Series Review: F Zero

Game: F Zero
Console: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: 13th August 1991

Racing at speeds of over 700 km/h in futuristic environments, F Zero brings a high speed kick to racing games on SNES. With 20 racers competing on track as well as other traffic, 15 different circuits and 4 difficulty modes, it's an impressive game for the time. Unfortunately there's only 4 different vehicles available to the player, with slightly different stats between them. These are controlled by 4 different characters from the series, the most famous of which is Captain Falcon.

There's 3 different championships to complete, initially with 3 difficulty levels available. Once they're completed in expert mode, master mode for each championship is unlocked, to give more replayability. With Championship and Practice modes being the only two available, there's no 2 player support or any other kind of races featured on the first installment in the series.

The gameplay is fast paced, with sharp turns and fast straights featuring on every track. The controls make it fairly easy to get around most tracks as long as you use the brakes before sharper turns. Hitting other vehicles or the edges of the tracks will send you in a completely random direction about half of the time which can make winning races a little harder. There's also a power meter which is depleted when your vehicle hits the barriers, or other obstacles. Instant race losses are featured too, in some of the harder difficulty levels it's possible to fall short of jumps and get a game over.

Graphically the game is vibrant and bright, and pretty good for the early 16 bit era. There's no a great amount of detail on the other cars or backgrounds to the tracks, but with the speed of the game as it is, that's almost to be expected. Musically the game is good, featuring a host of catchy background music for each track and good sound effects.

Overall the game was a good start to the series with some classic tracks and music. The lack of two player mode and limited amount of championships did affect the replay value of the game somewhat, and makes me wonder what it could have been with a few tweaks. Other than this though the only real bad point is the loss of control when hit by rival cars. Sometimes it's unavoidable and gets frustrating when it costs you a race that you were winning.

Rating: 75/100
Grade: B

Game: F Zero X
Console: Nintendo 64
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: 6th November 1998

7 years after the first game in the series came F-Zero X, a 3D installment of the racing series with higher speeds, 30 vehicles on track at one time, 30 preset tracks as well as a mode which generates random tracks, a two player mode and more. With an almost comic-based style for the menu and character select screen, and a rock based soundtrack it's quite an update stylistically as well as in terms of gameplay.

The main mode is still Grand Prix mode, with 4 difficulty settings, 6 races in each grand prix and 4 preset race series as well as "X" mode which randomises the track for each race. There's steep learning curve in this mode, and you'll need to beat the grand prix on all of the different difficulties to unlock all of the vehicles and content in the game. Just like the first game you're given an Energy meter which reduces with damage, but this time boosting also depletes the meter.

With thirty different racers on track at any one time, the races in grand prix mode can get a little crowded at times, but overall it adds to the fun. Every racer earns points for their finishing position in the race, up to 100pts for first place and these are kept track of throughout Grand Prix mode. This is an improvement from the first game which only had target finishing positions in order to complete a Grand Prix. In later difficulty levels the AI can appear to be incredibly hard to beat, making it more difficult to finish 1st.

Other modes in the game include a much needed two player mode, time trial and practice modes, and a death race mode, which sees the player attempt to take out the other 29 racers. Unfortunately this isn't as fun as it sounds because taking out that amount of other vehicles is pretty monotonous, not to mention that it's difficult to not accidentally fall off the track in the time it'll take you to complete even one round of this mode.

Graphically the game isn't particularly detailed; both the tracks and vehicles are lacking anything besides their polygonal shapes. This doesn't detract from the gameplay, but with 30 vehicles to choose from, it can make them seem pretty samey. Other than that it's nice to see the franchise move into 3D, as the racing feels even faster. The soundtrack for the game features some rock versions of songs from the original as well as some new rockier songs; overall it's good in places and a little weird at other points.

As a sequel F Zero X is pretty impressive, featuring not only a much wider range of choice in vehicles, tracks, modes and characters but also taking elements from the first game and improving them. Graphical improvments and a slightly less steep learning curve are the only things I can think of to make this game better, otherwise its a true N64 classic.

Rating: 84/100
Grade: B

Game: F Zero: Maximum Velocity
Console: Nintendo Gameboy Advance
Developer: Nintendo
Release Date: 22nd June 2001

The first of three portable F Zero games on the Gameboy Advance, Maximum Velocity features gameplay more akin to that of the SNES installment than the N64 sequel with a return to Mode 7 graphical techniques and 2 dimensional vehicles. There are 5 races to each Grand Prix, with 4 classes to choose from, for a total of 20 tracks featured. 4 vehicles are unlocked from the start, with a further 4 unlockable by winning races, although this is the only game not to feature Captain Falcon.

With the return to the SNES style of gameplay comes the problem of losing control when hitting anything with your vehicle. Also as your energy meter depletes, you slow down considerably when compared to other games in the series, further hampering your chances of finishing the race in the required position. This added to the fact you have to press the L and R buttons to boost, which can be difficult whilst trying to steer makes for less enjoyable gameplay than in previous installments.

Graphically the game looks arguably worse than the SNES version, although I'd say its about even. The racers themselves have better a better 3D effect than in the first game, but the scenery around the tracks is pixellated and undetailed. Musically, Maximum Velocity isn't as good as the other games in the series, but it's bearable; there's some decent tracks in amongst the generally forgettable majority of the soundtrack.

Overall this feels like a scaled down version of the SNES title, 10 years after its release. The tracks are less enjoyable, the music and feel less classic, and there's hardly any improvements from it. Multiplayer is possible, however you need another GBA and copy of the game to link up and play. As with a lot of handheld installments of home console games, F Zero Maximum Velocity disappoints somewhat.

Rating: 61/100
Grade: D

At this point, I was going to do a review of F Zero GX, the Gamecube installment to the series, however as the disk won't read, that's it for now!