After years of never beating the game ‘cause I could never beat the Silence track, getting to play the rest of the leagues feels like I’ve been missing out on quite literally the best parts of the whole thing. Like getting to see brand new horizons…
I’ve been staring at this word document for the better part of an hour trying to cobble up something, anything that AT LEAST would resemble a normal review, but I have no idea from what angle to approach F-Zero, at least not in a way that fully grasps what this game represents and is… which is just a fancy way of saying I don’t now what in the actual f*ck this game is doing, but I love it.F-Zero* is deceptively simple from an outsider’s view; it’s an EXTRAORDINARILY beautiful 16-Bit game, a masterwork of selling game feel through visuals alone. Even without the speed tracker, you can tell damn well we are getting a speeding ticket with this one… But that’s also just about it when it comes to viewing secondhand footage or on first contact; it sure is a racing game that goes fast and sells what a chip can do pretty well; there are some interesting ideas like getting one boost per lap completed and the health system, but overall this doesn’t seem anything awfully special, and some beginning tracks really don’t help its case.
Mute City and Big Blue are iconic for a reason, but others like Wind Valley and SILENCE lack the fun or exciting factor they should provide to instead offer something more boring or outright frustrating and unwelcoming. It’s a pretty poor start to a racing game like this… however… this time I realized something. In other racing simulators or even kart racers, the main objective and challenge is to, of course, win the race or Cup… in F-Zero it ain’t about winning… it’s about surviving*…
… and I mean, getting first is also cool too, but you get my gist.
With each lap, more and more racers get taken out, to the point that only three can truly reach the finale; the intensity ups when cars collide and clash against the electric walls and magnets, and the only way the tension ends is by either reaching the finish line… or as the world goes silent dims, and the screen is filled is filled by the smoke that’s going out of what used to be your vehicle.
It was then and there, when I understood what the game was truly being, the moment I survived Silence, that I began to adore F-Zero: the Queen and King League, are on a whole f*cking level quality wise, there are still some stinkers here and there, like the comeback of Wind Valley, but generally the tracks get MUCH better, and begin to test you out in other ways. Your reaction, your ability to improvise while using boosts, managing health to such points that taking a hit feels as bad as getting a real life car scratch, and of course, learning to press down on the D-Pad in rampsWHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT BEFORE IT TOOK ME SO LONG TO REALIZE I’M SO STUPID.
By the time you reach the final course, your rivals are relentless, almost as deadly as the tracks themselves, and the excitement and pure joy that gives defeating them is as high as reaching the high speeds the game is all about.
The best word that summarizes F-Zero is intensity, the thrill of reaching the finale despite the sheer madness you just went through. Now I f*cking understand why this racing competition is such a big deal in-universe, people are getting killed in this just for the fun of it!
I’ve seen others lament the fact this lacks any form of Co-op play, and while I’m sure that would be incredibly fun, I’m kinda glad they never included that because, for one, I don’t think any Super Famicon or SNES could achieve it without imploding, but mainly because I don’t think F-Zero was really built to be anything but what already is, which is way more than I was expecting in the first place.
This is an incredible first outing, a rough one at places, SPECIALLY at the start, but I’ve went to being kind of familiarized with this series to now wanting to try out the rest of the games as soon as I can. I’ve been officially Samurai Goroh pilled.
The fact this and Super Mario World were launch titles is crazy to me, what an insane line-up, and that’s ignoring the other games that released alongside them both…
