F-Zero

I have some issues with this but overall it's a fun game. The core driving mechanics are actually pretty neat and I especially like how the drifting is handled, the fact that you have boosts on hand as you complete each lap of a stage, and that you have a health bar so you don't want to run into walls all the time. All this makes the overall driving very fast but also somewhat deep as you consider what the best approach is for quickly overtaking the other racers. Another great positive this game has is the overall aesthetic and track selection. It's fun to watch one of the earliest Mode 7 implementations work so well and damn is the game super pretty to look at too. I also really like a lot of the track design in this game too, ranging from very smooth simple roads like all the Mute City tracks, to more intermediate/tricky ones like both White Lands and Sand Ocean, to outright brutal ones like Death Wind II and Fire Field. It's not perfect since I don't enjoy playing on Silence and its 90 degree turns at all but there aren't a lot of misses and combining all this with the visuals and banging hectic soundtrack makes the overall experience fun.

That being said though there are quite a few problems I have with this game. First, the game is pretty thin on content, with the only other thing other than the main mode being a time trial thing where you don't even have access to all the tracks in the game. I would have loved to practice on Fire Field but nope apparently that is not a thing and that is really disappointing. Another more major issue is how the CPU gameplay is handled. It's probably some of the lazier rubberbanding I've seen. If you end up making an error and slowing down at any point while you're even, by perception, vastly ahead of the other racers then suddenly that racer is right behind you and has a chance to catch up. And you have to deal with that while also dealing with all the slow and sometimes "about to explode" ships on laps 2 onward that I'm convinced only exist to make the game less fun because it's very easy to hit them and lose health in the process.

Overall, neat game and it's worth checking out. I just wish it had more content, including an improved time trial mode, and there was a way to make the CPUs less aggravating to deal with.

F-Zero was one of Nintendo's first attempts to dive into the racing genre for international audiences. They had seen some success in Japan with the Famicom-exclusive game Famicom Grand Prix F1 Race, but when pitching the idea of shipping the game's sequel internationally, it was shot down on the grounds that the racing concept lacked a cool edge to it. It wasn't until a trip out to America where the insiration for F-Zero began to dawn upon its development team – in an interview with director of F-Zero Kazunobu Shimizu and main programmer Yasunari Nishida, Tim Burton's 1989 film Batman was "all the rage" in the states at the time he visited, and took notice of the costumes characters in the movie dawned, as well as flashy vehicles, like the Batmobile. In Shimizu's mind, this gritty near-future aesthetic would be the perfect fit for the racing game – and he was right. Shimizu headed back to Japan (not before buying a stack of Batman comics) to begin working on his idea.

Back in Japan, the development of games had begun for Nintendo's next console, the Super Famicom. Nintendo had asked main programmer of F-Zero, Yasunari Nishida, to practice development for the console's Mode 7. Before mode 7 racing games were either presented top-down, isometric, or "treadmill" style (Rad Racer on NES or Outrun on Genesis, Pole Position). Mode 7 allowed for one massive sprite to be manipulated, and tilted around the game. This is how F-Zero works - the tracks are a huge 2D sprite tilted down to give off the illusion of it being in 3D. In the interview with Shimizu and Nishida, the team explained the original concept for F-Zero had "oversized tires like hot wheels," but that idea had to be scrapped as the wheels would've had to be drawn at every angle and position - considering that would've had to be done for every car, it would've been a development nightmare. On top of that, Mode 7 could tilt an image down, but it would've been tricky to program roadside items, like trees or stands with crowds of people found in typical racing games. This is where F-Zero's futuristic theming came in - if the game was set in the future, they could allow the cars to fly, and therefore prevent a massive headache. To combat the issue of the roadside imagery, the courses would be set in the sky where you could only see imagery like buildings and roads from a far distance. Within a 15 month development span from a 9-person team, F-Zero would join the ranks of Super Mario World and be released in November 1990 in Japan as a launch title for the Super Famicom.

With Batman directly inspiring the creative direction of F-Zero, it should be no surprise that the story for the game was told with a comic book that came bundled with the game. In the comic, aptly titled The Story of Captain Falcon, which gives the player some much-needed context as to who these racers are as well as some background information on the planets you'll be racing on in-game. After reading the comic, you'll learn that in the year 2560, Earth coexists alongside alien races and planets. Advanced technology and trade has made many people rich, but people still desire entertainment. F-Zero came from multibillionaires wanting to see people race at hundreds of km an hour. The 9 planets of the universe are the hosts of 3 leagues and 15 courses. We soon see the protagonist of the game, Captain Falcon, on Mute City (short for Mutant City) killing an alien for a bounty. He's soon confronted by his rival bounty hunter, Samurai Goroh, before escaping. We're cut to the beginning of the Knight League Grand Prix on Mute City where we meet Dr. Stuart and Pico, the other two adversaries to Captain Falcon. The comic ends with a "to be continued" which leads directly into the game, which is a nice touch.

Starting off with my favorite moments of F-Zero, the presentation here it top notch. I love how everything blends - the 4 color buttons on the Famicom represent the 4 drivers (and the colors of their vehicles. Each character has been given a brief backstory and fully illustrated model thanks to the comic. When you load this game into BSNES-HD, the colors pop while also maintain that gritty futuristic vibe the game is going for. The comic also sheds light on the F-Zero world through its characters - we get to see an example of one of the elites with Dr. Robert Stuart of the Golden Fox, and the Wild Goose's Pico, an alien hailing from the planet Death Wind. The game's intensity also makes it stand out from other racers at the time, and even make it hold its own against modern racers; F-Zero is at its best when you're speeding through courses and narrowly zooming past other vehicles and obstacles. As the stages get trickier and the CPU get faster, F-Zero has that old-school difficulty, and it feels great to best those dickhead AI racers that are definitely cheating. For a game with static courses you barrel through at 30 seconds a lap, the game has a surprising amount of strategy to it: at the beginning of the race, you can either choose to not accelerate, accelerate towards the end and get a little boost, or accelerate the whole time, get a big boost, and then stall out for a second. I learned through experimenting that you can get the full boost, stall out, hit an opponent behind you, and get that full speed again. Super jets are given once a lap and you can choose when to boost - I'd usually wait until the starting/finish marker to use them as every course has a long line for this marker with little to no obstacles. The development team intentionally programed some game mechanics to be used strategically - there was originally going to be invisible walls so you couldn't make shortcuts by jumping off jump pads. The rocket jump was intended to be a penalty (like a false start) before being switched to the "boost with a stall" that it became. Finally, the music in this game is just amazing. It's incredible how nearly any long-time Nintendo fan would know the tune to Mute City or Big Blue despite a new entry for the series not being released in 20 years. The melody and driving bass is intense and keeps you going.

Now for my least favorite moments, starting with the cars: The slipperiness of every car except the Fire Stingray is just not fun to race with in harder difficulties and stages. I've heard the racing in this game often compared to bumper cars and pinball for how some cars slide on turns, and for how far away you'll bounce when getting hit by a car or a wall. This aspect of the game is what kept me away from the series for so long, but when I raced as the Fire Stingray this time around I was finally enjoying the racing. The Golden Fox is quick out the gate but feels slippery to control and has a terrible max speed of 438 km/h (for reference, the Fire Stingray gets up to 478 km/h at its max. It's best to play offensive with this one, bumping into people and slowing them down so you can take the lead. That being said, it’s pretty tough to shoot past anyone if you don’t have a boost or some kind of combat on the road. This is like the Super Smash Bros. Little Mac of cars - a bunch of stats cranked to the max like quick recharge and acceleration, but having heavy disadvantages to compensate. The Blue Falcon, perhaps the most iconic car in the series, is the all-arounder vehicle. It has a pretty average acceleration, top speed, control, health, etc. Compared to other vehicles, playing Blue Falcon can feel like an upgrade in some areas (the Fire Stingray’s poor acceleration), but in my opinion, you’re missing out on the extra flavor that the other three vehicles provide in their own way. The Falcon feels the best on windy stages because it’s such a sturdy ship - the wind has a negligible effect on it. On a track like Port Town II with its twists and turns, this car is just slippery and slow enough to make driving it a nightmare on higher difficulties. I'd catigorize the Wild Goose as an extension of the Blue Falcon where all of the stats feel samey, but I've read otherwise that this is the ship to pick for the harder leagues on harder difficulties. It controls well and has some nice speed, but it can't drift to save its life, which is a nonstarter in my book. Finally, we've got the Fire Stingray, which was my personal favorite. The control is buttery smooth, but it's horrible at accelerating. This makes it easily the best pick for the Knight League as the courses in that league have easy turns for the most part, but on higher difficulties and leagues it's nearly impossible to win with it if you make a mistake. That gets into my next gripe with the game – the AI racers at higher difficulties are just unfair. By the time I got to the expert level, I had to go with what I knew best with the Fire Stingray. If I were to pick this up again in the future (or play F-Zero 99), I’d practice those other 3 karts at the lower levels until I got the hang of them. I’m sure they have their own rhythm and advantages like the Stingray, but with their poor control I felt so unmotivated to try them out. I will say, beating expert and master cups is extremely rewarding, which is the silver lining with all of the bullshit you'll have to deal with in these races.

All of that being said, my enjoyment for this game almost entirely depends on what racer I get to play with. Maybe I just didn't practice with the other characters enough at lower levels, but by the time I wanted to experiment with my playstyle at the higher levels, I couldn't stand any vehicle other than the Fire Stingray. The problem with that was the Fire Stingray only plays well on courses with open turns (Knight League), so I would've either had to make pixel perfect turns or switched my racer if I wanted to play through Queen and King leagues on Expert and Master mode - neither option sounded enjoyable to me. Videogamedunkey has a great video detailing this exact problem in Halo - it was possible for him to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, but he had to resort to guns like the plasma pistol that he didn't enjoy using. I feel like F-Zero suffers from the exact same kind of problem, and so I didn't bother to finish Queen or King on Expert or Master, and just played through with the Stingray on Master so I could see that final cutscene. I feel like making the player decide not to even complete the game displays a massive oversight on the development team's end, and although the ramped-up AI difficulty probably kept the game fresher for longer for people that owned a SNES at the time, it is singlehandedly the aspect of the game that aged the poorest.

I really enjoyed F-Zero's unique approach to placing: I'm so used to needing to get first in every track and every cup to get the highest accolades (this is how Mario Kart entries have been set up), but F-Zero is more of a survival racer, which fits in perfectly with its story. Each lap requires you to be in a certain place to continue racing - if you aren't in the top 3 by the time you finish the race, you can't continue to the next course. This means in the higher difficulties, you can focus on striving for the bronze rather than winning races. The only progress the game recognizes is your time on each course, which helps keep its arcadey feel (keep playing to better your times, and boost your bragging rights). Furthering the arcade racer vibe, you are awarded points for every lap based on your current place. For each 10,000 points you get, you earn an extra life (these are really important considering you can lose life off a bad ramp landing or missing the lap's minimum place). I also love this pixel art 2D/3D hybrid for a racer. This is hands-down the best 2D racer I've played due to Mode 7, and it's so cool to see how they've revitalized this game and art style with F-Zero 99.

All and all, F-Zero laid the groundwork for future racers, and is an important title that was worthy of the facelift it got from F-Zero 99. I loved the presentation of this game (comic book and all) as well as racing with the Fire Stingray, but the lack of modes and that brutal AI doesn't have me itching to come back to the original. I played through F-Zero in its entirety for the first time shortly after F-Zero 99 was announced. While not a requirement to do well at the battle royale, I thought it would be fun to play through the few games in the franchise before giving the brand new one a shot. F-Zero 99 takes the best parts of this game and removes the crappy AI, adds an incentive to race for first place, widens the tracks, and updates the boosting and spinning mechanics we'd see in later titles. There's little to no reason to come back to this title now that we have F-Zero 99, but there's a novelty to seeing the roots of this series.

Score: B (3.0)

I don’t even need to put this one into its historical context to be impressed by it – the sense of velocity and speed is shockingly effective on the original F-Zero. Unlike most other 2D racing games, it doesn’t feel like a static moving image. it feels like exactly what it tries to convey – a disastrously fast futuristic racing vehicle. Emphasis on dangerous, because this game is HARD and isn’t afraid to throw breakneck turns and aggressive AI at you to cause a crash and have you forfeit a race. Cool stage concepts add to the thrill, but sadly it’s a short-lived one. I get the feeling this was rushed out for launch and as a result contains only 3 cups that take less than 30 minutes to complete each. F-Zero nails its game feel for the hardware it’s on, but ultimately feels like a tech demo with not much content.

After the absolute travesty that was Super Mario Kart, I got a few people from a couple of different places mentioning F Zero, another SNES racing game that used mode 7 scaling to give the effect of being placed in a 3D environment. After hearing those comparisons I was admittedly a bit tentative to check this game out, but I'm glad I did, because this is really cool and suffers from very few of the criticisms I could place on Super Mario Kart. F-Zero really feels like an arcade racer done right, with the incredibly high speeds lending themselves to a lightning fast pace, and the core gameplay loop and game feel only adding to the adrenaline rush. Along with this, the game demands a high degree of adaptability and intricate knowledge for each of the 15 tracks here, feeling as if it heightens both the skill floor and ceiling tremendously, encouraging some pretty rigorous practice in an attempt to improve your skill and track times by any amount you can, feeling rewarding every step of the way.

One of my favourite things about this is the way that the game feels endlessly nuanced in ways that largely don't matter unless you're actively trying to perform at your absolute peak. Each of the 4 cars you pick between feel significantly different from one another but all feel great to play in their own ways, often coming down to personal preference about which one works best for you. While there's only one car that any speedrunner would dream of using due to its extremely high speed and handling, it definitely doesn't feel quite so cut and dry due to the high risk high reward nature of it. New players who pick it will find themselves losing with this one more often because of the car's strengths being balanced out by being extremely punishing for every minor mistake you make, for example.

Each car essentially feels as if it fills its own niche that only really gets broken once you're at the point where you're already incredible at it and just want to improve yourself, and I love this, the game manages to set up this dichotomy in how a player is expected to approach things depending on if they're casually playing things or gunning for their best, with the decision making dropping off a bit as you get better, replacing it with a game that feels infinitely harder due to the player essentially expending all of their safety nets in pursuit of those extra couple of seconds. While you could say that a similar dynamic could be applied to a lot of games, I don't really recall one making me consider this to quite the same degree as I did while zooming down these tracks at absolutely ludicrous speeds. This feels especially true with the boost you get at the end of each lap, where there are so many potential applications for them and it really depends on your current position that determines where you end up using them, as while you could always save it for the optimal point in the track, you could also decide to wait for a slightly safer point or even save it in case you make a mistake and want to get back up to top speed as quickly as possible. The utilisation of such tools becomes something that completely encompasses the experience and it makes it even more insane when it's happening while the player is driving at such high speeds.

While the core gameplay feels superb most of the time, controlling with just the right amount of weight and being a constantly exhilarating experience, the game isn't really perfect either, mostly thanks to how strangely cruel it is in certain aspects. A lot of the later tracks seem to have these one or two moments that feel specifically designed to trip you up every time without fail, where your speed management and turning has to be absolutely perfect for you to not get thrown around or lost the majority of your momentum. While I'm all for the game challenging you to do that bit better and master its mechanics and level design, I do feel like it's a bit much to be so harshly punishing for not being absolutely perfect, as that sort of stuff feels like it should more be something you do to improve at the game rather than requiring it to not completely fail. That infamous jump in White Land II is a particularly brutal example, where if you aren't fast enough, you don't only bump into a couple of obstacles and need to build up speed again, but you straight up die and need to start the race again entirely, even if you're on the final lap.

I also feel like the physics when you bump into another driver are really, really janky, often sending you in seemingly random directions and very easily derailing your entire race, which is particularly nasty given how many cars are on the track most of the time. Overall I think that F-Zero is a pretty sick game though, it feels great to play, and even though I'm awful at it, I still felt that drive to try and improve myself, the game just feels so cleanly built to always make the player simultaneously love the feeling of driving but never feel 100% satisfied with their performance, always striving to get better and truly feel the thrill of driving at high speeds flawlessly. Starting to get why there are those people who are still gunning for a new F-Zero game at some point in the future, and apparently the sequels are even better, so I'm looking forward to that.

F-Zero is the racing franchise that Nintendo has forsaken. It predates the first Mario Kart game by a couple of years, so this means F-Zero was Nintendo’s first foray into establishing a series in the racing genre (the one-off NES title Excitebike withstanding). Once Mario Kart emerged on the SNES in 1992, both franchises coexisted for a few generations until Nintendo decided only to invest in the wildly popular Mario Kart series and leave F-Zero in the dust. We have not seen hide nor hair of F-Zero in almost twenty years, besides Captain Falcon’s long-running stand as a character in Super Smash Bros. I can’t say I’m surprised that Nintendo stopped investing in F-Zero and focused solely on Mario Kart as their juggernaut racing franchise. Why is this you may ask? Because Mario Kart is accessible while F-Zero only reaches a niche demographic of gaming masochists. Why would Nintendo, a company that thrives on its user-friendly properties, put effort towards a franchise that makes people want to tear their hair out due to sheer frustration? It wouldn’t make sense to do this from a marketing standpoint, and that’s the reason why Nintendo gave up on the series many years ago. What Nintendo failed to realize is that this niche market still hungers for more of the meaty challenge that only F-Zero provides. As early as the first F-Zero game on the SNES, the series provided a high-octane racing experience that tested the limits of the racing genre.

The first F-Zero also tested the limits of what was capable on the new SNES. As a launch title for the system, its ulterior goal was to showcase the capabilities of the new console. If Super Mario World showcased an evolved translation of the NES side scroller, F-Zero showcased features that could not have been functional on the NES at all. The potential of the new “mode-7” feature on the SNES was exhibited greatly with F-Zero, almost as if the feature was crafted with racing games in mind. “Mode-7” graphics detail a rotated background layer, changing the perspective to give the illusion of 3D graphics. That’s right, this was the prototype for the 3D revolution that would become the standard for gaming, and it was used as early as a SNES launch title. While other SNES games used snippets of mode-7 graphics, F-Zero utilized them to the best of their capabilities. Racing games of previous generations were restricted due to graphical limitations. They were presented in a myriad of perspectives, but none of these did the racing genre justice. The new mode-7 graphics created the most ideal racing perspective for a console that predated the 3D era. Not only did the pseudo-3D graphics allow the player to see their car from the back, but it allowed the player to see what was directly in front of them. Racing games of previous generations could only render only a minuscule amount for the driver to see on the road. F-Zero puts everything in clear sight so the player can anticipate everything from dirt pits, road curves, and other drivers. It seems so simple in retrospect, but this was a revolutionary change for the racing genre at the time.

The futuristic evolution of the racing game that F-Zero upholds in a technical sense is supported by its futuristic aesthetic. F-Zero is a racing game set in a time that nobody alive in 1990 or today will ever experience. The high-octane speeds that the racers accelerate to surpass any flux capacitor and quite frankly, scare the hell out of my comparatively unadorned 21st-century being. The tracks are winding and the backgrounds all look like concept art from Fantastic Planet. There is more context to F-Zero’s racing league and its drivers, but this is only elucidated in the game’s manual of which I do not possess (the SNES was before my time and I played this game on my Switch). What the game presents is that the player has a choice between four different racers whose cars have distinct stats. The blue car (of which I’m only pretending not to know that this is Captain Falcon’s car because the game doesn’t tell the player) is the car with the most balanced level of speed, handling, and acceleration. It’s the perfect car for beginner players. The other cars have stats that exceed the blue car in some aspects but are lacking in others. This way, the small selection of racers the player has is at least varied. There are fifteen tracks in total divided into three grand Prix each with five tracks and each grand Prix gets progressively more difficult.

Speaking of the difficulty, I think F-Zero should serve as a lesson that we as people should not attempt to surpass the limits of automotive technology. The racers of F-Zero drive at speeds in the 300-500 range, tripling the rates of speed of any present-day automobile. Driving at these perilous speeds is probably why F-Zero is so goddamn difficult. The player can see plenty of what’s in front of them, but good luck trying to avoid the many hazards each track presents. This can include having to execute the sharpest of U-turns, avoiding the patches of snow and dirt on the tracks, dodging unexploded ordnance, and not misstepping any of the various jumps that could lead to the driver’s death. All the while, the player has to contend with the other racers who swerve masterfully around the courses even on the easiest difficulty. The other racers are ruthless and will defend their position as their lives depend on it. Even if the player is in first place, another driver will always be tailing them. One minor mistake on the player’s part will most likely cost them their position. Trying to pass other racers on the tracks tends to turn F-Zero from space-age NASCAR into space-age bumper cars. Passing the other racers without getting nicked is incredibly hard to do because the tracks are so narrow. The possibility of the player coming into contact with another racer is highly likely and will result in the player getting bumped around on the track like a pinball. The most frustrating aspect of this is the generic yellow and brown racers on the track who have no stakes in winning the race. Their only purpose is to cause grief for the player, acting as obstacles even when all the other racers are behind them. Some of them explode upon impact just to fuck the player over even harder. All of this battering and bruising the player will experience will lower their energy bar which is essentially the car’s health meter. After too many clangs and clashes on the road, the energy bar will deplete and do a constant warning flash if it’s too low. There’s one long stretch of each track in which running on it will replenish the energy meter, but it only charges a minuscule amount. If that energy bar goes to zero, the car will blow up and the player will have to start the race over again. The game will only give the player three chances, and they’re going to need all of them.

The ironic part about how innovative F-Zero was to the racing genre is how it seems like an arcade game. If I didn’t know any better, the demanding difficulty curve and the lives count scream arcade game to me. As one could probably tell from my reviews, I’m not a fan of games with this format that were made for consoles. The difficulty has little to do with my grievances here. Rather, it’s due to the lack of tangible rewards the player gets for overcoming the hardest racing game on the NES. All of the tracks, racers and grand Prix that are available from the start are all that is offered. What about the two or three racers that are always in fifth and sixth place? Unlocking their cars would at least be some incentive to keep playing the game. After winning a grand Prix, there is no grand ceremony giving the player a gold trophy. All the game will do is tally up the player's scores. I’m not someone who thrives off of bragging rights, so merely keeping scores like an arcade machine is not enough to satisfy me. There isn’t even a multiplayer mode which should be mandatory for any racing game.

If anyone out there thinks they are the Mario Kart grandmaster, playing F-Zero will be a humbling experience that will put them in their place. Alternately, if you’re someone who feels frustrated by being hit with a blue shell and losing a race, those unfortunate snags are nothing compared to the trials and tribulations on the futuristic tracks in F-Zero. I’m almost ashamed to admit this, but I had to play F-Zero on the easiest difficulty to experience the full game for this review. The easiest difficulty still managed to bend me over and make me its bitch. I got so frustrated with being tossed around on these tracks that I almost gave up. This is most likely the shared experience of many players of F-Zero, but I still kept playing. There is something so gratifying about progressively getting better at this game after struggling to even place in first on the beginning grand Prix. Learning how to properly drift and slide past those acute angles on the roads with little trouble feels like I’ve become a more capable person, something that no other racing game provides. That’s the appeal of this game that makes getting pummeled worth it. All the same, the game would’ve benefited greatly from providing the player with rewards for mastering it. The first F-Zero might have been a cutting-edge racing title that showcased the potential of the SNES’s hardware, but it still felt a little rudimentary all the same.

F-Zero is well and truly an under appreciated title in not only the SNES library but Nintendo's IP's in general. Its well regarded now that the original game was more or less a fully fleshed out tech demo for the SNES's Mode 7 chip and its capabilities and for that it is a beautifully realized game and tight racing sim. Scratching that, however, leaves a game with a fatal flaw. A solo only experience. Granted a game like this with the graphical limitations of the 32-bit console would be incredibly difficult to render and, with hind site, the games spiritual successor Super Mario Kart definitely show that maybe a 2 player mode wouldn't have been in this games best interest after all.

One of my favorite aspects of the game itself is just the background art and music, which really gives it a very nostalgic and enticing atmosphere that always brings me in. Who doesn't get goose bumps when seeing the endless purple desert dunes and low hanging gas giant on Silence or the gorgeous twilight coastal setting of Port Town. Its arguable how well the game has actually aged, still a great edition to the SNES and the start of an equally great racing franchise.