Played on Beginner, Standard and Expert difficulty. At its core, F-Zero is a simple, albeit satisfying racer. Maintaining top speed is especially important in a game such as this where the rubberbanding AI can easily catch up with the player after a mistake. To this end, mastery of both the drifting and boosting mechanic is necessary - though they are easy to learn, these two have a very high skill ceiling, there are a lot of little optimization to be made on every track, and I was pleased whenever I managed to beat one of my best times, if only by a second or so. Track variety is unfortunately on the lower side, as 6 of the 15 tracks are repeats to some extent, but that is ultimately a very minor complaint.

What really ended up dragging this game down for me was playing on one of the second-highest difficulty, Expert. A lot of my minor annoyances with this game, such as the invincible opponents, the random orange cars on the tracks that can actively hinder your movement, their explosive cousins and the life system which prevents you from continuing a cup if you do not consistently place within the top 3 became genuine grievances on this difficulty. Call it a skill issue, but I felt as if I was constantly fighting an uphill battle, as if everything was working against me. Coupled with the fact that you cannot even select the latter half of the tracks in practice mode, Expert ultimately left a sour taste in my mouth and I will likely never bother with Master difficulty.

Regardless, this was an interesting experience and I cannot wait to give F-Zero X a try.