(This is the 29th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Game #2 of the release day offerings for SNES release day in Japan. F-Zero is a futuristic racing game developed by Nintendo EAD - developers of the early Super Mario games and Legend of Zelda games as well - and F-Zero is just yet another example of how much talent Nintendo had at the time (still has of course). It released on November 21st, 1990 and seemingly was used to as a tech demo of sorts to show what the SNES is capable of.
Going into this, I had heard of F-Zero before but to be completely honest, though it was a JRPG or something like that and not simply a racing game. To see it mentioned that often for 'just' being a racing game, I thought this must be pretty good. Opening the game up and looking at the title screen, I then started to think that this game was probably popular based on nostalgia and the advancements in technology for racing games will probably make F-Zero a frustrating and bland experience.
Oh boy, was I wrong.
F-Zero has a total of 15 tracks in 3 different "leagues" of 5 tracks each. You choose the league and the difficulty and face off against multiple other cars, though I'll get into that a bit more later. You start with 3 continue's, a full life (power) bar and on track #1. You have to go through 5 laps to finish a track.
During the race, your car can crash into the walls, you can lose power by driving over the edges, which are filled with power-zapping tiles of sorts, and you can bump into other cars, which either throws you into the sides or at worst, has you almost reverse as well.
There are other cars that drive with you, both cars that actually participate in the race and others that just seemingly drive on the track for fun, just so you can bump into them when they stand in your way all the GODDAMN TIME. GET OUT OF THE WAY JACKASS, THIS IS A RACE TRACK!
I can't really say if I enjoyed the existence of these cars for the additional challenge, or if I despised the fact that they made me lose both my speed and my life bar by being so annoying. Oh wait, I can say how I feel, and that is that the existence of these sucked.
The other cars in the race are not that present as these non-racing ones, because the non-racing ones keep spawning and keep doing so in front of you, no matter what place you're in. Out of the other cars that are actually participants, the fastest car (the yellow one) is usually the only one you see after the 2nd lap, unless you crash really bad.
But the game doesn't actually have these cars drive at a certain speed once you get past them, but rather has them show up as soon as you lose your top speed for as little as a second. And once they overtake your spot, they start driving at slower speeds than you again. This means that in reality, you should be 20 seconds in front of the second spot by Lap 5, but instead a tiny crash means you can lose the race even though you just broke your record and had won the race the previous time you tried, where it took you 10 seconds longer. This was pretty annoying because having any car in front of you in these tight tracks meant that you could lose your full power bar within the last two laps simply because the other cars love to screw with you. The controls don't really allow you to crash them into the sides to gain an advantage yourself because unless you're incredibly skilled, it will be YOU who loses control from any kind of contact.
To get one more bad thing out of the way about this otherwise really good racing game, there were a couple maps that I didn't really like but none were as frustrating as the White Land maps. Especially the second one. 10 tries and I still can't make that one jump.
But enough about the bad, let's talk about the good. And there are two things about this game that are really good.
First, it's the pace. The game does a great job of translating pace and if you'd ask me about anything about this game that is timeless, I would have said this is it. However, there is something even more timeless here, and that is the soundtrack. Almost every song here is so good, and I'd almost be inclined to put some of them in the GOATed tier. The Port Town song immediately became a favorite of mine, and after listening to the entire OST on YouTube, I've become a big fan of Big Blue and Fire Field as well.
But going back to the gameplay, the game has really tight controls and plays at a smooth 60 FPS (played it on Steam Deck), and it's really up to your skill on how you perform, though again, those stupid non-racing cars did get me annoyed a lot.
I found myself starting this game up about once a day even though I've "beaten" it for the purposes of this challenge 3 days ago, that's how much fun I'm having with it, and I'm sure the sequels build on this in all the right ways, though I was saddened to see no new F-Zero game in almost two decades.
Finally, I quickly want to mention that the game records your best times for each map, which I think is a great little feature to add to this game, because it gives even more incentive to play these tracks over and over again, and I can only imagine how many hours kids of yore put into beating their own records back in the day.
OVERALL
If you're looking for an old school, fast paced racing game with a great soundtrack, this is it. Especially on a portable device, this is a lot of fun overall.
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME
- Ed Semrad or EGM, Issue 25 (Aug 91): "The perspective used really gives [...] a sense of speed and the scrolling is superb."
- Speedy Buns for GamePro, Issue 30 (Jan 92): "F-Zero shows what the SNES can really do, with futuristics racing action and head-spinning 3-D graphics."
