199 games ago on this 1001 list, I played F-Zero X for the first time. I liked it but would have liked to see some firepower coming out of these futuristic racers. With the chaos of 30 drivers on track at once, however, weaponry would probably have been a bad idea...
That was back on the N64. How does the GameCube up the stakes for the anti-gravity racers amongst us in F-Zero GX? Are there even more racers on track? Do we finally have some offensive capabilities? Is it more of the same, but better? What does the 'G' even mean?
I've absolutely no idea, but I'm ready to rev up my engines and find out.
Fun Times
Right from the menus, F-Zero GX looks and sounds both swish, and stuffed with things to do. Grand Prix, Vs. Battles, Time Attack... a mode for every racer, but one of them catches my eye above them all: Story mode.
What did I just watch? A CGI cutscene, sure, but what was going on? Am I in a cartoon, full of bright colours and whacky villains? This most definitely isn't a realistic story. This is some Speed Racer type of story. Each week, we'll have a race, get sabotaged, overcome the odds to win, the villain will curse and clench his fists, credits roll, and the same thing will happen next week.
I mean, that's the kind of vibe I'm getting. You can have good story modes in racing games. I can't name any right now - it's more a case of 'surely, it's possible' - but I know you can get something out of all this drama. I just didn't expect it to be cartoon villainy.
Saturday morning cartoon. How else can I see F-Zero GX? It's not the greatest of aesthetics, but to be fair, these are good looking clips. They've put some effort in, and they're finally leading me to some gameplay.
Captain Falcon has been practising. That's us. This is our practice. Do we have what it takes to race? After setting up our craft for acceleration or speed, the simulation boots up, and we're ready to go.
Anyone familiar with any racing game will know where to find the accelerator on the controller, but the little details of piloting your craft will need to be learned through practice.
Different forms of braking can be achieved with the B-button, or shoulder buttons, causing you to almost sidestep around corners. If WipEout is a game about drifting, F-Zero GX is a game about side shifting, if that makes sense. They're both floaty racers, but F-Zero GX is the zippier, more digital racer, if you will, compared to WipEout's analogue feel.
But you can ignore all that nonsense if you want because the analogue stick serves its purpose well, steering and pitching your craft as you need it. Collect all the doodahs in the time limit, and your training is complete.
Chapter 2 of our thrilling tale is locked behind 20 tickets, and we've only managed to get hold of 15! We'll have to play another game mode to get some more, and the Grand Prix seems like a good choice.
There is a choice of championships to compete in, at various difficulty levels, but the Novice Ruby Cup should be all I need to get 5 tickets, surely? It starts in Mute City, at Twist Road, a leisurely track to introduce ourselves to the other racers.
A leisurely, but nice looking track hovering in the night sky. The joy of anti-gravity racing games is the ability to ignore physics and make all these rollercoaster track layouts that are just plonked above a city. F-Zero X didn't look too bad. F-Zero GX looks like two console generations have come and gone between the titles.
As the lights go out, we hit stupid speeds in seconds, and go from 30th to 3rd before we even know what's going on. This is F-Zero GX in a nutshell. The numbers don't matter, as you flit between positions on each turn and down each straight.
Carefully avoiding the walls as well as other racers will push you to the front, and well-timed boosts, be it from your energy reserves or the on-track boost pads, will see you into first place, and hopefully stay there.
I was emulating this game, and it ran so well that the only slow down I got was when I get pressing the screenshot shortcut. Pressing it when you're not prepared for the track ahead can lose your positions, so don't take too many...
If you hit a wall and drop 9 places before you've recovered, actually enjoying the race you've just taken part in, or even seeing the track in all its glory, is almost impossible. Luckily, the replay feature is full of camera angles to really show off the spectacle of these races.
The next race takes place at Casino Palace, an insanely large, ridiculously themed casino track. The attention to detail, like the replays above, can only be really seen in still photos, but these photos just don't convey the sense of speed F-Zero GX gives players.
You are travelling at absurd speeds that you and I can't fathom in the first place, but you're made to feel that by the scenery whizzing past you, and the frame rate firmly locked and capable of showing it all. Smooth doesn't begin to describe the performance.
A ridiculous finish - 1/100th of a second faster than the Death Anchor in second place - I was sitting pretty on top of the points table as we headed into the desert.
Frustrations
Sadly, this level pushed the emulator hard. Perhaps because it was a vast, open desert, or maybe it was all the flying sand sharks around the place. Whatever it was, I was racing at half speed here, and it's not as fun, obviously.
You can drive a hell of a lot smoother at half speed, but I wasn't able to enjoy the flow of this circuit at all, despite wanting to, as it contains sections of track that I'd never seen or raced on before, thanks to the anti-gravity nature.
We've all got our favourite corners, jumps or layouts across various racing games, and the Sand Ocean may well have been it for me in F-Zero GX. Until the Lightning Loop Cross.
Further Fun Times
Ooh, this circuit. The emulation was able to chuck this one at me at full speed, and I was ill-prepared for it, hitting the walls and messing up seemingly all the corners, but it was terrific. The look, the colour, the atmosphere, and above all, the very nature of looping back around and driving along the ceiling of the start/finish straight... this is what anti-gravity race tracks should be like.
Not always, mind. You need to drip feed the good stuff to keep it special. Immerse yourself in dimensions not possible for road cars, though, and you bring all those rollercoaster emotions into play.
Though I had four first-place finishes under my belt, there was still a chance of messing it up as I headed into the last race, taking place in between the skyscrapers of Aeropolis.
If that Lightning Loop was the best track, Aeropolis was making a case for the worst. Out of nowhere were 90-degree turns that practically forced the use of your brakes, which I was most certainly not yet comfortable with using around any but the gentlest of corners.
Anti-gravity racers challenge you to really get to grips with your ship because bouncing off the walls always damages them, and too much damage results in blowing up, for which you don't get any points towards the championship.
As the energy of your craft is also the energy of your boost bar, you need to decide when to drain it to catch up to the front runners, and when to keep it so that you don't mess up this bastard of a corner.
Holding it together for a final first place, we were rewarded with an interview on live television. Unexpectedly, I get to ask myself a question.
That was awful.
Still, I got 15 tickets. Time to buy the next chapter of the story.
Awww... Do I boost to catch up, which risks having a weaker craft when I inevitably drive into a boulder or do I keep my energy in case I hit rocks which risks falling too far behind my rival?
After a couple of failed attempts, I called time on F-Zero GX. I'm going to need quite a bit more practice, I think.
Final Word
Back when playing F-Zero X, I said I'd probably spend more time with it. It's different to WipEout, but it's still a solid racing title. While I prefered the carnage of weapon pick-ups, I could appreciate the quality of pure racing that was taking place here.
F-Zero GX is no different, really. I still prefer weapons, but I really enjoy the simplicity of just nailing that perfect line through a course, finishing first, getting the job done. And it looks damn fine.
While I'm not entirely on board with the cartoon villains and the art style, some of the circuits and their environments easily rival those of WipEout. There's a strange blend of 'grounded' and 'nonsense', but it applies throughout the stages, the characters and their racecraft, and on the whole, it does look like a decent package.
If all you do is pick it up and play it for a little while, it's going to be a good time. It's fast and frantic in ways that other racers are not, yet it's familiar and straightforward so that anyone can jump in and have a go.
Will I play some more? At some point. I won't say no. Do I still prefer WipEout? Yup. Do I know what the 'G' means? I think it's for 'GameCube' because the Arcade port is called F-Zero AX. That's the best I've got, though. Don't know for sure. It's not important, is it?
Fun Facts
The game runs on a version of the Super Monkey Ball engine, and now I imagine anti-gravity racing monkeys. Make it happen, Sega, or Nintendo, or whoever cares enough.
F-Zero GX, developed by Amusement Vision, first released in 2003.
Version played: GameCube, 2003, via emulation.