The last item in F-zero, Nintendo’s anti-gravity racing series, came out 17 years ago on the Game Boy Advance. The last major console release was F-Zero GX, developed in conjunction with Sega’s Amusement Vision studio in 2003. Despite F-zero tracks that appear in Mario Kart, and Captain Falcon is one Super Smash Bros. mainstay, Nintendo has shown no interest in continuing F-zero over the past two decades. Fans will have to keep holding their breath.
At the end of last week, IGN published one extract from the interview with retired Nintendo designer Takaya Imamura about F-Zero’s long break. (Please forgive the lateness, but as this is F-zero what we’re talking about, I couldn’t quite pass this news up.) IGN asked Imamura if the franchise was really dead, and he had this to say:
“Of course I’ve thought about it a lot, but without a great new idea it’s hard to bring it back.”
The subtext here is that Nintendo tends to design games based on new gameplay concepts. Unless the company can make one at a time F-zero, it feels it cannot justify bringing the series back. Nintendo clearly has a precedent for revitalizing beloved series with new ideas, The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of the Wild serve as an excellent modern example. I would personally be pleased if Nintendo made an excellent arcade racer again, but apparently that’s not an option. There must be a trick.
Okay okay. So then give us a gimmick.
My main issue with Imamura’s line here – and it’s one Nintendo has parrot before about this franchise – is that it suggests F-zero not only needs a gimmick to work, but it’s also inherently immune to creativity. New thinking cannot be applied to it I think because it is a racing game.
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That’s somewhat ironic, because Mario Kart 8 and 8 Deluxe, which has recently been combined to chart as the best-selling racing game of all time, hardly had any new ideas to talk about. Karts turn into hovercrafts and gliders mid-race, but those transformations are short and almost entirely cosmetic; they do not significantly change vehicle behavior or add smart facets to the overall race. Mario Kart has never really changed that much, and yet Nintendo still sells a lot of those games.
Nevertheless, if the company is convinced F-zero cannot come back without an ingenious idea, there is enormous potential in that universe. First, the plethora of quirky characters makes it ripe for a story.
How about letting players control a racing team, like a futuristic version of Grid, recruit pilots and sponsors? Be inspired by Splatoon’s team-based games and Fire Emblem: Three Houses’ extensive team development activities when you are not on track. Give us the bona fide racing RPG that no one else is brave enough to make, just like you do golf
Bring back the in-depth aspects of customization and engineering from F-Zero GXStudy how other games in the genre have kept things fresh with asynchronous objectives and leaderboards that motivate players to constantly beat their friends’ times and scores.
I can’t be convinced there is absolutely nowhere for it F-zero to go. We’ve been through three console generations without a new one, and this medium has made great strides in that time.
It’s especially annoying to longtime fans because, as Imamura goes on to say, 2003’s F-Zero GX was phenomenal because Sega and Nintendo just made the damn game together – no “big idea”, no tricks. Led by Toshihiro Nagoshi (yes, Which Toshihiro Nagoshi, most famous today for Yakuza F-Zero GX was an engineering marvel on the GameCube and remains one of the most visceral, dazzling arcade racing experiences to this day. But that was not a big surprise as Nagoshi gave us too Virtua Racing Daytona, United States and Scud Race
Imamura told how that game came about:
‘I think it started with [Amusement Vision’s] Toshihiro Nagoshi presents the project to Miyamoto, ”says Imamura. “I really liked Daytona USA (which produced Nagoshi) so it was an honor to work with him. We had an arcade system board called Triforce that was based on the GameCube’s architecture, so when Nagoshi suggested making an arcade version of F-Zero, I was very happy, since I’ve always been a fan of arcade games.
At the time, Nagoshi was the top of Amusement Vision, a subsidiary of Sega. I don’t think many people from outside the company were ever allowed to enter the actual development offices. Companies usually didn’t let people into their development offices, but they showed me the arcade machines they were working on, which has become a special memory for me, ”Imamura recalls. “Nagoshi had a professional dart machine in his office, which I thought was very stylish. At the time, Nagoshi still had long hair, but he was already quite impressive. ”
You can see there is still reverence for it F-Zero GX by those who worked on it, including Nagoshi himselfHowever, it is difficult to make a business case for a game with a relatively small but extremely passionate and vocal cult of fans F-zero has been away for so long that I can’t help but believe a new entry wouldn’t fail, especially with all the love for Nintendo and the Switch out there today. Maybe give us a remaster of it GX to first gauge the receipt? Honestly, I will settle for anything on this point.