Collection essentials #185: F-Zero (SNES)

Here we have one of the few Super Nintendo launch titles, a game that served as a technical showcase to demonstrate what the powerful new hardware was capable of. F-Zero is a futuristic racing game which takes place several centuries from now. The Super Nintendo was capable of “Mode 7” graphics, which basically meant that it could freely rotate a background layer, and so this is how F-Zero’s tracks work. When you turn in F-Zero, you’ll see that the whole track under you rotates, and in a way that looks natural. That might seem kind of basic, but other consoles at the time couldn’t do that! Look up racing games on the NES and Genesis and you’ll find that none of them look quite like F-Zero. This does mean that F-Zero’s tracks are 100% flat with no hills of any kind, but that doesn’t ruin the game.

Being a futuristic racing game, you can probably guess that F-Zero isn’t very realistic, and that’s a good thing. It’s a very fast game, with a lot of hazards to be wary of. You have an energy meter that depletes whenever you hit something, and if you touch anything when it’s empty, your car blows up and you lose the race. After the first lap you get a limited number of boosts, which give you an awesome burst of speed, but this is of course risky because you need to make sure you can still dodge hazards. And at some point in each track there is a special area you can drive in that will restore some of your energy. You control one of four selectable cars, each with somewhat different attributes. Gameplay is fast, frantic and fun. There are three grand prixes in the game with five tracks each for a total of 15, as well as different difficulty levels, offering plenty of challenge for whoever wants it.

My only real complaint with F-Zero is that it feels like it’s missing some basic stuff. The most glaring obvious omission is any kind of a multiplayer mode. Racing games are typically multiplayer-focused, due to the exciting competition between friends they can provide, but this is a rare exception where you will only ever be racing against computer opponents. The explanation is likely because it would have been difficult for the console to handle two players simultaneously moving so fast; it likely would have caused at least some slowdown at times due to trying to process all that action at once, compromising the game’s signature speed. However, I think most fans would agree that two-player mode with some slowdown would have been preferable to no two-player mode at all. There’s also a practice mode where you can race a track alone and try and set a best time, but the problem is that less than half of the game’s tracks are available in this mode. It seems odd to me that they wouldn’t have included the rest of them as an unlockable reward for beating the game.

F-Zero has a story, and established characters who pilot each of the game’s four vehicles. Another odd thing is that the story and characters are not present in any way in the game itself. And the odd thing is that they clearly cared and put effort into it, because there’s an entire comic in the game’s manual, which is really cool! One of the four characters, Captain Falcon, went on to be a playable fighter in Nintendo’s “Super Smash Bros.” series years down the road, which is actually how most people are familiar with him, since Smash is much more popular than F-Zero.

As for my own history with F-Zero, it was another game that my mother scored at a yard sale in the late ‘90s, which isn’t very surprising since the game is so common. It wasn’t my preferred racing game on the system, as I preferred a certain Mario racing game I will be talking about later, but I still had a lot of fun with it. The funny thing is that when I played the original Smash Bros. at my cousins’ house, I really liked Captain Falcon, but had no idea that he was from a game I had played. It wasn’t until I checked his bio which revealed that he’s originally from F-Zero, and my mind was blown!

The F-Zero series, in my opinion, would improve with future entries, but this was a really good start. And being a launch title helped it become an iconic Super Nintendo classic. An undisputed essential.