LogFAQs > #950863343

18. F-Zero X (N64, 1998)

It is fall of 1998, and I'm with my family in a Best Buy, trying to decide on which current-gen console we're going to invest in. It's a few months before Pokmon, and Nintendo, and video games as a whole all start to take over my life, so I'm mostly excited by the thought of playing the latest NCAA Football entry on the PlayStation. My brother is much more drawn to the upcoming release of Zelda on Nintendo 64, and as the one with much more interest in gaming (at the time), and the one with actual money (and seniority), he convinces us to go with it. But obviously we had to have a game to go with it, as Zelda wasn't due out for another couple of months. Memories of how exactly we landed on F-Zero X are hazy, but as someone who liked their experiences of both Mario Kart and Wipeout, it was a pretty safe choice. And thus my two-plus-decade long love affair with the F-Zero series, and its...sadly paltry selection of games, began.
F-Zero X made a lot of sacrifices visually to run at a constant 60 fps (very uncommon among N64 games) - it's backgrounds are hazy, there's very few non-track elements on the courses, and it's just generally quite ugly. But the gameplay is so, SO smooth. F-Zero's claim to fame is always its absurdly high speed, and as such its perfect framerate is almost essential in capturing that so well. As a bonus, it misses out on the problematic N64/PS-era "texture hell" graphics - its minimalist courses make it very clear where hazards, walls, and boosts are along the courses, and it still holds up exceptionally well to this day. X also nails so many other aesthetic elements that you can forgive its graphical limitations: the stylistic comic-book themed characters and menus, the incredible heavy metal soundtrack, and the ridiculous robot voice effects (YOU'VE GOT BOOST POWER! POUR IT ON, YOU'RE WAY OUT IN FRONT!! YEAAAAH, THE FINAL LAP!!) all stand out so distinctly in my memory.
X also introduced a number of novel innovations, most of which would quickly be adopted as standards for the series. Boost power allows you to deplete your power gauge for a temporary speed boost, rather than just earning one per lap as in the SNES edition. A full 30 racers compete on a track at the same time, earning points for placement in each course across an individual cup (and that also means 30 unique vehicles and drivers to play as and unlock). Vehicle attacks such as the side-swipe and spin are added here, and you can earn extra lives in a cup race by taking out enough opponents. There's even some novel additions like the X Cup (comprised of six randomly generated courses) and Death Race (take out the other 29 cars in a looping course as fast as you can) that only appear here, but are just as enjoyable.
But the game's courses are the huge stars here: they're outstanding technical roller coasters that really make the most of the translation to a 3D environment. You've got big jumps, little jumps, steep banked turns, loops, corkscrews, half-corkscrews, tubes, half-pipes, full-pipes, all flying at you at over 1000 km/hour. There's a giant oval course with near-nonstop boosts, there's a course with a staircase of deadly jumps at the end, there's a course that's almost entirely a treacherous halfpipe with no walls, there's a course shaped like a giant hand - every one of them kicks ass. But unlike Mario Karts, F-Zero is an uncompromisingly fair game; you don't get power-ups or items to work your way back in front, you've got to do it all on your own racing merit. And there's no Lakitu to save you if you drive off an edge or fly off the course from going too fast; you lose a machine and have to try again. This makes multiplayer perhaps a little bit less accessible to new players, but also makes competing for fast times and high scores extra compelling. I only beat a couple of the staff ghosts back in the day, but a good friend of mine conquered them all and regularly submitted times to fan-created online leaderboards. The courses are so wonderfully crafted that it feels good to optimise every last turn, jump, and boost to perfection, and then do it again.
And though I made a brief reference earlier, I can't end without mentioning the game's incredible music. X has so many awesome and memorable tunes, and its guitar-laden tracks feel so tonally different to what you might expect from video games of the era. There's something extra special about the combination of headbanging metal to precision high-speed racing - it just works and the whole game leans into it perfectly. The guitar arrange edition soundtrack, released in Japan, is one of my all time favorite video game soundtracks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnp2c4wl7Y
For a period of my teenage years, I listened to this thing nearly every damn day, and popping back in now and hearing a couple tunes is just an absolute treat.
There's only one racing game that has managed to capture my heart in the same way as this one, and it shares a heck of a lot of similarities, but we won't be seeing that on the list until the top five. Playing its courses feels just as wonderful as it did back in 1998 - and if you haven't played this one by now, shame on you. If I'm willing to concede that Mario 64 "holding up" is debatable, I'll hear no arguments for X - it's certainly ugly, but it still runs like a champ and absolutely kicks as much ass as it ever did. I could ramble on forever (guess I sort of have) about F-Zero, and why Nintendo should be held criminally responsible for not giving us anything in the series for the past 15 years, but we'll always have X as a beautiful gem of a game, and I'm so thankful for that.
Top 5 Courses: Sector Beta - Red Canyon - Port Town - White Land - Silence

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