If you are like me and you enjoy Nintendo games, then you have most likely heard of Mario Kart. You’ve probably played at least one game in the Mario Kart series, or perhaps two or three. Well what if I told you that Nintendo created a different racing game series before they started on the Mario Kart franchise?
That’s right—two years prior to the release of Super Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1992, Nintendo released F-Zero in Japan in 1990 (the game would later come to North America in 1991 and Europe in 1992). Set in the year 2560, a group of galactic billionaires created “F-Zero,” a new competition based on Formula One, with drivers utilizing high-speed, futuristic racing machines to compete against each other.
One of five launch titles for the SNES, F-Zero was revolutionary in its design, making use of the system’s Mode 7 graphics to create the illusion of a 3D background in a 2D space (this video provides a detailed explanation of how Mode 7 functioned on the SNES). For its time, F-Zero was a graphical wonder, breathing new life into the racing genre with its fast-paced gameplay and challenging difficulty.
In the game, players can choose between four competitors: Captain Falcon, who drives the Blue Falcon, Samurai Goroh, who races in the Fire Stingray, Pico (Wild Goose), and Dr. Stewart (Golden Fox). All four racing machines have their own unique stats, incentivizing players to try out each of them during gameplay.
Upon choosing a driver, you can race in one of three leagues, each increasing in difficulty—Knight, Queen, and King. Once you have entered into a league, you can toggle between four difficulty levels, which are Beginner, Standard, Expert, and Master. As you race, you have a power bar, which indicates the energy level of your machine during a race. This level can go down when you make contact with another machine or when you run into the sides of the track, but your lost power can be recovered by going into a pit area, which are typically placed near the beginning of the track.
Each race contains five laps, and with each completed lap, the player earns a “Super Jet,” a power-up that grants a short burst of speed. Races are played in a knockout format, as each racer that is below a certain place by the end of a lap is eliminated; for example, if the top 10 racers are admitted into lap two, you would be eliminated from the race if you were to finish in 11th or lower. Given the rapid and unforgiving nature of each race, the knockout style of these competitions vastly ramps up the intensity of the experience.
F-Zero performed quite well, selling 2.85 million copies in the time since its initial release in 1990. In the years following F-Zero’s launch, interest in the futuristic racing subgenre had emerged, with British game developer Psygnosis Limited making the Wipeout series for the PlayStation in the mid-1990s. However, the future of the F-Zero IP was in question, as plans for a sequel were a bit hazy.
In Jan. 1993, Nintendo acquired a 19.5 percent interest in the Japanese satellite radio company St.GIGA, becoming St.GIGA’s largest shareholder in the process. At the time, St.GIGA had been struggling financially, as they were having a hard time getting listeners to pay for their new subscription model. Japan was in a recession during this period, deterring the public from wanting to pay for a subscription radio service. Nevertheless, Nintendo was determined to make the most out of their working relationship with St.GIGA.
In 1995, Nintendo’s R&D2 division teamed up with St.GIGA to launch the Satellaview add-on for the Super Famicom, the Japanese version of the SNES. BS F-Zero Grand Prix, the first of two F-Zero games for the Satellaview, was released in four parts between Dec. 1996 and Jan. 1997. Considered to be the first sequel to the original F-Zero, BS F-Zero Grand Prix took many assets from its source code, providing a very similar feel between the two titles. This game added new tracks and new racing machines, expanding upon the universe that had been established several years earlier.
Over at Nintendo R&D1, the staff was hard at work on the 32-bit Virtual Boy, which launched onto the market during the summer of 1995. Plans for a new F-Zero title called G-Zero (also known as Zero Racers) were publicly announced around 1996, but the game never saw the light of day due to the cancellation of the Virtual Boy that same year. Although no known gameplay footage of Zero Racers exists, former Nintendo of America localizer Jim Wornell stated that the game was finished and had received a rating from the ESRB. Even so, Zero Racers, along with several other Virtual Boy titles, was ultimately never released thanks to the system’s cancellation after just one year on the market.
In the Mar. 1997 issue of Nintendo Power, Nintendo discussed plans to release a localized version of BS F-Zero Grand Prix overseas. By this point, it had been almost six years since F-Zero had been released in North America and five since it had come to Europe, leaving non-Japanese players starved for content for much of the ‘90s. Ultimately, these plans were scrapped, and the localization of the first Satellaview F-Zero title never came to fruition. Whether these plans were ever close to being realized is unknown, but this is not to take away from the fact that the IP was struggling to make a mark outside of Japan.
During the summer of 1997, BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 was rolled out in three parts, with a demo version called BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 Practice being broadcast beforehand. Unlike the first Satellaview F-Zero title, Grand Prix 2 was considered to be more of a special edition of the first Grand Prix installment rather than its own game. This would be the end of the series’ time on the Satellaview add-on, as Nintendo slowly ceased support for the satellite subscription service between 1998 and 2000.
As the Satellaview died out, Nintendo shifted more focus to the SNES’s successor, the Nintendo 64. Around this time, they had begun development of F-Zero X, which would be the second title in the series to make it out of Japan. Released in 1998, F-Zero X brought an edge to the series, featuring a heavy metal soundtrack, the ability to attack other racers, and faster gameplay than ever before; this commercial says it all. X introduced a plethora of new drivers, including Jody Summer, James McCloud—both of whom were said to have been playable in Zero Racers prior to its cancellation—Blood Falcon, an evil clone of Captain Falcon, and Black Shadow, who serves as Captain Falcon’s archnemesis. Another significant addition was the Boost Power feature, which, like the Super Jet before it, would kick in at the end of the first lap of a race. This mechanic grants you a free speed boost, albeit at the cost of your machine’s health.
On the whole, X was a pretty innovative step forward. While some were unimpressed with early screenshots of the game due to its perceived poor graphics, X ran at a steady frame rate of 60 frames per second (FPS), including 30 racers on the track during a given race. X was also the first game in the series to feature multiplayer, allowing for up to four players to play at once. Personally, I really enjoy X for its soundtrack, and I think it has influenced my taste in music quite a bit; “Drivin’ Through on Max” and “Dream Chaser” are two of my favorites.
In 2000, Nintendo released the F-Zero X Expansion Kit, an enhanced version of F-Zero X for the Japanese-only Nintendo 64DD, an add-on for the N64 that enabled the use of disks for the system. This variant of F-Zero X featured 12 new tracks, a car editor, and a track editor, allowing the game to reach its full potential. The Expansion Kit also added some new songs, including a remix of Mario Kart 64’s Rainbow Road. Overall, F-Zero X sold 1.1 million copies, which, while good in its own right, was less than half of what the original had sold on the SNES.
2001 saw the release of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo’s latest handheld gaming system. Among the GBA’s launch titles was F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, the series’ third worldwide entry; Maximum Velocity was developed by NDcube (now Nintendo Cube), serving as one of the first games to be developed by the company. Set 25 years after the events of the original F-Zero, Maximum Velocity features a new cast of characters, disregarding the original four and the newcomers from X. As a result, Maximum Velocity has none of the familiar faces from earlier installments, but some characters and their racing machines reference a few of the drivers from past games, such as Kent Akechi, who drives the Falcon Mk-II.
Mechanically, it was quite similar to the original on the SNES, opting to take more elements from F-Zero than F-Zero X likely due to the GBA’s limited processing capabilities. The knockout style of the races returned, and the environments of the tracks shared some similarities as well. In addition, Maximum Velocity contained some unlockable machines and included a multiplayer mode for up to four players, keeping gamers invested after they had initially purchased the game. While some critics felt that Maximum Velocity was hard to control at times due to the GBA’s small button sizes, they enjoyed the game for what it was and said that it was a solid addition to the GBA’s lineup of racing titles. Maximum Velocity sold 1.05 million copies worldwide, a slight decrease from X’s sales.
Around the time of Maximum Velocity’s release, Sega, one of Nintendo’s long-time competitors, had ceased support for their Dreamcast console and shifted their focus to third-party game development. Amusement Vision, one of Sega’s development teams, worked on Super Monkey Ball, which was released as a launch title for the Nintendo GameCube in late 2001. Shortly thereafter, Nintendo and Sega teamed up with Namco to create the Triforce arcade board, and Amusement Vision began development on F-Zero GX and AX, releasing both titles in 2003.
Serving as the series’ GameCube installment, GX was the first F-Zero title to be released on a home console since X in 1998. As a result, GX was able to set itself apart from past entries, not having to be confined to the gameplay style of the original SNES game. Likewise, GX was able to refine the fast-paced energy of X, while still holding true to the series’ roots on the SNES.
Perhaps the most notable addition to GX was a story mode, which saw the player race as Captain Falcon, the main protagonist, in a sequence of challenges against opponents like Samurai Goroh, Blood Falcon, and Black Shadow; each chapter of the story mode can be completed on one of three difficulty settings—Normal, Hard, and Very Hard. Some of GX’s other features include a shop, a garage, and an emblem editor, allowing players to customize their machines to their liking; all of this would probably be included as paid downloadable content today.
To this day, many consider GX to be the best title in the series, routinely voting GX as the number one F-Zero game on polls online. Despite all of its offerings, however, GX did not perform well enough commercially to keep F-Zero afloat in the long run. Though producer Toshihiro Nagoshi told Edge in 2018 that GX had sold 1.5 million copies worldwide—which would have outsold both X and Maximum Velocity—there is no way to confirm this information, as Nintendo themselves has never listed GX as having sold at least a million units. Thus, in spite of its critical success, GX has likely sold less than its predecessors on the SNES, N64, and GBA. GX would be the last F-Zero release on a home console for 20 years, largely due to the developers not knowing how to take the series further.
2003 continued to be a busy year for the F-Zero series, as the F-Zero: GP Legend anime premiered in Japan that fall, with Suzak Inc. developing an accompanying tie-in game launching for the GBA around the same time. GP Legend sees police detective Ryu Suzaku (known as Rick Wheeler in North America) wake up in the year 2201 after nearly dying from a car accident while chasing down an escaped criminal named Zoda. 51 episodes were produced, airing in Japan from Oct. 2003 to Sep. 2004 before 4Kids Entertainment adapted the series for North American audiences. Oh, and Captain Falcon performed his famous Falcon Punch in one episode.
Like with Maximum Velocity, the GP Legend video game took design cues from the original F-Zero on the SNES, featuring the Mode 7 graphical capabilities once more. GP Legend also included a story mode, allowing for players to complete a series of missions in addition to racing in traditional Grand Prix circuits. Though GP Legend scored well with critics, it did not perform well commercially, selling under 200,000 copies worldwide.
By the mid-2000s, it became clear to Nintendo that F-Zero had not been selling as well as they had hoped. Due to poor sales of prior titles and competition from the Mario Kart games, Nintendo opted not to release 2004’s F-Zero Climax outside of Japan. Predictably, Climax was not a high-selling game thanks to its limited release, although it did fairly well with critics. This marked the end of the F-Zero franchise for almost two decades, being relegated to one of Nintendo’s many dead and unsupported IPs.
While F-Zero was on hiatus, Captain Falcon made regular appearances as a fighter in the Super Smash Bros. titles, having been playable since the series’ first entry on the Nintendo 64 back in 1999. Other characters like Pico, Dr. Stewart, and Jody Summer made cameo appearances as collectibles throughout the course of the Smash Bros. series. Although several F-Zero titles saw digital re-releases, no new games were made.
During this period, Mario Kart made several references to F-Zero, featuring the Blue Falcon as a kart in Mario Kart Wii (2008), Mario Kart 8 (2014), and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017), with Mute City and Big Blue making appearances as race tracks in the latter two titles. On top of this, the Wii U launch title Nintendo Land (2012) included an F-Zero-inspired minigame called “Captain Falcon’s Twister Race,” in which players would drive around an obstacle course in the Blue Falcon in an effort to reach the end of each level within the given time limit.
Though Nintendo of Europe had reached out to Burnout and Need for Speed developer Criterion Games about potentially making a new F-Zero title for the Wii U, nothing came of this encounter, as Criterion was busy working on Need for Speed: Most Wanted at the time. While Nintendo continued to let F-Zero sit in the dust, German studio Shin’en Multimedia’s Fast series carried on the legacy of futuristic racing games with Fast Racing League (2011), Fast Racing Neo (2015), and Fast RMX (2017). All three titles are exclusive to Nintendo platforms, although they have seen a limited release primarily through digital storefronts; a sequel, Fast Fusion, will be released for the Nintendo Switch 2 later this year.
In 2023, Nintendo revitalized the F-Zero franchise with the release of F-Zero 99, a battle royale spin on the SNES game that started it all. As the name suggests, 99 players can compete in an online F-Zero race to try and go for the gold. 99 provided a new twist to the series by introducing Super Sparks, which, when enough are collected, allows players to ascend to the Skyway for a few seconds to race high above their competitors and pass them on the track. Given how long it had been since any F-Zero media had been prominently featured outside of a series of small cameos and guest appearances, F-Zero 99 was well-received at launch, and several updates with additional content have dropped in the time since then.
Whether Nintendo will decide to keep going with new F-Zero content after 99 remains unknown, but there is definitely a market for new games. After F-Zero GX is ported over to the Switch 2’s Nintendo Classics line, I hope Nintendo will consider making a new F-Zero game for the Switch 2. It’s a new generation, anything is possible. Make it happen, Nintendo.
Featured image by Patrick Hood on Canva.
