing to do in these country-based championships is to upgrade your bike in between runs. Of course, you can only upgrade your bike so much, and the handicaps that are in place will prevent you from switching to a better, faster bike. But that’s what makes country championships so challenging — the limited time (in more ways than one) and the fact that unlike in other events, the rules try to make things as even as possible for everyone competing.
12. What Can You Expect From Multiplayer Events Mode?
Apart from the country championships we mentioned above, there are two main types of multiplayer races you can access via the Multiplayer Events menu. The first of these is Jam Mode, which is usually a free-for-all event that lasts for about a week. Some of these events may require a specific bike to be unlocked, but should you be entering an open race that doesn’t have any bike requirement, you may be in for tougher competition if you’ve only got a handful of bikes unlocked.
The good thing about this mode is that you aren’t restricted to a certain number of minutes per track. When it says “unlimited play,” you can replay a race as often as you like until you’ve improved your time, though you will naturally have to make some upgrades and, as the game suggests, “keep calm,” if you’ve tried several times and aren’t able to improve on your best run.
The Jam races can be accessed in the Events tab under Multiplayer Events, and not all of them may be open at the same time; you may have to wait for some of them to open before you can jump in!
The second of the two multiplayer modes you can access under this menu is Duel Mode, and unlike the seven-day Jam races and the four-hour country championships, seasons in Duel Mode take place across multiple months, and you can win rewards for reaching certain trophy milestones, as seen on the bottom of the screen.
Depending on the quality of your opponent’s bike, you can earn trophies for a win, but you can also lose trophies when defeated, with the number of trophies again depending on how good your opponent’s ride is. Here, you’ll have two minutes in order to post a better time than the other rider, and unlike in country championships, you cannot buy additional time! Whatever your best time is in two minutes will stick, and you won’t get any more chances when the time is up.
As such, this can be a higher-stakes, higher-pressure mode, but if you’re patient enough, if you stay frosty despite the additional pressure, and if you take some time to regroup after a string of losses, you can easily move up from one league to another and get yourself some nice prizes for those trophy milestones/league promotions.
13. You Can Trade Gold Coins For Regular Coins At The Store
Finally, let’s discuss Mad Skills Motocross 3’s in-game store, which can actually be a good place to get yourself some goodies, particularly extra currency. We don’t normally discuss in-game stores, but if you’re low on regular coins, you can exchange your Gold for coin packages; 40 Gold is worth 1,000 coins, 1,000 Gold is worth 2,500 coins, and so on until you reach 400 Gold for 10,000 coins.
You also have the option to pay real money for Gold packages, with the cheapest costing $3 for 100 Gold and the most expensive being $50 for 2,500 Gold. Next to that, you’ll see an option to watch an ad video in exchange for 5 Gold — that really isn’t much, but if you keep watching ads on a regular basis, that could all add up over time.
In addition, you may notice the Pro Pass deal on top of the store screen, which allows you to get rid of the ads while getting an instant 400 Gold bonus, unlocking a wide range of customization options, and giving you 120 Gold per day. The Pro Pass is free for the first three days and costs $3 per week if you choose to keep it, and if you ask us, it can be worth keeping for a few weeks, if only for the free Gold you can collect on a daily basis.
There you have it! This wraps up our Mad Skills Motocross 3 guide. If you happen to know more tips or tricks for the game, feel free to drop us a line!
Rob Hodge
Thursday 3rd of March 2022
How???? How do you "backflip the triple" in the track "Feel The Burn"??