F-ZERO 99

I couldn’t believe what I was reading when F-Zero 99 was announced during the recent Nintendo Direct. I was so excited to see the return of a true classic racing game - a game that still holds up remarkably well in 2023 - and seeing it attached to the brilliant ‘99’ formula that has been used so well with other classic titles in the past few years. The 99 games walk this brilliant tightrope where they’re super fast-paced and fairly light and breezy, so when you crash out you can quickly jump into another game and have another go but when you are in the business end of things it is some of the most exciting and tense action available. Victory is the most important thing in the world and also, doesn’t really matter at exactly the same time. It’s equal parts high and low stakes and utterly, utterly compulsive.

And yet! People were so negative about the idea of F-Zero 99 before they’d even downloaded the thing onto their Switch. F-Zero as a battle royale game was made out to be like it was Hitler 2, an absolute affront to God. A real “Monkey’s Paw” of a return for one of Nintendo’s most beloved game series. People wanted F-Zero GX2 and this was about as far from that as possible, with some people even saying the SNES original had ‘aged badly’ or was a ‘tech demo that was never that good to begin with’ - two absolutely ridiculous statements and one’s likely parrotted by people who had barely played it to begin with.

Now, don’t get me wrong - I would LOVE F-Zero GX2 or, better yet, a spiritual successor to the far superior N64 game F-Zero X, but the SNES F-Zero is a cracking little racing game geared around track and control mastery. Throwing an element of chaos into the mix might not be in the spirit of the hardcore racing of those classic games but based entirely on how the previous 99 games have worked, I couldn’t see it being anything less than a whole lot of fun built off the strong base that the SNES game provides. Unsurprisingly, F-Zero 99 is a work of fucking genius, mates.

You and 98 other racers line up on a custom bit of starter track, hit the gas and eventually jump into one of the classic tracks from Nintendo’s 1990 belter. Obviously, it is carnage, so you need to act fast if you’re going to stay alive. The most obvious is to use your boost power, which now has more in common with the N64 game than the original SNES game in that boosting drains a block of your life bar. It isn’t exactly like the N64 version in that you can stop boosting whenever you wish and spend a precise amount of your health but hitting boost gives you a SNES style burst of speed for a quarter of your life bar. Simply put, four boosts will put you at death’s door, with a single touch of a wall or by one of the many other competitors will have you blown to bits and eliminated from the race. It’s a very simple but very effective bit of risk/reward strategy that riffs on the rules of the SNES original.

As is the nature of F-Zero, there’s an emphasis on aggressive driving but here, every collision causes a glowing sphere to drop onto the track. Picking these up fills a meter, which when maxed out, allows you access to a floating skyway about the track, covered in boost pads whilst avoiding the crowded pack of other racers. The further back you are, the more of these orbs are likely to be scattered for you to pick up. It is a much more graceful solution than simply putting in rubberbanding as a catch-up mechanic. You can also perform the F-Zero X ‘spin attack’ to knock rivals out of the way and, if you are able to deliver the killing blow, grants you an instant health refill and, of course, access to more, safer boosts. Each one of these has a really clearly defined use - if you’re at the back, grab the orbs. If you’re in the middle of the pack, start trying to take out other racers and thin the herd and if you’re at the front, boost away safe in the knowledge you’re not going to hit heavy player traffic. All aspects of F-Zero’s core fundamentals - track mastery, taking out your rivals and boost management - and the risk/reward associated with each one, are represented here and fit perfectly into the F-Zero 99 formula.

The structure of F-Zero 99 is so smart. In order to take part in the main part of the game - the Grand Prix tournaments that pop up at timed intervals throughout the day - you have to enter standard one-off 99 races to acquire tickets, three of which are needed to enter a Grand Prix. Finishing a race in F-Zero takes less than three minutes tops and if you manage that, you’ll get near enough points for a ticket. Even if you stink the joint up and crash out, you still get something so you’re more than likely to hit the target of three before a Grand Prix session comes around. This essentially forces you into some low stakes practice runs at the courses and getting chances to try out different race strategies. Do you boost your way into the front and have a free run at the track or do you hang back, collecting the golden orbs and plan a late strike at the first place position, for instance? It also gives you ample opportunity to try out each of the four vehicles on offer, each one with different stats that govern top speed, cornering, the speed in which they recover life from the pit lane and how fast the cooldown on the spin attack is, so finding the one that best suits your play style and race strategy is essential.

When you’re ready, it is time to put all of this to good use and enter a Grand Prix event. A Grand Prix is a series of three or five races, with points gained depending on the position you finish. Most points at the end wins the Grand Prix and everyone who takes part gets given a bunch of points towards their position in the overall online leaderboard, which resets weekly. This is the ‘serious business’ part of F-Zero 99. With every race, the threshold to continue in the Grand Prix is raised, from top 80 to 60 to 40 until there’s a maximum of 20 competitors left in the final race. You will also be eliminated if you blow up, so sometimes you have to make a strategic call to maybe drop a few places and finish the race alive, rather than blowing all your health on a suicidal attempt at boosting your way to first place, because finishing the entire GP is going to be much more beneficial than getting dumped out on the first race and having to gain some more tickets to enter the next one. Again, this isn’t the worst thing that can possibly happen but it is just enough on the line to make the GP events feel meaningful and exciting and for me, that is the ‘99’ game experience right there. That brilliant little mix of being high and low stakes at exactly the same time. Like playing poker with your mates with a fiver each in the pot. No one is going to miss a fiver for an entire evening’s entertainment but if there’s five of you at the table… twenty five quid is a decent return for an evening’s work!

So, I get it, I do. I get that this isn’t the F-Zero that everyone wanted when they spent the last 19 years pretending to be a fan of F-Zero because a YouTuber they watch really likes F-Zero GX. I understand. However, what we have got is a fantastic little game that has so much potential to grow - more tracks, vehicles, modes and even things like the ability to host your own lobby could be added to the game over the coming months and make an already excellent thing even better. It’s going to be a real pisser when Nintendo inevitably shutter the servers for this in a year or so, so rather than complain about something that was never going to happen, enjoy the really fucking good thing that did happen while you can.

THANKS FOR READING.

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