"High speed racing returns to its SNES roots."

From it’s historic outing on SNES to its flying framerate on the N64 the F Zero series has been at the forefront of high-speed racing titles. With classic characters, lightning fast cars and tracks that push your reactions to the edge the game established itself as a must have and it raised more than a few eyebrows when announced for the Gameboy Advance. Many wondered how such a game with such a demand for speed would be able to be designed for the tiny handheld system. Well after years of waiting and hours of thumb-blistering gameplay I can sure you this is one of the titles to have for your Gameboy Advance system.

This F Zero title, F Zero: Maximum Velocity, is set 25 years after the N64 version where the legend of Captain Falcon was born and placed into F Zero history. However the danger and thrill of F Zero racing has enticed younger pilots to take up the challenge of racing excessive speeds over jumps, around tight corners and over icy roads.

The game features three save slots and within each players have a variety of game modes including Grand Prix, Training, Multipak Link, Single-Pak Link and Championship.

In the Grand Prix players can select from four pilots initially each with there own individual vehicle which has different specifications on everything from boost time to maximum speed. From there you can select up to three different competitions (Pawn, Knight, Bishop) each with five races in each (a forth competition is also available to unlock, this is known as Queen). In each race players must be at a certain place by the end of each lap or you will get disqualified – you must finish in the top 3 in every race. Don’t fear though you can have up to 5 lives just in case you make a mistake.

Each competition has 4 different difficulty levels ranging from the simple Beginner through to the insane Master for seasoned pro’s. With the ability to unlock new pilots and vehicles the game offers plenty of challenges to those who just enjoy a race every now and then to those dedicated to winning it all.

The championship mode is just one time trial track which players must try to first beat the time set in the game already. The ghost of that time is shown on screen and the object is to beat that time. Once beaten the challenge is to beat yourself and get your time as low as possible. However one of the best things about F-Zero is that you can link-up with a friend who has F Zero and exchange not only your championship time but also all your records for every one of the 20 tracks available to play in the Grand Prix mode. And don’t fear if you are a bad player and you don’t want your scores beaten down by your friends, both a combined list of times and your individual times is available for each track. Up to ten records are saved on both your individual list and the combined list making for a total of 420 records that can be saved on your F Zero cartridge. Impressive to say the least.

Multiplayer in F Zero is something else. In the Single-Pak mode only one track is available and the characters a pre-selected droids – it’s fun but after about ten or so races the novelty wears off and the boredom sets it. However with three other Game-Pak’s the multiplayer mode in F Zero really comes to life. All characters and tracks become available and the madness of Gameboy Advance gaming begins. Even if you crash in the multiplayer mode you can still continue racing – which means no sitting around for three laps drowning in your sorrows. The action is fast and furious and with the design of the tracks players can choose different routes and find themselves smashing back into each other as the track merges back into one.

The controls in F Zero are simple and obvious which is good for someone who picks up the game every now and then. A-Button is accelerate and B-Button is your brake and of course the directional pad controls your ship – these are the fundamental controls and are logical, straight forward and easy to follow. The R and L shoulder buttons are used to drift your vehicle one way or another – this is often a very hard skill to learn but once mastered you will be dominating the master section with no worries at all – smooth stuff. To speed up the action you can boost by pressing both L and R simultaneously or if you change the control settings you can change the boost button to up on the directional-pad, which is a lot easier to use. One boost is earned after the completion of each lap and you can store a maximum of three boosts. Each vehicle handles differently – some slide across the tracks while others are more responsive and you must decide which vehicle to master.

More advanced controls include the boost start (self-explanatory) and the rocket turn. The rocket turn is very important and is down by tapping the A-Button as you turn a corner. This gives added traction and control and is the most important technique to learn in the game initially – without it you will struggle to succeed even on Beginner. Overall the controls are nice to use and good to play with however the shoulder buttons are far to hard to manipulate at times as your index finger cannot press the button easily and some players (including myself) don’t even use the buttons.

The game is like its predecessors in the fact that the graphics have had beauty sacrificed in exchange for practicality. As you zoom round these tracks at over 500 km/h you are not looking out for lovely textures anyway, in fact you will be so into driving through these levels so fast that you won’t have time to think about the backgrounds. The exhilaration of boosting in this game is awesome – once you tap that boost button the level zooms past you even faster than and the feeling of this speed is really great. With the mode 7 scaling (used in most GBA racing games – Mario Kart, GT Advance etc) being so effective the feeling actually racing in a 3D world is strongly apparent.

However like most Gameboy Advance games such as Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 the ‘darkness’ factor is strongly apparent. You have to play this game in good lighting because the colours chosen are far to dark and because this game needs a lot of concentration it can be a problem to find an area with enough light without any glare. This is the true downfall of the game and has been for many GBA games already – hopefully developers have learnt to use brighter colours from now on.

The presentation of the menus is also nice – easy to follow and appropriately styled for this modern racing title.

The music is very ‘racey’ and has a fast beat, which is of course, very appropriate for this title. Each level has it’s own individual tune and they can get repetitive – as they do in almost all racing games. However there are plenty of sound effects, which liven up the sound waves blasting out from the speaker. Boosting has its own ‘whirring’ sound as well the crashes of you hitting opponents and the track walls – lets not for get the loud explosion when your car blows up from too much damage or from flying off the track.

F Zero: Maximum Velocity builds on the previous two games in the series and although does not develop to much on them it is amazing that they could even bring this to the Gameboy Advance as it is such a fast-paced game. However Nintendo have done a great job and F Zero is a classic F Zero game that is must have up there with Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 and GT Advance. The difficulty of the game at first is quite intense but once you come to terms with the controls it becomes a lot easier and most players will finish the normal difficulty with ease and should be able to beat expert in a minimal number of weeks. We can’t wait to see the next installment of this game on either Gamecube of Gameboy Advance and hopefully the return of Captain Falcon.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/15/02, Updated 10/15/02