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1990 · SNES · Super Famicom
| Region | Date | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 21 Nov 1990 | Nintendo |
| North America | 23 Aug 1991 | Nintendo |
| Europe and Australia | 11 Apr 1992 | Nintendo |
Picture the Super Famicom's first weeks in Japan: a flat track that tilts and turns beneath a hovering car, drawn as if in 3D, at a speed no home console had shown before. That was F-Zero. Nintendo shipped it as a launch game on 21 November 1990, and it existed as much to show off the new hardware as to be a racing game.
The racing itself is simple and strict. You pick one of four hover machines, each driven by a character (Captain Falcon among them), and race five laps against a field of rivals. You must finish each lap in a higher position than a set cut-off or you're disqualified. Every lap you complete earns a Super Jet boost, and you can hold up to three. Crashing into walls, mines or other cars drains your power meter, which refills only in the pit lane on the home straight.
Shigeru Miyamoto produced it and Kazunobu Shimizu directed, with a team of nine including three programmers. The trick behind it is Mode 7, a SNES feature that rotates and scales a single flat background layer. F-Zero spins the whole track around your car to fake a 3D road without drawing any polygons. Critics at the time called it the fastest, smoothest pseudo-3D racer on a home system.
North America got it in August 1991 and Europe in 1992. Its 15 tracks come in three leagues, Knight, Queen and King, each with four difficulty levels up to Master. Mute City appears three times, in day, evening and night versions. The series continued with F-Zero X on the Nintendo 64 in 1998.
The sense of speed survives. Hitting a dash plate at full tilt, holding a Super Jet for the last straight and threading between rivals still feels fast and precise, and the music is excellent. On the later leagues, with their tight corners and slippery patches, it becomes a real test of memory and nerve.
What's missing is company. There is no two-player race at all, only a practice mode alongside the championship, and the rivals are either bumpers or rockets. The tracks are flat, since Mode 7 can't do hills. As a solo time-attack game it holds up well; as a racing game to share, it was quickly passed by.
There is a moment on a Mute City straight, Super Jet held, dash plate ahead, when your thumbs stop feeling like thumbs. F-Zero was a launch showpiece in 1990, a flat track spun around your car to fake 3D, and the feeling it sells hasn't aged.
Roger Caillois named four kinds of play, and one is ilinx: vertigo. Children spin until they fall over; F-Zero spins the whole world instead. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains why it lasts. Flow comes when challenge matches skill, goals are clear and feedback is immediate; self-consciousness drops away and time bends. The lap cut-off sets the goal. Every wall scrape shows on the power meter at once. The King league raises the challenge as your nerve grows. F-Zero is thin on modes, and mostly it's you against your own lap times. Chasing a tenth of a second alone at night is still one of the purest ways to disappear for a while and come back somehow lighter.
Read: The zone: why good games make time disappear →
Verdict · 7/10
A launch game that still feels quick and sharp, even if it is thin on modes. Great for chasing your own lap times; look elsewhere for a night of racing with friends.
