PixlBit

A high-speed race across the galaxy!

                             Be sure to raise you volume to hear that sweet guitar riff

Hello everyone, how are you? Welcome back to another installment of Years Later. F-Zero X turns 20 years old today. As with any game with an anniversary, I like to use these posts to give my thoughts and share my memories on a game be it 5, 10, 15, or 20 years old. So as long I have played said game. So get your F-Zero machine ready, put on your racing jump suit and pump up your volume to some metal as we run back to the 90's and take a look at the fastest racing game in the galaxy with F-Zero X...

We've been going back to the 90's a lot on these last few posts. But yeah anyway, I first learned of F-Zero through Super Smash Bros. on the N64, and I'm sure many of you did as well. We are going to be referencing Smash a lot in later posts. It introduced me to Captain Falcon and back then I thought he was one of the more unique characters in the roster. More on that in a future post. He was from a game series called F-Zero and there was an F-Zero game on the N64 and knew I had to try that out.

I saved up the allowance money I had and managed to find a new copy for $30 and the most interesting thing is that I found it at a store many years ago in the neighborhood I live in now. It's funny how life works. As a kid, I honestly I didn't know what to expect but all I knew is that it was a racing game and that Captain Falcon was in it. Plus $30 is a lot of money to spend as a kid so for that price I was hoping it was good.

                                          Even the box art looks freaking awesome

As kids, we didn't know a game was going to be great or not till we tried it out for ourselves. We usually relied on the boxart a game had and the description on the back. Sometimes even word of mouth from friends or other kids in the school yard or whatever. And if you were lucky, you either had access to the internet or you read gaming magazines for news and info on games. I suppose this is why video game rentals were a great and cheap alternative to buying games. For a small rental fee you could check out a game without spending full price on it. If you loved the game, you could save up to buy it eventually. But if not then well that's money and a weekend wasted. I'm still hate whoever deleted my Majora's Mask progress on the cartridge I always rented. But that's for another time.

One of the things I always loved doing when I bought a new game was open it up and go through the manual on the way home. I loved being able to flip through the pages and learn more about the game, the story (if any), and the characters. F-Zero X had a story or at the very least, a plot to why all the characters were racing. And there's 30 of them and each one of them has a reason for racing. One thing I loved about the F-Zero X manual was the artwork. It was in 2D and made the characters look like if they were comic book characters in a way. You can tell it was so 90's based on how they were drawn. I miss artwork like that.

Speaking of manuals, remember those? Games these days don't come with them anymore. They don't even come with the warranty slip from the publisher either since it almost always comes printed on the back of the cover art slip. Some games do come with manuals but it seems to be a special edition only thing which really sucks. I wish they would bring back manuals.

                                           This is Batman according to my mom

We got home and I popped in the cartridge on my N64. As soon as I turned it on I was greeted with a really epic guitar riff, which you might of heard when you loaded this post. Even the title screen music sounded incredible. I looked through the modes and decided to start with Grand Prix. I felt that the only way to see how this is, is to jump into the main mode and learn as I go. I picked the cup and I got to the character or Select Machine screen and picked Captain Falcon. I saw that you had to unlock the other racers since you couldn't select none of them. You could adjust the stats on your machine if you wanted to as well to suit your playstyle.

I went through my first race and managed to pick up a bunch of things. It's a racing game but it's way different from Mario Kart. For starters, there are no items to attack opponents. However you can attack them with your machine by performing an spin or side attack. Doing this can give damage to your opponent or you can wreck their machine and make them retire for the current course.

On lap 2 they let you activate your Boost. You can boost at will but at the cost of energy from your machine. When your energy is too low your machine will flash red. You can keep racing if you completely deplete your energy but any slight tap from another racer or hitting anything will cause your machine to blow. Thus retiring from the current course. You can restart if you have a spare machine, basically lives. However you can heal yourself by using Pit Areas on the course to recover energy. There are also dash plates that give you a boost without using up energy.

I managed to finish my very first race in first place. Not bad for my first time with the game. As you went on, courses got more elaborate with sharp turns, loops, no guard rails and different obstacles. It required a lot of concentration and quick reflexes. If you fell off the course you basically retire from the race. Yeah you don't get picked up by an F-Zero version of Lakitu from Mario Kart or anything However you can use this to your advantage and drop other racers off course as well. Destroy or drop a cerain number of them and you get a spare machine. You get this satisfying bleep noise when you destroy or drop an opponent.

 

               Back then you had to unlock extra characters. These days it's called dlc.

One thing I noticed that I always got such a huge rush whenever I played this game. I would get so hyped and it was exhilarating. An adrenaline rush I suppose and I loved that feeling. Feeling that rush, especially after a race that was so intense. I think it also has to do with the music as well. That music was so good. The game had a number of different modes too.

Grand Prix is basically the meat and potatoes of the game. You are going to be spending your time here clearing all the cups in all the available difficulties. There's a Time Atack Mode which has you complete 3 laps on any track in the fastest time possible and you can challenge your ghost racer too. Practice explains itself, basically practice any course. Death Race with has you eliminate the other 29 racers as fast as possible. The boost is available at the way beginning. This mode was a lot of fun. And there's VS Battle which has you play with 2 to 4 players. What's neat about VS Battle is if a player drops out early in the race, the game allows them to access this slot machine which you can use to deplete everyone elses energy.

My brother eventually got into the game and we played and it was really fun. I remember that we went to a party at my cousin's house. He lived next door. Anyway me and my brother and him and his oldest brother played some N64 games and I brought F-Zero X with me. We played VS Battle and everyone selected their character and we each took turns selecting levels. It was my turn to select a stage and I chose White Land 2. This course was a whole halfpipe and there were no gurad rails on the sides of the course. So what I did was let everyone start and I just stayed there at the beginning of the course. Everyone wondered why I wasn't moving. I knew what was going to happen so I continued to wait. Apparently everyone started to fall off the course and that's when I finally began to move and I made sure I didn't fall and I won. Everyone was mad at me but we all had a good laugh afterwards. It's one of those memories I'll never forget.

    The Phychedelic Experience that is Rainbow Road even makes an appearance here too

The game makes references to other Nintendo games too. Like did you know that the James McCloud from F-Zero X looks like James McCloud from Star Fox? Jody Summer also looks like Samus from the ending of the first Metroid game where she has a bikini. Octoman also appears in a much more later game known as Star Fox Command as a boss. Silver Neelsen looks like Cranky Kong from the Donkey Kong Country games in some ways and even acts like him too.  But I think one of the most neat ones is Mr. EAD. He looks just like Mario himself and even his name, EAD is a reference to Nintendo EAD. Even Rainbow Road from Mario Kart 64 makes an appearance in the game as a track as well. It's even the same map layout which is really cool.

There are also cheats in the game as well. You use button inputs on the controller to activate them. You can unlock everything in the game and you can even turn the machines small like Penny Rcers cars. It's pretty neat.

One of the more cooler things about F-Zero X is the X Cup. It's the final cup in the game and the coolest thing about it is that the tracks are always different since they are randomly generated. You might get easy or hard courses, it's always different and you never know what to expect but that makes it even more exciting.

                   

                                I have always loved this piece of artwork. It looks so epic.

Final thoughts: The game still plays really well. I went back to go play it not that long ago and it still plays well. The graphics haven't obviously aged well, and the graphics got criticized when the game first launched for looking too basic. Basically untextured polygons. Lact of graphical detail. But the reason for that is so the game could stay at a smooth 60fps. It's definitely a technological feat keeping the frames at that level when you got 30 different racers on the screen at the same time. I honestly prefer a game to run better without any problems than have pretty graphics any day.

The gameplay is really fast and there is a lot of variety with the courses and characters, every machine controls differently and the game has a good number of modes. The music is really great. It really matches the game well due to the "extreme" nature of the game. The music just makes you want to headbang along like when you hear a good rock/metal tune. It's definitely the most hardcore music Nintendo has ever put out in any of their games. This game is basically Mario Kart on steroids. It's definitely one of the best N64 games out there and one of the best multiplayer games out there as well. Try White Land 2 or Big Hand with a group of 4 players and see what happens. It's definitely the most fun you can have at 1000 km/h.

So those are all my thoughts on...

 

               

Did you know that F-Zero X had an expansion kit?

That's right. F-Zero X received an expansion kit for the Nintendo 64DD on April 21, 2000 which was (almost) years after the original F-Zero X released. What does this do? Well basically it was an expansion kit, think of it like dlc, except it's a physical version of said dlc. It adds more tracks to the game, more music, a car creator/editor and even a track creator. Yes you can make your own courses and you can create up to 100 of them. They basically gave you the tool the developers used to make the original tracks from the base game, which is really cool.

Some characters, well 3 of them, even got an upgrade with the expansion. They got new looks and new machines as well with better stats. Captain Falcon got the Super Falcon, Jody Summer got the Super Cat, and Samurai Goroh got the Super Stingray. They were only available through the expansion but apparently the Super Falcon is available in the base game's code. You can access it via a cheat device but that freezes the game.

Another neat thing this expansion did was add a rock remaster version of the Rainbow Road song from Mario Kart 64 to the Rainbow Road from F-Zero X. That was really cool.

Sadly the expansion kit never saw a release outside of Japan due to the Nintendo 64DD never taking off. It would of been cool if Nintendo released the expansion kit as a form of dlc for F-Zero X since it has been available digitally on the Wii and Wii U for years. They can if they wanted to. Maybe they never will but at least we got the machine creator/editor in F-Zero GX so that's something I guess.

One thing I hope is that we get a new F-Zero game. The last new F-Zero game never made it out of Japan and that was 14 years ago. The last console F-Zero game released back in 2003 and the last F-Zero game we got over here came out in 2004. It's been such a long time since we had one. Miyamoto once said that Nintendo would make a new F-Zero game with the right controller interface. This was back when the Wii U was a thing. Was he referring to the Joy-Con controllers? I think the time is right for a new game in the series. I think it would be neat with the HD Rumble since the rumble could simulate the boosting and whatnot and all the crazy stuff that goes on in F-Zero games. Samus returned not too long ago and Fox made his appearance recently too. Maybe it's time for Falcon to show us his moves again in a game that isn't Smash Bros. Plus this happened too which is always a well played by Sakurai. Even the father of Super Smash Bros. wants a new F-Zero game. F-Zero even created the futuristic racer subgenre and influenced many of the futuristic racers we see today. It would be great to see the game that started it all back in action.

And with that, those are (finally) my thoughts on F-Zero X 20 years later. So what do you think? Did you ever play F-Zero X? If so, what do you think of it? Thanks for reading and Happy 20th anniversary F-Zero X!