Collection essentials #516 & #517: F-Zero GP Legend (GBA) and F-Zero Climax (GBA)

Nintendo’s futuristic, high-speed racing series debuted with a launch title on the Super Nintendo and effectively showed off the power of the hardware. The sequel, F-Zero, came years later in the middle of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan and effectively reimagined the concept of the first game in 3D with impressive results, though not with impressive sales. For the launch of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo made a brand new F-Zero game titled Maximum Velocity, which felt very much like a successor to the original Super Nintendo game. Unfortunately Maximum Velocity isn’t making my list, I never was a fan of the game’s “slippery” controls and thus never at any point put very much time into it.

But F-Zero wasn’t done on the GBA. In 2003, an F-Zero anime would be produced. An anime tie-in made sense, since F-Zero X had introduced a large cast of interesting-looking characters that had potential to be expounded upon. I can’t tell you a whole lot about the anime because…well, I never really watched it. And honestly I’m wondering why the heck not, since I was definitely an F-Zero fan at the time of its release. At that point in my life I wasn’t watching very much TV in general, so I guess that’s the reason why. It probably didn’t help that the English localization got canceled after only a handful of episodes. But anyway, the second GBA title, F-Zero GP Legend, was based on said anime. 

What I appreciate about GP Legend is that it incorporates some of the gameplay elements from the 3D F-Zero games. Most notable of these is the way “boosts” work. In the previous 2D F-Zero titles, you are given a free “boost” for each lap for a temporary burst of speed. But in this game, after the first lap, you are instead given the freedom to boost as much as you want, at the expense of your energy gauge which will cause your ship to explode and therefore lose the race if you get hit on an empty gauge. 

For me, GP Legend has a lot of things that make it more appealing than Maximum Velocity. There are more modes, including short challenges and a story mode where you can play as a variety of characters. Speaking of characters, there are way more to choose from, making it more likely that you’ll find a ship that pilots exactly the way you want it to. There’s also an announcer this time as opposed to the voiceless Maximum Velocity, which adds a bit of extra personality to the game.

Less than a year after GP Legend’s Japanese release, we’d get another game, F-Zero Climax. This one kinda feels like a sort of “update” to GP Legend in a lot of ways, with many reused assets. Climax adds some really cool stuff, though. This includes the “spin attack” move which was first released in F-Zero X. But the biggest feature for sure is “Edit Mode”, which lets players create their own racetracks! This wasn’t a new concept by any means, but it hadn’t been in any of the 2D F-Zero games before so its inclusion is still notable. Players could trade custom tracks with others via a Game Boy Advance Link Cable, or by generating a password which can be entered into any copy of the game to recreate the track.

Sadly, Nintendo’s investment into the F-Zero series in the early 2000s just didn’t pay off in the way they were hoping. F-Zero Climax never even got released outside of Japan. And thus, after the release of Climax, Nintendo decided to basically put the whole series to rest for a very long time. Over the next couple decades, Nintendo did on occasion acknowledge that F-Zero exists, when for example they’d represent it in Super Smash Bros., Nintendo Land or Mario Kart. But fans hoping for a new F-Zero would be out of luck. It wasn’t until 2023 that we’d get a new F-Zero of any kind, when Nintendo released F-Zero 99, a free-to-play online multiplayer reimagining of the original Super Nintendo title. Whether or not we’ll ever get a new 3D F-Zero remains to be seen.

As an F-Zero fan, I got GP Legend when it first came out, the very same copy shown in the photo. And then I imported Climax a year later in 2005, again the very copy you see above. After being disappointed with Maximum Velocity, I was pleased to see that these games were much more enjoyable and I put a good amount of time into each of them, beating what there was to beat in terms of single-player modes.

Truthfully, these usually aren’t the games I revisit when I want an F-Zero fix as I tend to prefer the console titles, though it might be worth playing around with other peoples’ custom F-Zero Climax tracks posted online at some point. These games are still quite good though, and worthy of being collection essentials.