PixlBit

 Number 13

 

I remember 2003 being a pretty big year. 2003 was the first time I got to try my first Zelda games, the Advanced Generation of Pokemon games released, I got to try Rare's last game on the Gamecube, I turned 13, I think I had my first crush at school, my family and I went to Mexico for vacation back when it was safe to do so, and I was going to have a new baby brother.

It was a big year for me, well me and my family. It was around November and my little brother was born. Around that time my dad asked what me and my other brother wanted for xmas. I kept my list to a minimum and only asked for 2 things because of my newborn brother. One of them was one thing I had been looking forward to getting for the entire year..

                              

Close but no. I'm reffering to the fastest racing game in the galaxy...

F-Zero GX was a game I was really hyped for. I first learned of the game through Wind Waker's pre-order bonus disk, Master Quest, or back when pre-order bonuses were cool. The Master Quest disk included a port of Ocarina of Time and Master Quest, which was a harder version of the former. It also included trailers for upcomming Gamecube games, it had games like Wind Waker, Wario World, Metroid Prime, 1080 Avalanche, a montage trailer of all the games available on the Gamecube, and a trailer of F-Zero.

I was pretty blown away when I saw the trailer, I had no idea there was a new F-Zero game. I remember seeing the commercials for it too, and based from what I saw, the commercial was trying to tell me that this game was intense. Even my classmates asked me if I was getting/had F-Zero GX. I said no because all of my money went to Wind Waker, Starfox Adventures, and Star Wars Rogue Squadron 2. Months passed and I finally got F-Zero for xmas and boy was I excited for it. I went to the room as soon as we were done opening our presents, I popped the game on my Gamecube and I was blown away at how great the game looked and how fast it was. I was stunned at everything I saw, my 13 year old self couldn't comprehend at how awesome this game was.

            

If you're not familiar with F-Zero, here's what the games are about. Basically, the F-Zero franchise are racing games that have you pilot a hovercraft like vehicles while racing on crazy tracks at insane speeds. F-Zero X was my first F-Zero game and I loved it, but I knew that this was a huge step up from X. First and foremost what you should note about GX, is that Nintendo didn't develop it, but rather Sega did. Yes Sega. This was the first time that Nintendo and Sega worked together on a game, but it wouldn't be their last colaboration.

This game comes packed with different modes. First off, lets talk about Grand Prix mode. As the name implies, GP mode is basically a series of races in a cup that pits you against 29 other pilots/racers. You can also set your difficulty when selecting the cup you want to race in, and the higher the difficulty, the harder the races will be. There are 5 cups, 3 are available at the start and 2 of them are hidden.  After selecting a cup, you'll select your pilot. Here you have to select a machine but you have to pay attention to its stats. Stats are divided into 3 catergories: Body, Boost, and Grip and have ratings from A to E, with A being the best to E being terrible. The higher your Body's Rank is, the more abuse it'll take. The more Boost you have, the more you'll get out from Boosting. Grip is what'll allow you to control your machine. Afterwards you'll have to adjust your machines setting. You can choose from having more stop speed, but sacrificing acceleration, or having better acceleration but sacificing top speed. You can also keep the settings balanced and those are the ones I always use.

                 

You race and basically you have 3 laps to go through the whole course which are accompanies by some sweet rock and techno beats. You can also attack other racers with a spin attack and a side attack. Tracks are filled with obstacles from mines to jump pads that makes your machine jump in the air, to boost pads that gives you temporary boosts. To terrain hazards like dirt and such that affect your machines handling. After the 1st lap, you be able to use your machines boost which gives you a burst of speed, but it depletes your energy meter, if your whole meter deceases, your machine will blow up and will force you to use your spare machines/lives to restart the race, the lives you get range depending on the difficulty you choose so be careful. Also, your enenrgy can also deplete if you bump into other racers or hit mines and like boosting, it depletes your energy meter and it'll blow up. Races work like in Mario Kart, the higher the place you finish, the more points you get, and the higher you'll be in the overall rankings based on your grand total of points. After finishing a Grand Prix cup, you get interviewed by a reporter who asks your pilot questions and such. You also get tickets which you can use to buy stuff.

There's also a Practice mode to practice on any of the available courses with the ability to adjust laps, vehicles, and more. Time Attack haves you race for the fastest time possible on any of the available courses, as well as saving ghost data from your best time attack. VS. Mode has you play against 2-4 players in any of the available modes. Pilot Profiles show you info of all their pilots and machines. You also get an Options menu but that is self explanatory, a Customize Mode which I'll talk about in a bit, and a Story Mode. 

                  

Story Mode, as the name implies, is a story mode that puts you in the shoes of Captain Falcon, following his exploits, from practicing for a new tournament, fighting of a gang of racers, to trying to keep his machine from blowing up with a bomb, to racing against gods. It's pretty neat and gives you more clue on who is Captain Falcon and what does he do. I'll also tell you that the story mode chapters get hard as you progress. It has 3 difficulty settings and they are really tough. You unlock more content for the game if you manage to beat the chapters on harder modes.

Now let's talk about Customize. Customize is where you can take all your hard earned tickets and spend them on various unlockables. You have 3 options here, you can buy new characters and their machines as well as the 2 new cups if you manage to unlock them. Emblem Editor allows you to make an emblem of you own and slap it on a machine, or slap some premade ones as well. Machine Editor is the meat and potatoes of the Customize mode. Here you can put on emblems on existing machines, or make your own creations with original parts you can buy. Parts are divided on 3 different catergories, body which is the frame of your machine, cockpit is used for where your pilot will sit as well as using the grip/handling of the machine, and boost which are the boosters of your machine which also serves as the boost stat.

The game itself is really intense, you really have to rely on sharp reflexes through the courses. The races are really intense and you have to memorize the course carefully. And I'll also want to point out that this game is just brutally hard. I'm serious. The problem with the game is that it gets too hard too fast. Remember the GP Modes? I think there are 4 diffulty modes, and it gets hard on Hard mode, but it gets really insane when you unlock the Master Mode. That and the hardest mode on Story Mode. That is a real problem too because as you raise the difficulty, the lower number of spare machines/lives you'll get. On Master Mode, you'll only get one live, so if you lose a life, you already lost. You can attack opponent machines, and if you destroy 5 of them you get a spare machine. But good luck on Master Mode. Also, each character has a special movie that you can unlock, if you can win in Master Mode. And there's over 30 or 40 characters in the whole game and each of them has a special movie. Good Luck with that.

Let me tell you, out of all the games I ever played, out of all the difficulty modes in them, GX takes the award. I have never been so frustrated with a game before. Here's a little known fact about me, I broke 3 Gamecube Controllers trying to beat the Master Modes and the hardest story modes in the game. I'm not kidding. The game is that hard. But I kept coming back to it. I eventually got all the characters end movies and beat story mode in the hardest setting. I felt so proud with myself, in fact I was crazy enough to do it again a second time on another memory card. You know how people say that Demon/Dark Souls are the hardest games out there? I never played them and this is an unfair comparison since this is a racing game and the games are rpgs, but this is my version of those games.

              

The game is also compatible with F-Zero AX which is an arcade version of the game, and you can unlock content in both versions if you take your memory card with your save file of GX. AX has a special cup called the AX Cup which is exclusive to the arcade version, as well as additional characters. However, as before, if you can manage to beat the Story Mode on the hardest setting, you can unlock all that content without having to find the arcade version. Also, it was reccently discovered that you can play the arcade version of AX if you hack your copy of GX using a cheat device. Pretty neat.

As for my final thoughts of the game, well I like it. It's really fast, the tracks require you to have really sharp reflexes or you'll fall off course, the tracks have a sweet rock and techo beats to them, and it has alot to keep you playing for a while. The only flaw I see is the difficulty. It will put off newcomers because of its steep difficulty, but if you're looking for some really crazy and intense racing, and Mario Kart just doesn't do it anymore, then F-Zero GX is the game for you. It is one of the best things Nintendo and Sega have ever collaborated on and result is great.

                              

So, did you ever play F-Zero GX? Hpw about any of the other F-Zero games? Thanks for reading and later.