Despite being a fan of Nintendo since I first began playing video games the F-Zero franchise has always been a blind spot for me. I missed the SNES release, and because of that skipped out on all future iterations. I always knew of it; for decades this has been highlighted as one of the best 16-bit racing titles of all time. This was also one of the first Super Nintendo releases that really pushed mode-7 graphics, and in motion it looked almost an entire generation ahead of what Sega’s rival console had to offer. I decided that it’s finally time to give F-Zero a chance. I was blown away not only by how fun it is, but also by the fact that it stands the test of time rather well. Let’s jump right into our review!
F-Zero takes place far in the future. Planets have been settled, and aliens co-mingled with. The resulting is a booming economy spanning the universe. The elite have become bored with everyday life and now wish for a new source of entertainment. Hence the F-Zero competition. This involves high speed hovercrafts racing each other along hazardous tracks in an all out contest of speed and dexterity. Bear in mind the story is mostly absent from the game. Racers aren’t even given their own bio. If the scenario is important you’ll have to piece it together via the instruction booklet. That’s kind of disappointing, but at least this is a racer so it’s no big deal. Let’s continue on to the gameplay.
As I’ve already touched upon F-Zero is a futuristic racing game. It makes heavy use of the mode-7 rotation and scaling effects that the SNES was known for. Because of this the game’s engine is able to create a convincing illusion of flat 3D tracks. The perspective is shown from behind your vehicle which was pretty advanced for it’s time. Grand Prix mode allows you to select from one of three competitions with with five tracks apiece. Each race consists of five laps, and you’re awarded points based on your placement at the end of each. It’s a pretty basic setup that most racing fans will be familiar with. When you actually start playing however you’ll quickly see that F-Zero has a lot of elements that set it apart from more traditional fare.
To start off your vehicle, ship, hovercraft… thing, has a life bar. Each time you bump into an opponent, bounce off the edge of the course or hit a hazard this is depleted. It’s pretty common for this to happen because many of the tracks are narrow with several sharp turns throughout. When it’s empty your craft explodes and you lose. F-Zero isn’t completely unfair though. You’ll find sections of each track that re-generate your health when your craft is positioned over them. In most situations these are situated on the side of long stretches of track so hitting them often requires you to go out of your way costing precious milliseconds of time. Sometimes you’ll have to decide between wasting small amounts of time in a race and just throwing caution to the wind and continuing on. I found this aspect of the game pretty neat to be honest.
The hazards are surprisingly inventive. I was initially worried that this being a mode 7 title that they’d just be flat dots. Thankfully that’s not the case. There’s actually a fair amount of variety in this regard. You have the ever present barriers around the track boundaries, but a myriad of other obstacles. This includes patches of what appears to be dirt on the track (this serves to slow down your speed), water/ice that changes your traction, ramps for jumps, and even magnets that pull you in and damage your vehicle when they make contact. There are even yellow arrows that provide a temporary speed boost. My favorite environmental effect is that in one course the wind is constantly blowing which makes it more difficult to stay on course. These help serve up just the right amount of variety in the different race tracks.
There are a few other aspects that make F-Zero unique from the average racing game. You are given just one speed boost per lap (except for the first one) and these boost your top speed for a few seconds at a time. Finding the exact moment to use these can be tricky because not all courses have straight stretches long enough to benefit from it the entire time. Also cool is the fact that you can use this, and the ramps to find shortcuts. These are very vaguely defined and F-Zero encourages you to find them with experimentation. This brings me to the next point. Tracks are recycled between the various cups, but each version takes place in a different time of day. What’s more is that some feature alternate paths. It’s a really neat way to recycle content and keep it fresh.
If there’s one complaint I have it’s the difficulty. F-Zero is far from being a cakewalk. I consider myself average, or very slightly above average when it comes to these kind of games but I was struggling right away. You have to be very precise with your turns, and know when to use the shoulder buttons and for how long. It’s all about muscle memory and memorizing the physics engine. Secondly, the game uses the infamous rubber band AI technique. This means you can never get too far ahead of the opponents because they’re programmed to always keep up to a degree. On the higher difficulty levels this is extremely frustrating because you can never gain enough ground to allow for mistakes. The enemies are always right on you. Additionally you have to maintain a specific rank in the later laps or you’re disqualified. You have no room for mistakes.
As I’ve already touched upon F-Zero looked almost an entire generation ahead of what the Sega Genesis had to offer at the time. It’s just that impressive visually. More to the point F-Zero still looks really good today. Mode 7 graphics have aged really well and thanks to them the game is able to maintain a blazing fast framerate no matter how much carnage is happening. Unlike the later released Mario Kart this one is full screen which is truly a sight to behold. Other developers had to play catch up with Nintendo at this point despite having more practice with 16-bit hardware. F-Zero is also extremely colorful, vibrant, and altogether pleasant on the eyes. The soundtrack is also incredible. Some of the most iconic music of the era comes from this mere launch game. The mix of techno and rock music works extremely well with the console’s sound chip.
