In Third Person

When most think about the F-Zero franchise, their minds immediately head towards the Super Nintendo original. There’s no shame in that, as the original F-Zero is a classic. For me, when I hear the name, my head speeds towards my fond memories of the Nintendo 64 sequel F-Zero X. Though I feel it was highly overlooked, it was easily one of my favourite games on that system and one of my favourite racing games of all-time.

F-Zero X took the core of the original game to crazy heights, speeds and turns. The advent of 3D allowed for the tracks to be designed with all sorts of loops, jumps, and cylindrical tracks; the latter of which I don’t think had been done in games before. With the cylindrical track, you could race all the way around the inside or the outside of the cylinder.

Combine this with its insane sense of speed, and F-Zero X is almost equal parts roller coaster as it was a racing game. At the time, there was no racing game that hit on those key points the way F-Zero did, which made the core formula a cut above to me.

Fleshing out the thrill ride was the fact that the game had a ton of different vehicles to choose from, a ton of tracks, a random track generator and 4-player multiplayer, which is where my friends and I spent most of our time. Maybe most impressively, even in 4-player split-screen mode, the game still moved at a blistering rate. F-Zero X may not have the cache of Goldeneye or Mario Kart 64, but it too was an awesome 4-player game.

If you don’t have easy access to a copy of F-Zero X and a Nintendo 64, the game is available on the Wii Virtual Console. I haven’t played it of late, but my gut thinks the game probably still holds up. I’m sure that if you give it a shot (and don’t have issues with motion sickness), you’ll have a blast.