Captain Falcon’s History

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Hello Smashers! Today we’ll talk about the super strong and agile F-Zero racer, Captain Falcon!

We’ll talk about the F-Zero franchise and how it has been developed over the years.

F-Zero is a futuristic racing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The game was released in 1991. The title was downloadable over the Nintendo Power peripheral in Japan and was also released onto the Nintendo Super System.

This is the inaugural game of the F-Zero series of video games and was first released in Japan as one of the two debut titles for the Super NES, but in the U.S. this launch title was accompanied by more games. F-Zero is considered to be the game that set a standard for the racing genre; the title was known for its gameplay, having an original scenario, and running on what was considered to be at the time a groundbreaking technological achievement that made the title the first racing game to be developed this realistically. As a result, the title inspired the future creation of numerous racing games inside and out of its own subgenre.

That’s what I call a 16 bit racing game!

F-Zero is a futuristic racing game where pilots race on circuits inside plasma-powered hovercars in an intergalactic Grand Prix at speeds that can exceed 400 km/h. The objective of the game is to beat opponents to the finish line while avoiding hazards such as land mines, slip zones and magnets that pull the vehicle to certain sides of the track in an effort to make the player damage their vehicle or fall completely off the track. A race in F-Zero consists of five laps around the track. The player must complete each lap in a successively higher place or be disqualified and unable to finish the race. For each lap completed, the player is rewarded with an approximately four-second speed boost and a number of points determined by place. One of the “SSS” on-screen displays will be shaded green to indicate that a boost can be used. If a certain amount of points are accumulated, an extra “spare machine” is acquired. F-Zero includes two different modes of play. In the Grand Prix mode, the player chooses a league and races against twenty generic vehicles of different colors through each track in that league. The Practice mode allows the player to practice seven of the courses from the Grand Prix mode.

Get to that finish line, Captain Falcon!

The game introduced the first F-Zero characters; Captain Falcon, Dr. Stewart, Pico, and Samurai Goroh. Each of the four characters have their own selectable vehicle along with its unique performance abilities. Each machine has an energy meter, which serves the purpose as a measurement of the machine’s health and is decreased, for example, when the machine hits the side of the track or another vehicle.

After a roughly seven-year hiatus outside Japan, the series made the transition to 3D with the third installment, F-Zero X on the Nintendo 64. The game introduces 26 new vehicles, and brings back the four from the original F-Zero game. In addition to a Grand Prix mode, the title does introduce a “death race” mode and a random track generator called the “X Cup”. In the death race, the player’s objective is to annihilate the 29 other racers as speedily as possible, while the X-Cup “creates” a different set of tracks each time played. Despite the hardware limitations of the gaming console, F-Zero X used the N64’s power to its full extent. This resulted in the game running at 60 frames per second with thirty machines on screen at the same time, however this left little processor power for graphical detail and music.

All the racing excitement in full 3D

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity was the series fourth released installment, but the first incarnation of the franchise for Nintendo’s Game Boy handheld. It was the first title developed by first party subsidiary NDCUBE. This GBA launch title returned to the SNES F-Zero’s gameplay with a Mode 7-styled game engine.

This game goes back to it’s roots

The next F-Zero title, F-Zero GX was the first game in the series to appear on the Nintendo GameCube. It surprised many fans when it was announced that the new game would be developed by Sega’s Amusement Vision team (known for the Super Monkey Ball games) and would feature a story mode for the first time ever. This game, initially known as “F-Zero GC”, retained the core gameplay of the previous games, with a huge focus being on the game’s single player mode this time around. The arcade counterpart of GX was called F-Zero AX, which was released alongside of its Nintendo GameCube counterpart in mid-2003. The game had three types of arcade cabinets; standard, the “Monster Ride” and the deluxe which resembled an F-Zero vehicle. F-Zero AX had six original courses and ten original characters. However, by certain difficult means, the six courses and ten characters could be unlocked in F-Zero GX.

F-Zerp had never been so powerful before

F-Zero: GP Legend is the second game featuring a story mode, however this one is based on the anime series of the same name. This results in Captain Falcon sharing the spotlight with a new character named Rick Wheeler. Unlike the rest of the titles before it, GP Legend takes place in a different period of time happening in the twenty-second century rather than the twenty-sixth.

You can take the fun anywhere

Well that’s all for now, stay tuned for more news and updates!

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