 F-Zero Ah, F-Zero. It's a game I've played countless times since I received it for my 15th birthday in 1994. Before you start cracking wise about how much of a fossil I am, let me say that I am ancient. Ha! Beat you to it! SUCKA~~~!!! You must pardon the fetid ranting, as I'm doing this after a long day of work and there is teh alcohol in mah belly. Plus, I haven't done one of these review thingies in 2 1/2 years. To return to the topic at hand, F-Zero was another game I tried through the regular channels - numerous Blockbuster rentals or my old friend Ben had it. It's probably a little of both, since Blockbuster wasn't one to disappoint in those days and Ben had all the cool games. It's also a game that inspired me to start up a musical project and potentially had a hand in my starting up this very website, so if you've come here to see me trash this game, go to the Hate Centre. Of course, you won't find any F-Zero trashing in the Hate Centre, but that's besides the point. The point is (if you butterknives have yet to figure it out) that I think F-Zero is pretty awesome and I'm about to tell you why.
And here is where the review goes downhill, because it's hard to crack wise on a game that looks so nice. F-Zero came out in 1991, when Mode 7 Graphics were still all the rage. Man, forget you kids and your polygons, we had MODE FREAKIN' 7. Of course, Mode 7 was just used for the background - which to be fair, comprises a majority of the graphics in the game. It's difficult to have a race without something to race on, yes? Suffice it to say, the Mode 7 in F-Zero is quite superb indeed. Granted, it can be difficult to get a good look at the background without smashing your car into utter oblivion, but that's half the fun of looking. I know every time I'm cruising over the desert wastes known as Sand Ocean, I have to make sure I get a good look at the ginormous spiked snail shell. It's quite a valuable look into the future, because in 555 years' time, snails will evolve and mutate to become the size of large dinosaurs. It's a good thing they're living in the desert. Anyway, the non-Mode 7 cars look nice, are rather detailed, and are pretty like 4th of July when they blow up.
After all of these newer racing games have come out with the capability of using an analog control stick to steer, you would think trying to steer a souped-up, anti-gravity über-car with a directional pad would be a pain in the donkey. Perhaps this is the case for other older racing games, but it's not the case with F-Zero. Not to say that the play control is perfect, but it's definitely more-than-serviceable thanks to the L and R buttons. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out how to program a car to go straight in a game, but being able to program a car to turn properly seems to stump even the slipperiest of sea-bound mammals. However, the folks at Nintendo got it right by programming the L and R buttons to allow you to shift the weight in your car to the left or right, which makes turning without losing a ridiculous amount of speed (most of the time) a breeze. Good on them.
I've been known for getting long-winded at times, and LORDY is this review ever an example of that. However, I wouldn't get so long-winded over a game I found to be as enjoyable as cleaning up the floors of an Roman vomitorium, unless it was just the most terrible game ever - those are fun to employ the art of shredding on. No, F-Zero raised the race tracks into the sky, and Nintendo did the same thing with the quality of the game. The ability to use four different cars with different specifications bring a nice touch of variety and strategy to the game, though the tracks themselves certainly bring those aforementioned qualities as well. Jumps, rough patches, land mines, magnets - all of which require some smarts to negotiate properly without losing the race or having your car turn into a blazing inferno. The Practice mode is great as well - not for actually practicing the tracks, but for practicing them backwards. It actually makes White Land more fun! When it all comes down to it, F-Zero is probably the best racer on the SNES. Yeah, I know Super Mario Kart has the whole 2-player thing and Mario thing going for it, but can you make the go-carts in that game dance? No. You sure as hockey sticks can in F-Zero, though - tap the L and R buttons to make your car shake-a that thang, shake-a that THANG. Futuristic dancing cars... the promised land, I have found you and you have opened your arms to me. Final score: 3.8 (A)
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According to the manual, F-Zero was created by multibillionaires in 2560 because they were bored. For some reason, these multibillionaires thought that F-1 racing was the bee's knees, so they put anti-gravity racing circuits in the sky and created super-magnetic cars to hover around them in action-packed races. Intriguing. A few questions, though - do bees have knees? And what are multibillionaires doing watching F-1 racing? How did rednecks get that rich? Though now that I think about it, I may be lumping F-1 racing in with NASCAR, and that's probably unfair to F-1 racing. Besides, Europeans like it, so it must be cool. In any event, the whole F-1 racing in zero gravity (thus the über-clever title of the game) works just fine for me. However, I'm thinking this game could have been 12 new kinds of awesome if it had been interstellar NASCAR. You could have three-eyed orange aliens in wifebeaters and soiled Dickies cheering for you in the stands. That would have (not would of, but possibly would've) been CHOICE.
The songs of F-Zero are things in which dreams are made of. It's true, I found a page on the Internet that told me so. If any of you have headed over to the Auditorium, you should know how I feel about the Records screen music, but there are two tracks that even trump that one: Mute City and Port Town. I would go as far to say that these are two of the greatest tracks to ever grace a video game, because not only do they fit in perfectly with the hyperspeed racing theme, they are quite well-constructed opuses. Of course, they can't match the musical awesomeness of the works programmed into Color A Dinosaur, but what can? Unfortunately, the rest of the songs in F-Zero don't quite match up, though most of them are quite good in their own right. I also must apologize for not being more amusing with this paragraph, but I take my music seriously - which is why I write songs entitled 
F-Zero may indeed be the most perfect game to play if you only have a short amount of time before you have to go do something else and you're really craving some classic gaming. You can easily get through one of the leagues in about 15-20 minutes, or if you just one to do one race, you can usually finish those in less than three. However, I wouldn't recommend doing the King League if you're in a time crunch, because those can be some challenging courses - especially Fire Field (the last one, obviously). Whatever Fire Field lacks in musical quality, it more than makes up for in intensity - chances are you might be a tad frazzled after you attempt that one. However, a successful completion of Fire Field can be satisfying like a nice cold one; a loss just means you suck.