F-Zero X made a deal that most racing games of 1998 would not. Nintendo gave each of its hover-racers only about 50 polygons, as Edge counted them, and took nearly everything away from the side of the track. In return the game ran at 60 frames a second with 30 machines in every race, and kept that speed with four players on a split screen. Edge called it “quite simply the fastest racing game ever made”. Retro Gamer, ranking it among the best racing games ever a decade later, called it “one of the ugliest looking racers to ever appear on a 64-bit console”, and added that what it lacked in looks “it certainly makes up for in the all important gameplay department”.
Fast facts
- Developer: Nintendo’s EAD; Takaya Imamura, who had designed Captain Falcon for the first F-Zero, was chief designer.
- Released: Japan, July 1998; North America, October 1998; Europe, November 1998.
- Machines: 30, six of them available at the start.
- Modes: Grand Prix, Time Attack, Death Race, four-player Vs. Battle and Practice.
- Expansion: the F-Zero X Expansion Kit for the Japanese 64DD disk drive, 2000.
Speed first
The first F-Zero (1990) had been one of the Super Famicom’s launch games, its track drawn with the console’s Mode 7 and only four cars to choose from. Nintendo brought the series to the Nintendo 64 with real 3D tracks that loop, twist into tubes and run along the outside of cylinders hanging in the sky. When Edge previewed it in January 1998, some six months before release, Nintendo was already showing 30 craft and, with up to 20 of them on screen, “no noticeable slowdown”. “If the craft look polygonally challenged, it’s because they are,” the magazine wrote. “Most players will consider that an acceptable trade-off for speed.”
Edge’s review of the Japanese release in September 1998 explained what the trade-off was for. The game “sacrifices having complex background scenery in order to maintain maximum speed at 60 frames per second”, a figure that would fall to 50 in Europe, where televisions refreshed at 50Hz. With so little to draw, Nintendo could put far more craft on the track: “Gran Turismo’s six-up races suddenly seem slightly sparse compared to the 30 ships that F-Zero X can manage.” The four-player mode ran “with no noticeable loss of speed”.
Energy, boosts and attacks
Each machine has one energy bar. It is the machine’s shield: hitting walls or other racers drains it, and an empty bar means an explosion and the end of the race. From the second lap it is also fuel for a boost, so every burst of speed costs protection. Pit zones around the track recharge it.
The racers can fight. Double-tapping the R or Z button slams sideways into a neighbour, and holding Z while double-tapping R spins the craft into “a spinning attack capable of demolishing rivals”. Some sections of track have no rails, and Edge noted that a hard enough hit can push an opponent over the edge. Successful attacks add energy, and the game marks the driver closest to you in the championship as your “Rival”.
Thirty machines
The four craft from the first game, Captain Falcon’s Blue Falcon among them, came back with 26 new ones. Each is graded from A to E on three attributes: body (how well it stands up to collisions), boost and grip. Nintendo Power gave the Blue Falcon as an example: body C, boost C and grip A, which meant it “doesn’t stand up well to slams” and used a lot of energy when boosting, but handled very well. Before each race the player sets a slider between acceleration and top speed. Six machines are available at the start, and the rest are won by winning circuits.
Cups and modes
The Grand Prix has 24 tracks in four cups of six, named Jack, Queen and King, with the Joker cup opened by winning the others. Beyond those is the X Cup, whose six tracks are, in Retro Gamer’s words, “randomly generated”, different each time it is played. Time Attack keeps five records for each track and lets the player race ghosts of their best laps. Death Race puts the player on an endless looping track with the 29 other machines, and the aim is to destroy them all as quickly as possible. In four-player Vs. Battle, a player knocked out of the race gets a slot machine in the corner of the screen; line up three symbols and one of the remaining racers loses energy.
Reception
Edge gave the Japanese version eight out of ten. It thought F-Zero X “a lazy sequel in some respects”, relying “too heavily on its forebear for inspiration”, but “a highly competent racing game”, and said the four-player mode “is capable of devouring hours at a frightening rate”. It also pointed out that WipEout had taken its inspiration from F-Zero in the first place. Nintendo Power recommended keeping oxygen masks nearby. In 2008 Retro Gamer put it among its 25 best racing games: “By focusing on the gameplay first and foremost, instead of worrying about how pretty everything looked, Nintendo created a racing template that few other developers have managed to match.”
The 64DD expansion
When Edge previewed the game in January 1998, its menus already listed “Course Edit” and “Machine Edit”, a sign that Nintendo meant to support the Nintendo 64’s planned disk drive, the 64DD. The drive was sold only in Japan. The F-Zero X Expansion Kit came out for it in 2000. It needed the original cartridge, added new championships, and let players design and save their own tracks to disk.
Later F-Zero
The next home F-Zero was made outside Nintendo. For the GameCube’s F-Zero GX, released in Japan and Britain in 2003, Nintendo supplied the series and Shigeru Miyamoto acted as general producer, while Sega’s Amusement Vision studio under Toshihiro Nagoshi designed, directed and programmed it. Imamura again worked on the look of the game.
Sources
- Edge issue 54, January 1998, p. 35: preview (30 craft, polygon counts and the trade-off for speed, the Course Edit and Machine Edit menu entries).
- Edge issue 62, September 1998, pp. 76–79: review of the Japanese release (“the fastest racing game ever made”, 60 and 50 frames per second, about 50 polygons a ship, 30 ships, the attacks, the Rival, recharge zones, the cups, Death Race, four players, eight out of ten).
- Nintendo Power issue 110, July 1998, p. 29: preview (four machines from F-Zero and 26 new ones; body, boost and grip; the Blue Falcon’s grades; six machines at the start; oxygen masks).
- Nintendo Power issue 112, September 1998, pp. 12–14: F-Zero X feature (24 courses; the Grand Prix and the Rival; Time Attack records and ghosts; Death Race with 29 other machines and rail-less sections; the Vs. Battle slot machine; the acceleration and top-speed setting).
- Nintendo Official Magazine issue 75, December 1998, pp. 22–23: review of the British release (Jack, Queen and King cups at the start, then Joker and X; the side and spin attacks; boosts after the first lap; the pits; the slot machine).
- Retro Gamer issue 47, 2008, p. 88: “Top 25 Racing Games” (Nintendo EAD; 60 frames a second against 29 other racers; the energy bar as boost; the staff ghost; the randomly generated X Cup).
- Retro Gamer issue 115, 2013, p. 63: the four machines of the first F-Zero, Captain Falcon’s Blue Falcon among them.
- Edge issue 76, October 1999, p. 8: Space World 1999 report (the 64DD restricted to Japan; F-Zero X DD letting players design and save their own tracks).
- N64 Magazine issue 40, April 2000: future 64DD releases (the F-Zero X Expansion Kit, needing the cartridge, adding championships).
- Edge issue 111, June 2002, p. 24: Toshihiro Nagoshi’s “AV Out” column on the GameCube F-Zero, as cited in the Toshihiro Nagoshi entry; Edge issue 110, May 2002, news, as cited in the Takaya Imamura entry. Issue 128, October 2003, p. 84: F-Zero GX review (developer Amusement Vision; out in Japan, due in Britain in October).
- “F-Zero and Star Fox world and characters designer Takaya Imamura leaves Nintendo”, Gematsu, 20 January 2021 (web, secondary): Imamura as chief designer of F-Zero X. https://www.gematsu.com/2021/01/f-zero-and-star-fox-world-and-characters-designer-takaya-imamura-leaves-nintendo
- Wikipedia, “F-Zero X” (web, secondary): release dates by region; the X Cup’s six random tracks; the Expansion Kit’s Japanese release in April 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Zero_X