Though the Super Nintendo was late to the 16-bit party, it had one of the highest average quality game libraries of any system ever. To this day, one of my favorite games on that system is F-Zero, one of the launch titles, all of which were excellent. As a racing game, I think it is often overlooked on that system in favor of Mario Kart but that's a series I didn't get into until the Gamecube.
F-Zero is a pretty simple game. You get to pick one of four futuristic cars, each associated with their own character and then you choose your league and difficulty level. Each league (Knight, Queen and King) consists of five tracks. The higher the league, the harder the tracks. You get to choose your difficulty level from beginner, standard, expert and master options.
There are sections of the track that can slow you down and other sections that can boost your speed. You also get a few boosts that you can use at any time. There are also jumps and in some cases there are shortcuts that allow you to jump and skip part of the track. You definitely need to be at full speed to use these though or you will find yourself plummeting to the desert/city/whatever below as you come up short. There were a few other obstacles such as magnets that would pull your car towards them and landmines which could damage or destroy your vehicle. If your vehicle received enough damage from mines or other collisions then it would start running slower and eventually explode. When you car explodes you are treated to a rotating panoramic view of the track, surrounding locale and smoking crater that was your car. Each track had a pit area that you could drive through to replenish energy to avoid becoming a smoking crater.
F-Zero made excellent use of the Mode 7 effects of the Super Nintendo. This was a hardware assisted sprite scaling technique that gave a sense of 3D and speed. At the time, nothing came close to the sense of speed that F-Zero provided. Even though many games used Mode 7 over the years, none ever exceeded F-Zero in regards to those effects as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise, graphics were really pretty simple for the most part as most of the time you were just looking at the track and the other cars around you. The various backgrounds were well done though as was the music.
I once set a goal for myself to complete every track with every car on every difficulty level. I'm not sure if I ever made it but I know I came close. I probably played this game more than any other on the Super Nintendo. I never played any of the subsequent sequels so I don't really know how well they kept to the feel of the original. Honestly, my ideal F-Zero game would be a remake of the original, scaled to HD so you could do a good 4 player split screen. The only other features I would want would be more cars, more tracks and online play.
F-Zero has been made available in a variety of ways since its original release. It was released via Nintendo's eShop for the Wii, Wii-U and 3DS. It's also available on the SNES Classic. There's is no reason not to give this game a try.
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