Tuesday, March 12, 2013

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:



The games are hard as nails. Especially in GX, you have to go as fast as you can and almost destroy yourself to get in first place. You will fly off the bottom side of a track into the sky and explode. You will scream and break a controller (my friend Evan did this.) You will (eventually) rise to the top of the track on the back of the crumpled metal of your rivals and win as the announcer howls "ALLLLLRIGHTTT! FIRST PLACE!!!"

I think you can understand part of why I love the F-Zero franchise. The games are super stylish (in the way that only Nintendo can do) and crazy fast-paced. The music is also super awesome. Captain Falcon's theme  from F-Zero GX will get you pumped up to FLY INTO THE SKY AND BLOW UP THINGS WITH YOUR FISTS.

Okay, okay, enough of that. 

Nintendo, if you're listening (pls?), here are the three main reasons you should consider a new entry in the F-Zero Franchise:

1. The fans.

Nintendo, your fans love these games. Your fans love Captain Falcon. You only have to look at the F-Zero MiiVerse board to see hundreds of lovingly detailed fanart done with the WiiU's gamepad.
To look at more of the cool fan art check out this Kotaku article.
Your fans deserve a great new F-Zero game. One of the reasons I love Nintendo is that they do give their fanbase what they want sometimes (about 60 percent of the time, which is better than a lot of companies). We got a Donkey Kong Country reboot, and it was awesome. We have a new Pikmin game coming out soon, and I couldn't be more excited.

Why not a new F-Zero game? You have all of the tools to make one, which leads me into my next point...

2. The hardware.

The time and technology could not be riper for a new F-Zero game from Nintendo. Seriously. There are about a thousand and one ways you could bring the franchise into the modern era, and do it in STYLE.

You don't need a stereotypical controller to do a racer well. Honestly, the only buttons you need are to steer, brake, drift, and accelerate. F-Zero GX didn't need to be complicated to be good (there was an attack button but I never really got much use out of it).

Motion controls and touch controls aren't necessary, but you can use those features to make a better holistic experience for the game. Track maps, boost buttons, simplified touch-based interfaces -- those could all be integrated well on the touchpads of the 3DS and the WiiU.

 More than that, the 3DS and the WiiU have some amazing graphical capabilities. 

You could make the most visceral, crazy over-the-top 3D racer the world has ever known on the 3DS. You could make an even more graphically demanding game on the WiiU so that 5 of your friends can race each other at once on one TV screen.

The possibilities are endless, Nintendo. You could even port F-Zero GX over to the WiiU, buff up the visuals, revamp the soundtrack, add in an online mode and then I would buy it in an instant. Oh, and speaking of the internet...

3. Online play.

Little would capture the competitive spirit of F-Zero better than a well-crafted online system that lets people race against each other. It's almost a travesty that a fully-online game has not happened yet.

Just imagine 30 people from across the world -- all with their own F-Zero racers of choice -- competing in the same race going, like, 2000 KpH as they slam and crash into each other.

It'd be hectic, brutal and fast, and it'd probably cause a lot of broken controllers. Dear god would it be fun, though.

Nintendo absolutely has the capacity to pull something like this off. Online competition and F-Zero would go together like Captain Falcon and his beloved Falcon Flyer. It's a match made in heaven.

---

Yo, Nintendo. As C. Falcon would say: "Show me your moves!"

Outside of any licensing conflict with other developers and the F-Zero universe, there's no reason why you shouldn't start work on a new F-Zero game. Fans want it. Most gamers would eat it up. It's a beloved franchise that has been resting on its laurels for too long.

The time is nigh. The world is ready for the return of Captain Falcon and his host of intergalactic racin' buddies.

2 comments:

  1. IN THIS WORLD, YOU'VE GOT TO BE STRONG
    YOU'VE GOT TO FIGHT TO KEEP YOUR SPIRIT ALIVE

    Seriously though, I have a deep hunger for a shiny new F-Zero that cropped up in the middle of last generation and then NEVER WENT AWAY. I just have a deep fear of them introducing touchpad or motion controls, as I can't imagine them replicating the precision and feeling of GX.

    On another note, this is certainly an interesting development: http://www.joystiq.com/2013/03/07/full-f-zero-ax-arcade-game-discovered-in-f-zero-gx/

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  2. I totally get what you mean.

    A super tight racing experience would be difficult to say the least using touchpad or motion controls. I can point to the new Kid Icarus on the 3DS as a really good example of tight, fast motion controls, but I don't know how well that'd translate to F-Zero.

    Also, that's sick. I wanna play the AX cup so baddd


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