I've been a little preoccupied playing a little something that I'll be discussing on the blog very soon, but I've been trying to squeeze some SNES Online in between sessions. Today's discussion revolves around one SNES title that I've discovered to be rather addictive. BACKGROUND:
Like any other Nintendo plebeian, the only reason I know what F-Zero even is was thanks to one Captain Falcon being a character in Super Smash Bros. Apart from two of the tracks from the original game being available as DLC in Mario Kart 8, all of what I know of F-Zero is pulled from Smash. I've never played F-Zero, either, so I was excited to see where it all began. SUMMARY: F-Zero is a racing game where you pilot futuristic hover-car-things and travel at blistering speeds in various tracks. "Blistering" is not an exaggeration here, because at the game's fastest, it becomes extremely difficult to react to turns or obstacles unless you've memorized the course layouts. You can select from one of four vehicles (including Captain Falcon's signature vehicle: the Blue Falcon), and they each have different stats. Once you've made your choice, you select a "league" (essentially the game's difficulty setting), and go on a grand prix consisting of five tracks, each with five laps. There's a good variety of tracks, each with pretty varied layouts, distinct color palettes and backgrounds, and awesome music. When you're in the race, you'll have to watch out for sharp turns, obstacles (like sand, land mines, magnetic traps, and other things that have no business being in a race track), and other racers. There's a cutoff displayed throughout the race, and if you place lower than the specified position, you lose automatically. However, in a fast-paced environment such as F-Zero, winning is the least of your worries. Remember what I said about "blistering" speeds? Well, when shit's going too fast, you tend to hit your vehicle against objects, and in this game, that can lead to disaster. Smashing into walls or other vehicles drains your Power (indicated by a sort of health bar on your HUD), and if the bar goes to zero, your vehicle explodes and you lose the race. As terrifying as that sounds, there is a way to replenish your Power, and that's by driving over special tracks on the road. That said, it only heals so much, and if you want to survive, you'll need some quick reflexes to avoid crashing into things. If you manage to survive all five races, your race records (lap times, etc.) are saved in the aptly named Records menu. If you want to really optimize your times (or just learn the track layouts), there's also a practice mode where you can race in a selected number of tracks at your leisure. Though things are usually moving too fast for me to really register anything, there are a few moments during races where I can really appreciate how good this game looks. As with Super Mario Kart, I'm quite impressed with how they were able to pull this 3D racing game off with sprite-based visuals. VERDICT: As limited as the number of vehicles and modes are, F-Zero is still a blast to play on the merit of its thrilling, high-speed racing action alone. Skilfully navigating the challenging tracks at top speed with the killer soundtrack playing is incredibly satisfying, and that was more than enough to get me to replay races over and over. I now understand why there's a vocal minority of Nintendo fans calling for a new F-Zero game, because this game's pretty fun. - end -
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July 2024
Derryck
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