With the success of F-Zero 99, what should Nintendo do with the F-Zero series now?
With the success of F-Zero 99, what should Nintendo do with the F-Zero series now?
F-Zero 99 has proven the viability of OG FZero gameplay on for modern fans.
My thoughts:
Fans are going to say "This means you should make a new #FZero successor to FZeroGX".
I'm going to disagree.
What this actually means is you should make F-Zero Maker as a successor to Mario Maker.
The OG tracks are 2D and simple, they could very easily be hand-made by players in an editor.
My biggest pipe dream is an F-Zero with an extensive single player mode that's not even a racing game but plays like a Yakuza game instead. The series has such amazingly stupid characters that it would be a shame if nothing was ever done with them. I want Captain Falcon beating up people in Mute City in that over-the-top Yakuza style.
Good point. The lore of the game is that these are all crooks and bounty hunters and this racing thing is a side-gig. A racing-themed science-fiction open-world game is an obvious fit for that.
...That sounds kind of amazing. I don't know how happy F-ZERO fans would be with that, but Smash gave Captain Falcon enough fighting moves that it could kind of work.
The focus should stay on the racing. The mechanics need to be solid, there needs to be enough tracks, the works. The singleplayer would need to primarily be about racing, since it's rare that a game can be two genres at once and succeed. But the structure can be flexible!
You play as Captain Falcon in a somewhat open world. You can drive around freely in the Blue Falcon. The world is very large, but the Falcon is very fast so it's fun to explore. There are oodles of races to be had, but you have to drive to them in order to participate. At any point you can hop out of the Blue Falcon and, like, start punching stuff. Captain Falcon runs pretty fast, has his Falcon Punch, has most of his moves from Smash and more. You could also tweak the Blue Falcon's stats and look as you go. It would still be the racing game that F-ZERO fans want, but it would also attract people who weren't interested in F-ZERO but like Captain Falcon in Smash and want to play as him rather than his vehicle.
Yeah, beat-em-up gameplay on foot and racing gameplay in the hovercraft for an open-world sci-fi racing game seems like a good fit. Get cash from bounty-hunting and race purses, spend it on part upgrades, unlock new zones, etc. Samurai Goroh, the beefy katana-wielding bandit with a huge bounty on his head who pilots the Fire Stingray, gets to be your recurring villain. Racing, car chases on elevated expressways, and punching things.
Ooooh oooh I know this one! Due to the overwhelming success, they’re going to shut down F099 as soon as possible.
Why not both?
I'm happy people like f zero 99, but the f zero gx itch remains unscratched.
Scratch me, Nintendo!
to be fair, that was - bizarrely - a sega game
Excellent, Sega made the Yakuza and Shenmue games too, and the F-Zero setting is canonically about bounty hunters and crooks racing as a hobby. It would make perfect sense to have Sega return to the F-Zero franchise to make an open-world game in a crime-ridden interplanetary dystopia about racing, car-chases, and punching things.
There was a track maker add-on to F-Zero X for the N64 DD that only released in Japan. One cool thing they could do is put F-Zero X on the Switch N64 Online with that track maker added and if possible with online play and/or the ability to share tracks. That would be awesome.
Along with a brand new entry in the series, please. 😁
Hear me out: "Grand TheFt Zero".
"Son, you can get your money back if your falcon punch that prostitute."
If I were Nintendo, I'd announce that a successor to FZeroGX is in development. I'd also announce that FZero99 will be expanded beyond the original content. I myself don't really care about FZeroGX, FZero99 is a childhood dream becoming true, without knowing that this was my childhood dream, so I hope that we'll be able to play 99 for a while.
There is only so much you can do with a Mode 7 track editor. Mario Maker provides a massive catalogue of obstacles and power ups for the creator to use as they see fit, an OG F-Zero maker won't provide even a fraction of opportunities. As a standalone software it doesn't make business sense, but it could be an expansion to 99.
You'd have to add more content, yeah - more track elements than just mines, jumps, pain-borders, wind, and boosters. Maybe some way to control bumper-spawning as a track-design element or something.
I'm now revising my idea: "Combined F-Zero + Super Mario Kart maker". 1 Mode7 track editor, 2 games, 1 product. Post the best tracks to F-Zero99 as F2P content, make the editor, track-browser, splitscreen, and SMK the paid value-add.
I just learned about this game from this post, as an old head i just have to say whaaaaaaaat!!!
Glorious chaos. The game eases you into it with a few races with only 10 or 20 computer-controlled opponents. The first true 99 race was astonishing. I like the way they have everyone abreast in a standing start, and then spread them out with a few obstacles before funneling them onto the actual track so it becomes a rolling start, but without random chance determining the start order.
Same dude I just played it after reading about it. It's still technically 3.99$ for Nintendo online play. But damn if it isn't fun.
It's so much fun. If you've got a paid Nintendo Switch Online account, go play it it's a free download with NSO. That said
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The super-short track list is repetitive as hell, they're currently only running the 4 of the 5 Knight League tracks in normal rotation... and realistically OG FZero only had 15 tracks and half of them were retreads with minor variations so it will still be a problem when they launched Queen/King leagues.
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With 99 players constantly brawling, big rewards for ramming an enemy player to death, and some random speed-boost drops, the gameplay feels really random because of emergent factors. It's very chaotic. It's fun, and I've seen competitive streamers get sucked in so there's obviously enough skill involved to keep them engaged, but still there's a lot of races where you'll do everything right but still lose badly. My only first-place finish was blind luck.
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Thinking it further: Combined F-Zero + Super Mario Kart maker.
I know everyone wants the Captain Falcon GTA F-Zero, but the whole reason the franchise appeals to me is its purity as a racing game. GX pushed the absolute limits of what arcade racing could be, and there hasn't really been a non-realistic racing game since that has a skill ceiling that high. It's absolutely mind-boggling what Amusement Vision created with GX twenty years ago.
Adding vehicle weapons, RPG mechanics, or a GTA like open world would probably garner more sales and interest from average joe gamers, but doing so would lose sight of what makes this franchise great. All that is probably more likely to happen than not should there be a new installment, as much as I hate to admit.
I'd say vehicle weapons is right out and is the line where it ceases to be F-Zero, but I don't see how RPG mechanics or open-world preclude including racing challenges with an extreme skill ceiling. I mean, with the current Soulslike fashion trend I'd say they could market based on that, particularly with Armored Core 6 demonstrating how "RPG elements with a very low stat ceiling" works well with skill-based gaming.