Nintendo’s futuristic speed saga has been 30 years since its launch in Japan, and has been missing in action for several years. Will it return on Switch?
30 years. That is what F-Zero meets, one of the sagas loved by Nintendo fans that, yes, does not lavish too much. In three decades, six installments have appeared, and although some of them are considered the best that the factory of Miyamoto and company has, the futuristic racing series is more missing than we would like. Since 2004, a new installment has not appeared, and for the moment two desktop generations (Wii and Wii U), two portable generations (Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS) have been lost and it does not seem that the streak will be broken on Nintendo Switch.
Born as one of the great claims of Super Nintendo, it was on November 21, 1990 when the first F-Zero was published in Super Famicom, in Japan. The departure in the United States was in 1991 and a year later, in 1992, it would arrive in Europe. The game surprised by its futuristic theme, something that opened the way to the sub-genre that later other prominent names such as Wipeout or Extreme G among many others explored, standing out for its technical finish with the one known as Mode 7, which allowed us to experience a feeling of more realistic three-dimensional depth in these types of games.
The jump to polygons: technology at the service of speed
It took eight years for a new installment to see the light. It was F-Zero X, a game that displayed a higher level of graphics with what Nintendo 64 was capable of offering. But the highlight was the 60 frames per second on a console that rarely aimed at it, a sensation of devilish speed and a lot of competitors on screen: 30 at a time. The increasing difficulty, its extensive content and replayability did the rest. What was a first installment became a saga, and one of those that showed technical muscle every time he jumped onto the pitch.
At the beginning of the new century, in 2001, F-Zero Maximum Velocity would arrive, for the Game Boy Advance. A new show of power, transferring all the essence of the saga to the portable format: more than 20 tracks, demanding from almost the tutorial, with a difficulty curve that climbed as fast as the speed peaks of the ships and that forced the player at maximum concentration. Here, as in the entire saga, any failure meant failure.
The hardest game ever raised
It was in 2003 when the series reached the peak. In an exceptional collaboration between Nintendo and SEGA, with developer Amusement Vision, F-Zero GX for Gamecube and (a marvelous arcade version called AX) became everything the license had always wanted to be and what it had shown. The most brutal game of the racing genre that we remember, due to a difficulty that did not allow even the slightest failure, where a fifteenth position could be a good result for the general calculation, and where everything came together at the speed of light: frames per second like rocks, spectacular visuals, music accompanying the same devilish rhythm, story mode, content and challenges to bore, lots of vehicles on screen and a simply crazy track layout. A difficult game like no other, which goes beyond the concept of a racing game in a loose way and which today remains unbeatable.
A year later (in Europe) F-Zero: GP Legend would arrive, also for Game Boy Advance and this time developed by Suzak. With a more traditional formula, following in the footsteps of SNES and the previous Nintendo laptop game, the title was once again a demonstration of good work within the saga, with content to spare (highlighting the 48 challenges that put you to the test as a player) and a more than convincing finish. Although of course, we had just met GX and nothing was the same. Climax would later come out, exclusively for Japan and closing the trio of games for the GBA laptop. Since then, there has been no news of the license. Who knows if on Switch we will have news again.
