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[Neiteio]

Made it to the 15th (and I believe final) track today: Fire Field.

Didn't manage to beat it, but on my last life or so I realized that braking hard while turning tight is how you can safely navigate those hairpin turns. Also, when driving past the magnet rails, it helps to drive at a slight angle toward the outer wall.

I also realized something that should've been obvious: slowing down in the pit lane gives you more time to heel. Sometimes it's worth slowing down to do this.

The thing that keeps getting me are the narrow passages where everyone is pinballing off each other. Recipe for disaster!

Music and atmosphere is so good!

 

[voodoojohn]

Too many great memories of playing this game. Would love for the franchise to come back with less emphasis on the cartoony characters... the other games don't seem to capture the atmosphere of the original.

Spoiler

Coming from someone who didn't even play X or GX,but is turned off by screenshots and cover art.

 

[jnWake]

Port Town's music is seriously underappreciated. I love Mute City and Big Blue as much as the next guy but Port Town is simply majestic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5oXeWglbCE

Feels like a MMX2 track to some extent, especially the first section.

 

[Zapages]

I would rent this all the time from the local video game/video rental place growing up in the 90s.

My usual rentals were: Street Fighter 2 /Super Street Fighter 2/Street Fighter 2 Turbo/F-zero/Transformers the movie/GI Joes the movie.

Great memories!!!

The music is still great. I like it better than GX sometimes.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Reminds me of when nintendo released 200cc and had to remind everyone that a break button exists in Mario Kart 8.

That's exactly what I was thinking as I was reading the OP. Not just letting go of the gas, but actually using the brake button in 200cc felt almost like a surreal experience after so many decades of never using it in any game except to drift. Such an awesome experience, it's hard to play 150c after it.

 

[Niitris]

I still play F-Zero every now and then. Awesome game, defenitely an achievement for it's time.

 

[Neiteio]

Port Town's music is seriously underappreciated. I love Mute City and Big Blue as much as the next guy but Port Town is simply majestic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5oXeWglbCE

Feels like a MMX2 track to some extent, especially the first section.

Yeah, the Port Town theme is great. Did it ever get a proper remix in SSB Brawl or WiiU? Both have a Port Town stage with remixes of White Land, Fire Field, etc, but I can't recall if Port Town had a remix.

 

[Ladekabel]

Big Blue is the one that always stuck with me the most.



Looking forward to that one.

Never ever played F-Zero. But I heard Big Blue several times in Mario Kart 8. Am I crazy or does the beginning sound a lot like PunchOut?

 

[GenG3000]

Nice writing up.

As a F-ZERO and an arcade racer fan, I cannot see much value on this game nowadays. At the time it was the perfect system seller, the game that got people into the console thanks to how impressive it looked (and sounded!), while being one of the first good high speed racers, but for today's standards it's pretty rough and not so fun to play: 5 laps are definitely redundant, handling is too heavy, the rubberbanding is frustrating, the way you lose control in a game set around bumping is not clever at all, there isn't much skill involved (you can easily cheese through master) and compared to 3D F-ZEROs everything seems like a tech demo.

Pilotwings, in the other hand, as the other mode-7 launch title is still timeless in all fronts and the best Pilotwings game overall.

 

[JazzmanZ]

OP you managed to take down Pink grandma eh?

 

[BigJonsson]

F-Zero is awesome, got it along with Super Mario World when I got my SNES

 

[Neiteio]

Nice writing up.

As a F-ZERO and an arcade racer fan, I cannot see much value on this game nowadays. At the time it was the perfect system seller, the game that got people into the console thanks to how impressive it looked (and sounded!), while being one of the first good high speed racers, but for today's standards it's pretty rough and not so fun to play: 5 laps are definitely redundant, handling is too heavy, the rubberbanding is frustrating, the way you lose control in a game set around bumping is not clever at all, there isn't much skill involved (you can easily cheese through master) and compared to 3D F-ZEROs everything seems like a tech demo.

Pilotwings, in the other hand, as the other mode-7 launch title is still timeless in all fronts and the best Pilotwings game overall.

I haven't noticed any rubberbanding; if you don't hit anything, your rivals won't catch up. Also, the controls are super-tight and the laps are too briskly paced to be redundant. IMO.

 

[shouamabane]

Great game. I used to trade the cart off with friends at school and we'd try to beat each others times.

 

[Neiteio]

Man, I've gone through the King League and reached Fire Field on three separate occasions now, and each time I don't survive to the fifth lap, lol. Those tight passages where you're bouncing off everyone else are rough.

This game is so great. I'm smitten with its purity of design. You can boot it up and start racing in seconds.

I also must praise the sound effects, especially when you ease off and reapply the accelerator going around turns. It perfectly conveys the vehicle "shifting gears," so to speak.