F-Zero
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2008-07-15T03:04:54Z
FullMetal Falcon
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Reverted 1 edit by [[Special:Contributions/VisuDiviner|VisuDiviner]] identified as [[WP:VAND|vandalism]] to last revision by [[User:RainbowOfLight|RainbowOfLight]]. ([[WP:TW|TW]])
{{dablink|This article is about the first game in the series. For information on this Nintendo franchise as a whole, see [[F-Zero (series)]].}}
{{Infobox VG
| title = F-Zero
| image = [[Image:F-Zero.jpg|256px]]
| developer = [[Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development|Nintendo EAD]]
| publisher = [[Nintendo]]
| designer = [[Shigeru Miyamoto]] <small>([[Game producer|producer]])<ref name="credits">{{cite web| url=http://www.n-sider.com/gameview.php?gameid=86&view=credits| title=F-Zero credits| accessdate= 2007-08-05| publisher=[[N-Sider]]}}</ref></small>
Kazunobu Shimizu <small>([[Game director|director]])<ref name="credits"/></small><br />Naoto Ishida, Yumiko Kametani <small>([[composer]]s)</small>
| engine = [[Mode 7]]
| released ='''[[Super Nintendo Entertainment System|SNES]]''' <br />{{vgrelease|Japan|JP|[[November 21]], [[1990]]}}<br />{{vgrelease|North America|NA|[[August 13]], [[1991]]}}<br />{{vgrelease|Europe|EU|[[June 4]], [[1992]]}}<br /> '''[[Virtual Console]]'''<br />{{vgrelease|North America|NA|[[November 19]], [[2006]]}}<br /> {{vgrelease|Japan|JP|[[December 2]], [[2006]]}} <br />{{vgrelease|[[Europe|EU]]|[[December 8]], [[2006]]}}
|genre = [[Futuristic]] [[racing game]]
| modes = [[Single player]]
| ratings = [[Entertainment Software Rating Board|ESRB]]: Everyone (E)
| platforms = [[Super Nintendo Entertainment System|SNES]], [[Virtual Console]]
| media = 4-[[megabit]] [[cartridge (electronics)|cartridge]]
| requirements =
| input =
}}
{{nihongo|'''''F-Zero'''''|エフゼロ|Efu Zero|F-ZERO}} is a [[futuristic]] [[racing game|racing video game]] developed and published by [[Nintendo]] for the [[Super Nintendo Entertainment System]]. The game was first released in [[Japan]] on [[November 21]], [[1990]] and later in [[North America]] on [[August 13]], [[1991]] and in [[Europe]] on [[June 4]], [[1992]]. The title was downloadable over the [[Nintendo Power (cartridge)|Nintendo Power]] peripheral in Japan<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n03/index.html|title=Nintendo Power|accessdate=2007-08-05| publisher= Nintendo|language=Japanese|archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20061215234433/http://www.nintendo.co.jp/n03/riyou/mosikomi/sf.html
|archivedate = 2006-12-15}}</ref> and was also released onto the [[Nintendo Super System]]. In late 2006, ''F-Zero'' became available for the [[Virtual Console]] service on the [[Wii]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Vuckovic|first = Daniel |date=[[2006-10-18]]|title=First 7 Aussie Virtual Console games revealed| url= http://vooks.net/modules.php?module=article&id=11074 |publisher=Vooks.net|accessdate= 2006-10-23}}</ref>
This is the inaugural game of the [[F-Zero (series)|''F-Zero'' series]] of video games and was first released in Japan as one of the two debut titles for the Super NES,<ref>{{cite book |last=Sheff |first=David |title=[[Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children]] |origyear=1993 |edition=First |publisher=Random House, Inc. |location=New York |isbn=0-679-40469-4 |accessdate=2007-07-16 |pages=p. 361}}</ref> but in the U.S. this launch title was accompanied by more games.<ref>{{cite web |url= http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3155264 |title=Out to Launch: Wii |accessdate=2007-07-03 |last=Parish|first=Jeremy |date=[[2006-11-14]] |publisher=[[1UP.com]]}}</ref> ''F-Zero'' is considered to be the game that set a standard for the racing genre;<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.ntsc-uk.com/feature.php?featuretype=ret&fea=SnesWeekDay5 | title=SNES WEEK: Day 5| accessdate= 2007-12-03 | last = Allen | first= Matt| publisher=NTSC-uk.com|quote=[F-Zero] paved the way for other sci-fi racers such as Wipeout, and set the standard regarding how to do a racing game in general.}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Essential 50"/> As a result, the title inspired the future creation of numerous racing games inside and out of its own subgenre.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://ign64.ign.com/articles/120/120418p1.html |title=F-Zero X| accessdate=2007-07-16|author=IGN Staff |date=[[1998-07-14]]| publisher=[[IGN]]|quote=[F-Zero] blew gamers away with its Mode 7 technology and amazing graphics. It was the first of its kind; the only really successful inheritor (or copier, depending on how you look at it) to date are Psygnosis's Wipeout and Wipeout II for Sony's PlayStation.}}</ref><ref name="ign review"/><ref name="AMN history"/>
==Gameplay==
''F-Zero'' is a futuristic [[racing game]] where pilots race on circuits inside [[Plasma (physics)|plasma]]-powered [[hovercar]]s in an intergalactic [[Wiktionary:Grand Prix|Grand Prix]] at speeds that can exceed 400 [[Kilometres per hour|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.<ref name="vc-reviews"/> 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.<ref name="SNESmanual"/> 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 [[1-up#Extra life|"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<ref name="vc-reviews">{{cite web|url= http://www.vc-reviews.com/review/150/f-zero.php| title=F-Zero (Virtual Console - Super Nintendo)|accessdate=2007-08-05 |publisher= Virtual Console Archive}}</ref> 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.<ref name="SNESmanual"/>
The game introduced the first [[List of F-Zero characters|''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.<ref name="ign review"/> 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.<ref name="SNESmanual"/>
===Leagues===
''F-Zero'' has a total of fifteen tracks divided into three leagues. Additionally, the Death Wind, Port Town, and Red Canyon courses have areas that are not accessible unless the player is on another version of those tracks, which then in-turn closes the direction previously available. The game has three initial [[difficulty level]]s; beginner, standard, and expert.<ref name="SNESmanual"/> Completion of the expert class in any league unlocks the master difficulty level.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.cheatscodesguides.com/super-nes-cheats/f-zero/|title= F-Zero Cheats| accessdate= 2007-09-27|date=[[1998-11-17]]|publisher= CheatsCodesGuides}}</ref> Unlike most ''F-Zero'' games, there are three iterations of Mute City, showing it in day, evening, and night settings. In ''BS F-Zero 2'', Mute City IV continued the theme with an early morning setting.
===Story===
''F-Zero'' takes place in the year 2560 when humanity's countless encounters with these alien life forms throughout the Universe expanded Earth's social framework to astronomic proportions. Trade, technology and cultural interchange are carried out between planets. The multibillionaires who earned their enormous wealth through this intergalactic trade were satisfied with their rich lifestyles. However, they also yearned for new entertainment to stimulate their lazy lives, so a new entertainment based on the old F-1 races was founded. People were at first outraged with the brutality of the competition, but eventually demanded more excitement. They soon after called these Grand Prix races simply, "F-ZERO".<ref name="SNESmanual">{{cite book | editor=Nintendo EAD | title=F-Zero instruction manual |date= 1991-08-13| publisher=Nintendo| language=English| pages=pp. 3-5, 7-9, 11}}</ref><ref name= "ign review"/>
==Development and reception==
[[Image:SNES F-Zero.png|196px|right|thumb|Mode 7 allowed the track to be scaled and rotated around the vehicle to simulate a 3D environment.<ref name="Essential 50">{{cite web|url= http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3134033|title=The Essential 50 #29 -- Super Mario Kart |accessdate= 2007-11-30|last=Hiranand |first=Ravi|publisher= [[1UP.com]]|quote=The first example of this [more realistic racing games] was F-Zero, which cleverly didn't bother moving the car around the circuit -- it moved the circuit around the car. By pasting the car in the middle of the screen and then scaling and rotating the track past it, you had a reasonable approximation of a 3D world that worked wonders for racing games. F-Zero, which had turned heads not only with its sleek design but also with its unprecedented sense of realism. Home consoles had never played host to such a fast-paced racing experience with such a free range of motion... In 1991, however, it was truly breathtaking, and provided a vital tool for Nintendo's efforts to withstand Sega's relentless media campaigns.
}}</ref>]]
The game was developed by thirty people<ref name=Cubed/> over a period of two years alongside ''[[Super Mario World]]'', and ''[[Pilotwings]]''. [[Takaya Imamura]] was surprised to be able to so freely design the characters and courses as he wanted since ''F-Zero'' was his first game.<ref name="GCAC interview"/> Miyamoto wanted more than just four characters to be in the game, however most of them were left out due to the technical limitations of the SNES. As a result, four out of the twenty vehicles on the track are unique while the remaining sixteen became [[palette swap]]s of one model. The SNES could not properly process the graphical effects ''F-Zero '' had at such high speeds which resulted in a scrolling problem and in order to fix this the cartridge had to include a [[Super Nintendo Entertainment System#Enhancement chips|DSP chip]] which made the game appear fluid.<ref name="AMN history"/>
The ''F-Zero'' album was released on [[March 25]],[[1992]] in [[Japan]] by Tokuma Japan Communications. It features twelve songs from the game on a single disc composed by Yumiko Kanki, [[Yukio Kaneoka]] and Naoto Ishida and arranged by Robert Hill and Michiko Hill.<ref>{{cite web | title=F-ZERO| publisher = Square Enix Music Online | url = http://www.squareenixmusic.com/albums/f/fzero.shtml | accessdate =2008-03-04}}</ref>
<!--
{| class="collapsible collapsed" border="0" style="width:50%"
! style="width:20em; text-align:left" | '''Track listing'''
! |
|-
| colspan="2" |
#"Opening Theme" – 4:20
#"Big Blue" - 4:03
#"Red Canyon" - 4:11
#"Fire Field" - 4:15
#"Silence" - 4:34
#"White Land" - 4:22
#"Port Town" - 4:40
#"Select Time Theme" - 3:42
#"Mute City" - 4:24
#"Sand Ocean" - 4:39
#"Death Wind" - 3:31
#"Ending Theme" - 5:05
|}
-->
''F-Zero'' was widely hailed for being such a visually stunning home console game; it has been called the fastest and smoothest [[2.5D|pseudo-3D]] racer of its time<ref>{{cite web|url= http://gameboy.ign.com/articles/165/165423p1.html |title=F-Zero: Maximum Velocity review| accessdate= 2007-12-10 |last=Harris|first=Craig |authorlink= Craig Harris (journalist) |date=2001-06-14 |publisher=[[IGN]] |quote=One of the first titles for the Super NES was also one of the system's most technically impressive games as well -- when F-Zero was released on the Nintendo 16-bit system a decade ago, it offered the fastest, smoothest pseudo-3D racer ever conceived for a home system...}}</ref><ref name="EGM 219">{{Citation| last= Parish | first= Jeremy| publication-date= September 2007| title= The Evolution of 2D| periodical= [[Electronic Gaming Monthly]] | publisher= Ziff Davis Media| issue= 219| pages= 107| id= ISSN 1058-918X}}</ref> and the first racing game to offer such graphical realism.<ref name=Cubed>{{cite web | url = http://www.cubed3.com/news/4825/| title = The Who's Who in Gaming| accessdate = 2007-12-03 | last = Karn | first = Bianco| date = 2006-06-30| publisher = [[Cubed³]]| quote = Their [Shigeru Miyamoto and his new team of 30 people] first title was the Sci-Fi racer F-Zero, also the first game to unlock the special hardware feature known as Mode 7. This allowed intense graphics unlike anything seen before, special effects such as scaling and rotation allowed for a 3D looking world to be created effortlessly.}}</ref><ref name="Essential 50 "/> This all due to the fact that ''F-Zero'' was one of the first SNES titles to pervasively use a special exclusive hardware feature of the system called "[[Mode 7]]".<ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=4&cId=3152604 |title=Purple Reign: 15 Years of the Super NES|accessdate= 2007-08-16 |last=Barnholt|first=Ray |date=[[2006-08-04]] |publisher=[[1UP.com]]|pages=pp. 5}}</ref> This graphics-rendering technique allowed different kinds of scaling and rotation effects of bitmap graphics, which the game used to simulate [[3D computer graphics|3D]] environments<ref name="EGM 219"/> without processing any polygons. Such techniques in video games were considered to be revolutionary in a time when games were restricted to static/flat backgrounds and 2 dimensional ([[2D computer graphics|2D]]) objects.<ref name="ign review">{{cite web|url= http://wii.ign.com/articles/759/759087p1.html|title=F-Zero (Virtual Console) review| accessdate=2007-07-16|last=Thomas|first=Lucas|date=[[2007-01-26]]|publisher=IGN}}</ref><ref name=aussie-n/>
==Legacy==
[[Image:BS fzero2 launch.jpg|196px|right|thumb|''BS F-Zero '' feature vehicles not seen in subsequent games in the series.]]
''F-Zero'' sold at least a million copies<ref name="AMN history"/> and also became part of the [[Player's Choice]] line.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gamespot.com/snes/driving/fzero/similar.html?mode=versions |title= Release Summary: F-Zero|accessdate= 2008-04-18|publisher= [[GameSpot]]}}</ref>
In 1992, [[Toshihiro Nagoshi]] was head of [[Sega-AM2|Sega's AM2]] development team when he played ''F-Zero'' on the SNES for the first time. When Nagoshi experienced the game, not only did its realism impress him, but Nagoshi commented ''F-Zero'' "actually taught me what a game should be". ''F-Zero'' served as an influence for him to create [[Daytona USA (arcade game)|''Daytona USA'']] and other racing games.<ref name="GCAC interview">{{cite web| url= http://cube.ign.com/articles/356/356325p1.html |title= Interview: F-Zero AC/GC|accessdate= 2007-07-15|author=IGN Staff |date= [[2002-03-28]] |publisher=[[IGN]]}}</ref><ref name="AMN history"/> Approximately ten years later Nagoshi would serve as one of the co-producers for ''[[F-Zero GX]]''.<ref name="Conference">{{cite web|url= http://cube.ign.com/articles/427/427647p2.html |title= F-Zero Press Conference| accessdate= 2007-07-18| author=IGN Staff |date=[[2003-07-08]] |publisher= [[IGN]]}}</ref>
[[Nintendo]] was working on a sequel for the first ''F-Zero'' title,<ref name="ign review"/> but the game was canceled in its early stages of development due to the impending release of the [[Nintendo 64]]. The unfinished sequel was instead broadcasted in multiple parts on the St. Giga subscription service for the [[Satellaview]] attachment of the [[Super Famicom]].<ref name=aussie-n>{{cite web|url= http://www.aussie-nintendo.com/?v=article&p=14631 |title= Nintendo's Eight Famous Franchises #5 - F-Zero|accessdate= 2008-01-18 |last= White|first= Nick White|date= 2007-06-25 |publisher= Aussie-Nintendo.com}}</ref> Using this add-on, gamers could download these titles via satellite and save it onto a special Flash cartridge.<ref name="AMN history">{{cite web|url= http://gc.kombo.com/article.php?artid=4063 |title= The Legendary Race - The History of F-Zero |accessdate= 2006-12-26 |last= DeWoody |first= Lucas |date= 2005-01-05 |work=Kombo |publisher= Advanced Media Network |pages=pp. 1-2 }}</ref> The sequel was released under the names of ''BS F-Zero Grand Prix''<ref name="ign review"/> and ''BS F-Zero 2 Grand Prix''<ref name="F-Zero 2"/> during the mid-1990s, making them the second video game of the franchise. The ''BS F-Zero'' games have four playable vehicles that share the same performance attributes as the ones from the original SNES game, however they were redesigned and given different names.<ref name="AMN history"/> The tracks are named as a follow-on from ''F-Zero'' — the first track is called "Mute City IV", since Mute City I-III appeared in the original game. ''BS F-Zero 2 Grand Prix'' features one new league containing five different tracks, a Grand Prix and a Practice mode.<ref name="F-Zero 2">{{cite web|title=BS F-Zero 2 Grand Prix|url= http://cheats.ign.com/objects/573/573890.html |publisher= [[IGN]]|accessdate=2006-06-19}}</ref>
When ''F-Zero'' was released onto the [[Virtual Console]] service, the game was praised by [[GameSpot]] for its controls, longevity and track design. The reviewer felt the game offered exceptional gameplay, with "a perfect balance of pick-up-and-play accessibility and sheer depth". However, both [[IGN]] and GameSpot, who gave the title a 7.5/10 and 8/10 respectively, agreed that the game could have used a multiplayer mode.<ref name="ign review"/><ref>{{cite web|url= http://www.gamespot.com/wii/driving/fzerosnes/review.html|title= F-Zero| accessdate=2007-07-17 |last=Kasavin |first=Greg| date= 2006-11-19|publisher= [[GameSpot]]}}</ref>
==References==
{{reflist|2}}
==External links==
*[http://www.nintendo.com/wii/virtualconsole/games/detail/Pw3uFrEofIz6Yxh7ICrjlMqiDrRoVHlM ''F-Zero'' at Nintendo.com]
* {{moby game|id=/f-zero|name=''F-Zero''}}
{{F-Zero series}}
[[Category:1990 video games]]
[[Category:F-Zero series]]
[[Category:Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development games]]
[[Category:Super NES games]]
[[Category:Virtual Console games]]
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