A new F-Zero, Nintendo? Please?

F-Zero is a fantastic Nintendo franchise that needs a new entry, especially with the crazy hardware capabilities of both the WiiU and the 3DS. The last major console title -- F-Zero GX for the Gamecube -- was a kickass game and one of my favorite racing games of all time. It came out in 2003 and I STILL love playing it to this day.

I could talk for days about GX, but I would much rather talk about what's great about the franchise and why it absolutely needs a new game in the series. For those who don't know how awesome F-Zero really is, buckle up for a sec and read on.

Imagine, for a minute: the year is 20XX, of fabled Nintendo fame. Space travel is so possible we don't even give a fuck about it anymore. We humans are too busy RIPPING THE GALAXY APART so we can put crazy anti-gravity racing tracks everywhere for our own enjoyment.

You're some alien dude with a souped-up zero-gravity machine called an F-Zero, and you wanna race your ASS off in the most watched sport in the world: the F-Zero Grand Prix. Only thing standing in your way? 29 other borderline insane racers who want nothing more than to crush you into a fine silicon dust on the racetrack. Including this motherfucker:

"Black Shadow," a douche villain/C. Falcon's nemesis.

On tracks like this:

It's called "Fire Fields" because it's literally just a tube suspended above a bunch of lava...

And then there's Captain Falcon, the main protagonist who can blow up the entire damn universe with his punches:

2012: the year that gaming (sort of) grew up

Instead of another dreaded year-end "best of" list that most folk love to hate, I decided to take some time to go over some of the important trends and news stories from the game industry. Gaming turned 40 last year -- and with this progression the claims that it has "grown up." In my opinion, the growing pains have just begun.

Geoff Keighley being dead inside is a pretty good way to sum up how weird last year was.

2012 was a wild year for gaming as a global community. As a whole, the entire business of thinking about video games has been in the process of upheaval from all corners, regardless of how slow actual progress may seem to be. There were also a lot of painful, awkward incidents that (hopefully) helped teach universal lessons to developers, writers, PR execs and gamers alike.

In my own opinion, one of the biggest things that happened to the gaming community in 2012 was the corrosion of the powerful hold that shitty, racist, sexist and sophomoric people have on our electronic entertainment. Part of this beautiful corrosion was a result of the continued blossoming of games writing sites that encourage thoughtful discourse about the tenets of game design and the issues surrounding it. For example: BrainyGamer, Gamasutra, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, and even Kotaku all had some wonderful posts.