{"id":1518,"date":"2023-09-30T13:52:45","date_gmt":"2023-09-30T17:52:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/?p=1518"},"modified":"2023-10-04T21:05:27","modified_gmt":"2023-10-05T01:05:27","slug":"f-zero-99-impressions-review-one-of-the-years-best-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/?p=1518","title":{"rendered":"F-Zero 99 Impressions &#038; Review &#8211; One of the Year&#8217;s Best Games!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Introduction and On the Other &#8217;99&#8217; Titles<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div id=\"pid_139407\" class=\"post_body scaleimages\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Within the past few months, rumors of a new F-Zero game surfaced.\u00a0 I wasn&#8217;t sure whether to believe them or not given how long it has been &#8212; it has been over 15 years since the last entry on the GBA &#8212; but&#8230; it happened!\u00a0 F-Zero has returned&#8230; as a multiplayer-only battle royale-style racing game.\u00a0 This latest entry in the &#8220;99&#8221; line of titles has graphics and tracks taken from the original Super Nintendo F-Zero game, but with some new game mechanics and lots more players.\u00a0 It&#8217;s chaotic and intense but is pretty fantastic once you get used to it.\u00a0 This is the fourth Switch &#8216;battle royale&#8217; game, and the third from Nintendo itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Nintendo&#8217;s first Battle Royale game, Tetris 99, is outstanding and still is quite popular, but the big question is, how long will this game be available for?\u00a0 Because while Tetris 99 is still available and supported, the other games in this category of sorts of Nintendo Battle Royale games are not.\u00a0 Super Mario 35 was announced as a time-limited title and was indeed shut down as scheduled.\u00a0 I have no idea why they made the game time limited, but I didn&#8217;t like it all that much anyway; the physics were just a bit off, not quite NES Mario physics and very far from NSMB.\u00a0 As for the other one, Pac-Man 99, the game is a Switch exclusive but is run by Namco.\u00a0 The game is about to be shut down.\u00a0 I have no idea why Namco is shutting it down now, and it&#8217;s really unfortunate that they are because from what I played of it it&#8217;s pretty good, but I do admit I was probably part of the problem, I wasn&#8217;t playing it much.\u00a0 I presume player numbers must not have been that high, unfortunately.\u00a0 Too bad.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">So, the rocky history of these games leaves me skeptical about F-Zero 99&#8217;s future.\u00a0 I hope that this game is more Tetris 99 than Mario 35!\u00a0 F-Zero 99 is really good, it&#8217;d be a shame if it vanishes for no reason at some time not that far in the future.\u00a0 I recommend playing this game while you can, it&#8217;s really worth it.\u00a0 Another reason to play this game now is that some modes rotate in and out, if you want to play all of the tracks you&#8217;ll need to keep coming back.\u00a0 That so many modern games have features like this in them that force you to play one game for a long time is another issue that I have very mixed feelings about, but &#8230; I can&#8217;t help but play this game, it&#8217;s too fun to ignore.\u00a0 Yes, it&#8217;s endless games like this that are why I don&#8217;t actually finish games very often anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">F-Zero 99 &#8211; The Basics<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"><br \/>\nBut this is an article about F-Zero 99, not those other titles.\u00a0 F-Zero 99 is SNES F-Zero but with 99 racers and some new features.\u00a0 The game controls a lot like the Super Nintendo game, so control is responsive and feels great.\u00a0 The game feels designed to be played with a D-pad, though; analog controls exist but are incredibly twitchy, I hate the feel of this with analog.\u00a0 So that Switch analog stick will sit there unused like usual&#8230; heh, with the kinds of games I mostly play on Switch I rarely use that thing.\u00a0 This game works fine as it is, but better analog controls might have been nice.\u00a0 I know Nintendo wanted to prioritize being able to play this game with a d-pad because they wanted the game to play well on the Switch Super Nintendo-style controller, and that was a good decision, but the analog controls are incredibly twitchy, I find playing with analog very difficult and awful-feeling.\u00a0 The analog stick controls could have been a lot better, I&#8217;m sure.\u00a0 The other thing that needs work is the options menu, which has some missing options that should exist.\u00a0 Audio volume options are badly needed, for example; the music in this game is too quiet, and you can&#8217;t turn it up.\u00a0 It&#8217;s kind of annoying to have to turn my TV volume way up just for this one game, then back down for anything else.\u00a0 There also isn&#8217;t an option to dis[play the speed in miles per hour, which is a bizarre oversight to make.\u00a0 The speed in this game doesn&#8217;t matter much, but it should not have shipped only in kilometers per hour, those numbers are somewhat meaningless to me.\u00a0 Some past F-Zero games were also metric only but still, that&#8217;s an issue that could have been fixed.\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">But really, that&#8217;s it for issues as far as controls and options go, everything else is good.\u00a0 And these issues are pretty minor; just use the d-pad and maybe turn the sound up a bit and you&#8217;re good.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">As far as the gameplay goes, F-Zero 99 starts with the Super Nintendo game.\u00a0 Just like in that classic, the tracks are Mode 7 style rotating flat planes, and the vehicles are sprites.\u00a0\u00a0 The game has a nice minimap just like the SNES game, except now it shows your and your rivals&#8217; positions.\u00a0 There is also a new zoomed in map which shows all cars close to you but doesn&#8217;t show the shape of the track.\u00a0 The graphics are very sharp and high resolution, of course, making the game much sharper looking than the SNES game, but the similarity is clear.\u00a0 This modern take on classic SNES graphics looks fantastic.\u00a0 The controls and handling are similar to the original, so control is tight and responsive.\u00a0 Just like in the original, each of the four hovercars you can choose between has a very different feel to how it controls.\u00a0 It&#8217;s great that the four are so different, four vehicles may not be many but when they are this different it&#8217;s enough.\u00a0 And just like the original, in addition to the racers in the race there are also AI-controlled obstacle cars called bumpers.\u00a0 The two bumpers from the original game return, with two new ones added.\u00a0 Just like in the original, grey bumpers litter the course and just get in the way, while red bumpers explode when you touch them greatly damaging your car.\u00a0 The new types are blue and yellow.\u00a0 Yellow bumpers give you a bunch of yellow orbs, more on that soon, and blue ones are human-controlled obstacle cars the game sometimes lets you control if you crash out early in a race.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">And on that note, F-Zero 99 may start with the SNES game, but it builds off of it to fit its new genre and for the new control and game features that have been added in.\u00a0 Nintendo did a lot more here than just port the SNES game and add a lot more cars, there are new game mechanics present.\u00a0 First, the track designs, while extremely faithful to the original, have been expanded in scale to fit the larger field.\u00a0 Some track elements have been made easier, also &#8212; rumble strip areas don&#8217;t slow you down as much as they do on SNES, and White Land II&#8217;s big jump is significantly shorter and easier, for example.\u00a0 These changes are mostly okay, apart from the White Land II jump, I really wish they hadn&#8217;t messed with that.\u00a0 F-Zero 99&#8217;s tracks are challenging since they are the SNES F-Zero tracks, but the primary challenge comes from the other humans more so than the course.\u00a0 Overall I think they struck the right balance with track redesign.\u00a0 Each track has an opening start area as well, a fan-shaped area where all the cars start before driving towards the games&#8217; starting line in the course.\u00a0 The fan-shaped starting area finishes with a jump to the straightaway to the starting line.\u00a0 This solves the starting-line issue with so many cars in a fair way, it was a really good idea.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">But as far as game mechanics go, there are a few major changes.\u00a0 First, and least importantly, SNES F-Zero has five laps while this game has four, but the scaled-up size of the tracks to fit the large field keeps race lengths similar.\u00a0 More significantly, the the boost system of the rest of the series has been put in this game, so boosting boosts away your health.\u00a0 The SNES game just gave you one boost per lap, but F-Zero X and beyond have boosting reduce your health energy bar.\u00a0 I really like that this mechanic is here, it adds a lot to the game.\u00a0 Boosting, hitting a wall, or bumping other vehicles reduces your energy.\u00a0 If you run out of energy or go off the track on a jump, you explode and that&#8217;s it, you lose; there are no second chances in a race in this game.\u00a0\u00a0 Each track has a recharge pit area that heals some of your energy.\u00a0 How much you get back depends on the vehicle you&#8217;ve chosen and how long the tracks&#8217; recharge area is.\u00a0 Some vehicles recharge energy much faster but have lower top speeds, while others recharge slower but have a higher top speed.\u00a0 The game is well-balanced and those vehicle differences are interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">The second, and probably most important, new ability is about the superboosts to the Skyway.\u00a0 This new super-boost ability has been added.\u00a0 When any car damages other vehicles with a spin attack &#8212; another feature from later F-Zero games back-ported to the original here &#8212; yellow orbs drop.\u00a0 If you attack others you directly get a bit of meter, but most of the meter building will come from collecting the yellow orbs other players drop behind them upon every spin-attack hit between vehicles.\u00a0 Additionally, there are some large yellow AI-controlled vehicles that give you a whole bunch of yellow orbs all at once if you touch them.\u00a0 Once the meter is filled, if you hit the boost button instead of doing a normal boost you will go up into the sky to the Skyway, a second path in the air above each track.\u00a0 You stay on this more streamlined course for as long as your now-rapidly-depleting boost meter allows.\u00a0 Timing your uses of the superboost is one of the most important skills you will need to learn in order to do better at this game, because where you start a superboost can have a large impact on how much ground you gain from it.\u00a0 You will only get a couple of superboosts per race most of the time, since the meter takes a while to charge up, so you need to use them well.\u00a0 This mechanic is not something any previous game in the series has any analog to, and I&#8217;m not sure if I like it all that much overall because it allows you to avoid the challenging parts of a track and sometimes gain a large advantage through just using a boost well instead of through good driving skill, but it is an interesting mechanic that is key to the game.\u00a0 Superboosts are a lot of fun and timing when to use them is key to this games&#8217; strategy, but when Skyway trips skip like half of the track, as they do with a few of the courses, it kind of removes the challenge of the track, you know?\u00a0 This is particularly an issue with the track Red Canyon, for example.\u00a0 On the other hand, the superboost makes this game more accessible to new players and on the surface makes the game easier, but a good player will still do better due to racing better, knowing exactly when to use a superboost, and such.\u00a0 It&#8217;s an interesting and somewhat mixed-bag mechanic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\">Lastly for this section, one thing that is kind of the same and kind of a change is the way in-race eliminations for low position work.\u00a0 SNES F-Zero is a game where each lap the position you must finish that lap in decreases. By the final lap of the five-lap race you must be in the top three to finish.\u00a0 If you finish a lap in too low a place you lose a life, and you get only a few tries per prix before you have to start over.\u00a0 F-Zero 99 kind of keeps this system, but scales it down dramatically in importance.\u00a0 Where on the SNES the core of the game is the battle to learn the tracks well enough to not get ranked out because of not being in a high enough position, here in F-Zero 99 only a relative few get ranked out.\u00a0 The way it works is that periodically the bottom five or so will be eliminated, but this only happens once a lap or so so by the end of the race at least 75-80 people generally will have finished.\u00a0 Just stay out of the very back of the field and you&#8217;ll be fine here.\u00a0 It is possible to get ranked out, I&#8217;ve had it happen a couple of times, but it&#8217;s very rare.\u00a0 Make no mistake though, F-Zero 99 is a hard game.\u00a0 The tracks have been made slightly easier than their SNES counterparts in some ways, and the game doesn&#8217;t have a mode which constantly eliminates people putting SNES F-Zero levels of &#8220;stay at the very front or you&#8217;re out&#8221; pressure on you, but that game is learnable, good play will reward you with victory.\u00a0 Here, with 99 human players doing all kinds of random things, luck is a significant factor, and more driving skill will be required to overcome the challenge of all of those other humans.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Rank and Unlockables<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\">And lastly, as it is a modern endless multiplayer-focused game, F-Zero 99 has a leveling system and a lot of cosmetics to unlock.\u00a0 There is no cash shop here, thankfully; you unlock everything through play.\u00a0 As with many online games, there are two separate rankings in this game, your level and your online player grade.\u00a0 The former goes up after every race, with more experience for better performance.\u00a0 The latter, however, floats up or down depending on how you did.\u00a0 The game uses a letter grade system like a lot of Japanese online games, so you start at a D grade and go up to C, B, A, and then S.\u00a0 After S you gain more S ranks, until hitting the current maximum of S20, I believe.\u00a0 This whole system is based on a strange mechanic, though: you gain or lose rank based on how many of four rival players that the game chose before the race you finish ahead of.\u00a0 If you finish ahead of all four you get the most possible ranking points, if you finish ahead of at least one you get some ranking points, and if you finish behind all four you lose ranking points.\u00a0 So, you want to finish ahead of these people if at all possible.\u00a0 In single races the rivals are chosen based on people close to your level and total experience points.\u00a0 In mini or grand prixes, though, your rivals for races two and after are based on the four opponents closest to you in the cup ranking, so it&#8217;ll be the two people above you and the two below you unless you are in the top or bottom two overall.\u00a0 The system is strange and I don&#8217;t know if it was a good idea or not to have your rank be based on whether you finish ahead of arbitrary other racers, but it works.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\">As for those unlockables, this game may only have the four cars from the original SNES F-Zero game to choose from, but it makes those four machines look like a lot more by having a lot of different car paint skins to unlock, all in colorful palettes.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t buy them with currency though, this game doesn&#8217;t have currency.\u00a0 Instead these unlock like achievements, so you need to accomplish specific tasks in order to get skins.\u00a0 In addition to car skins there are also unlockables for your player logo that is displayed during multiplayer.\u00a0 This logo will show your vehicle of choice, a background, a frame, and three icons below.\u00a0 You can customize all of these elements from the things you have unlocked based on your level and accomplishments.\u00a0 Some of these things unlock based on pure play time, while others require accomplishing specific things.\u00a0 You can also unlock some other things such as new boost and skyway colors, there is a nice amount of stuff here to unlock.\u00a0 I think F-Zero 99 does a good job of having enough here to make the player want to keep coming back to get more cool skins and icons and such.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\">And lastly, the game has a weekly player ranking system.\u00a0 Every time you play a Mini Prix or a Grand Prix, the level points you get in the end are totaled up and added to a running weekly total.\u00a0 Note, this is based on the level points you got based on your finishing position and bonuses and such, not your player grade, so it isn&#8217;t arbitrary.\u00a0 On the games&#8217; main menu you can view the weekly player rankings.\u00a0 Here the game shows how everyone is doing, so you can see who&#8217;s got the most rank points this week, where you stand, and such.\u00a0 At the end of each week, the game tells you what place you finished that week in.\u00a0 I&#8217;m pretty mediocre, I finished something like 17,000th place the first week and like 10- thousandth the second.\u00a0 It&#8217;s fine, the game is fun regardless.\u00a0 I like that the game has something to play for here to keep people engaged with the Prixes.\u00a0 Nintendo did a great job making this a game which is both simple and complex, fun for a few minutes but rewarding to play for hours, accessible but also something with rewards for the good players.<\/span><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The Game Modes and Amount of Content<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">The core of the F-Zero 99 experience is a lot like SNES F-Zero, though, just in modern resolution widescreen and with the insane, intense chaos of 99 human-controlled racers on the track, all driving around and whacking into eachother.\u00a0 This is a wonderful game with, as described above, solid rewards for people who keep playing it.\u00a0 As for the actual tracks you drive on, though, there are a pretty limited number of them.\u00a0 R<\/span><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">ight now this is probably the games&#8217; main issue.\u00a0 The Super Nintendo F-Zero game had 15 tracks, which is a decent number but a lot less than its sequels would have.\u00a0 At launch in F-Zero 99, 7 of the 15 tracks from the original Super Nintendo game were playable.\u00a0 This felt like definitely too few tracks.\u00a0 An update in late September added five more, leaving three not in the game yet to be added in a future update.\u00a0 Even though only five tracks were added, this addition has done a lot to alleviate some of the repetition of the initial launch game.\u00a0 I hope they continue adding tracks after that, starting with the 10 from the two BS F-Zero GP games for the SNES Satellaview.\u00a0 Each track in this game is relatively short, so even with a decent number of tracks and the four lap races which this game does, plenty of tracks are needed to keep players engaged.<\/span><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">On those Satellaview tracks that hopefully will be added to this game eventually, I presume that Nintendo has copies of those tracks, because only half of them are currently available; the BS F-Zero 2 game we know is based on the Practice rom for BS F-Zero, which included four new cars and five new tracks, while the other five new tracks were only in the main two week versions with Satellaview streaming audio, neither of which has a publicly available rom.\u00a0 There are a few videos on Youtube of them being played with the original streamed Japanese voiced dialog, though, which is neat.\u00a0 There are more SNES-style tracks from the GBA games of course, or they could make new courses, but it&#8217;d be pretty fantastic to finally see BS F-Zero return, and for everyone to be able to play the five lost tracks!<br \/>\n<\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"post_body scaleimages\" style=\"text-align: left;\"><\/div>\n<div>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">Anyway, in order to keep player counts up in the modes since this kind of game requires a large player base to function &#8212; remember, every single race needs 99 hopefully human players, though if fewer than 99 humans are in a game when its start countdown timer ends it will fill up the field with fairly mediocre AIs &#8212; F-Zero 99 has two modes available at a time.\u00a0 The two are F-Zero 99 mode and a rotating other mode.\u00a0 Yes, the main F-Zero 99 mode is always available, but the others are not. In all modes,\u00a0 after a race completes you get level points based on your finishing position and some other bonuses, and gain or lose rank based on whether you finished ahead of or behind your rivals.\u00a0 Multi-track championships also have their own point totals they keep track of for the championship rankings.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong>F-Zero 99 <\/strong>mode randomly selects two tracks from a selection of now seven, the first four tracks of Knight Cup and the first three of Queen Cup, then the players vote on which one of the two they want to race on.\u00a0 That means that in this mode you may race on Mute City I or II, Death Wind I, Big Blue, Red Canyon, Sand Ocean, and Port Town I.\u00a0 Once the last three tracks are added Mute City III is likely to join this mode, I&#8217;d guess but likely not any more.\u00a0 That would make this games&#8217; biggest weakness, that if often feels like Mute City 99 instead of F-Zero 99 because most people seem to choose Mute City every time it appears, even worse, but at least each of the three Mute City variants is slightly different.<br \/>\n..<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">The Rotating Slot Modes Include:<br \/>\n<\/span><\/strong><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">&#8211; <strong>Team Battle<\/strong> &#8211; This mode races on the same tracks as F-Zero 99 does, except here the players are broken up into two teams which compete with eachother for points.\u00a0 The two most important sources of points are which team is in the lead during the race and the finishing positions of team members at the end and damage done to members of the other team done with spin attacks during the race.\u00a0 There are also less points handed out for two other categories, including how many members of the other team your team destroyed.\u00a0 This mode is okay but it&#8217;s definitely my least favorite in the game because the results feel extremely arbitrary, these races aren&#8217;t really long enough for team tactics. Also, due to the long wait timer you need to wait through between each spin attack, it&#8217;s not like races are filled with action, it&#8217;s really about the same as a regular race. This mode would be more interesting if they dramatically reduced the spin attack wait timer for this mode only, I wish they&#8217;d do that. As it is though I usually don&#8217;t play it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">&#8211; <strong>Mini Prix<\/strong> &#8211; A Mini Prix costs one ticket. You earn tickets through play in the modes which don&#8217;t cost tickets. This three-race championship has preset tracks, you can&#8217;t choose. It will consist of two randomly selected tracks from the ones F-Zero 99 mode chooses between followed by one final track from the ones in Pro Tracks mode (below). You get points based on your finishing position in each race and the winner is the person with the most points at the end of all three tracks. These are pretty fun.\u00a0 Also, remember that you get points towards the weekly rankings from your finishes here.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">&#8211; <strong>Pro Tracks<\/strong> &#8211; This mode is the harder tracks that are not the fifth track in a circuit. It currently includes three tracks, which it will select two of to offer the players to choose between. The three tracks here are Port Town II, White Land I, and Death Wind II. Once they add the remaining three tracks Red Canyon II is sure to join this mode. This mode&#8217;s great and it would be nice if it was available more as opposed to boring Team Battle mode. These are the most interesting tracks the game regularly lets you play on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\">&#8211; <strong>Grand Prix<\/strong> &#8211; This mode costs three tickets, so you will need to play for a while to be able to play it. A timer on the main menu tells you how long it is until the next Grand Prix starts, and shows an icon for which cup it will be.\u00a0 They go every two hours on weekdays and every 20 or 30 minutes on weekends.\u00a0 Grand Prixes are five track championships.\u00a0 As in the Mini Prix, you get points after each race, and the winner is the person with the most points after all five races.\u00a0 After each race the bottom 20 people are eliminated, so getting to each next course gets more difficult. So, only the top 20 from track 4 of the circuit can challenge the final track. For the first few weeks after the game released, this mode was the Knight Cup Grand Prix, and went through the five tracks of Knight Cup, finishing with a track you can&#8217;t play in any of the other multiplayer modes, Silence. The first update added the Queen Cup to the rotation as well, going through its five tracks and finishing with White Land II.\u00a0 Once the King Cup is added the third cup will finally be in the rotation.\u00a0 Of course, you get a bunch of points towards the weekly rankings for doing well in Grand Prixes.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Again though, even when a cup is running only that one cup is available at a time.\u00a0 You can&#8217;t choose.\u00a0 And here is where the games&#8217; design decision to lock the final track of each circuit to only ever appear as the fifth track of a Grand Prix is so frustrating, it basically means that you will almost never race these tracks!\u00a0 Grand Prixes are only occasionally available, and even when they are only one of the three is available then.\u00a0 It&#8217;s frustrating that some of the best tracks in the game are hidden away to very rarely be seen.\u00a0 This will be a particular shame when the final King Cup track, Fire Field, makes an appearance.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a really good course that deserves more play than &#8220;maybe once in a rare while if you&#8217;re good&#8221;!\u00a0 On the other hand, these tracks are treated specially &#8212; instead of the usual large<\/span><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\"> fan-shaped starting area, the final tracks start you at the starting grid behind the starting line, with all 20 racers lined up in their points order.\u00a0 It&#8217;s pretty cool to have some races with a traditional starting grid in ranked order.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"> This decision, to lock what will be three of the fifteen tracks to only appear as the final track of a Grand Prix, does make those tracks feel more special but, to emphasize what is maybe this games&#8217; largest issue, it also locks some of the most interesting tracks in the game to barely ever appear or, in the case of the Grand Prix cups not currently in the rotation, to be totally unavailable in multiplayer. I understand why only one cup is available at a time here since the mode modes you offer the greater the likeliness that games won&#8217;t fill with 99 racers, but the final tracks really should have versions in the regular modes too. I get the idea of making them special, but I&#8217;d rather have more tracks to race on all of the time, I think that would be better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;\"><br \/>\nAnyway, though, that&#8217;s the modes in F-Zero 99. This game is really really amazing and addictive and I&#8217;m looking forward to its future updates. Again I really hope that they don&#8217;t stop with the 15 tracks from the original game and also add the courses from BS F-Zero Grand Prix, that would be amazing&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\"><strong><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Conclusion<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: times new roman, times, serif;\">Overall, I love F-Zero 99.\u00a0 I&#8217;d love to see more content and for them to rethink the &#8220;the fifth track of each circuit cannot be played outside of its Grand Prix&#8221; decision, but other than this this game is really, really good, very addictive stuff.\u00a0 I have played quite a few hours of this game, and am over level 30 now, and will certainly continue playing.\u00a0 F-Zero 99 is an amazing game with great controls, very good, nostalgic graphics, and fantastic gameplay with depth and challenge.\u00a0 The mechanics are well thought through, the tracks are great, there&#8217;s a lot to unlock, and so much more!\u00a0 There is a good amount of variety here, too, particularly when you&#8217;re not playing Mute City 99 instead of F-Zero 99&#8230; heh.\u00a0 This game may be one of the reasons why I don&#8217;t play games that actually end anywhere near as often as I probably should, but when something this great comes along, a game this fun and in a genre and series I love this much, I can&#8217;t not play it, and you shouldn&#8217;t either.\u00a0 Play F-Zero 99 now, it&#8217;s incredible.\u00a0 This game gets an <strong>A<\/strong> grade for sure, and it&#8217;s close to an A+; whether it ends up that high somewhat depends on how future content updates for the game go.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Note<\/strong>: I edited this article on 10\/4 to correct a few errors, most notably about whether the earlier circuits would continue to appear after the next one was published &#8212; I thought the Knight League was entirely gone for a while, but if it was it was very brief, both cups are in rotation now.\u00a0 Otherwise the main changes were to add some needed detail, particularly about the way the rank-out system works and about the unlockables and level systems and such.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction and On the Other &#8217;99&#8217; Titles Within the past few months, rumors of a new F-Zero game surfaced.\u00a0 I wasn&#8217;t sure whether to believe them or not given how long it has been &#8212; it has been over 15 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/?p=1518\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,117,6,437,8],"tags":[547,171,546,45,491,357],"class_list":["post-1518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-impressions","category-full-reviews","category-modern-games","category-nintendo-switch","category-reviews","tag-battle-royale-games","tag-f-zero","tag-f-zero-99","tag-nintendo","tag-nintendo-switch","tag-snes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blackfalcongames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}