A tantalising glimpse of what Nintendo EAD was capable of when allowed to step off the family-friendly Mario-Zelda-Mario hamster wheel: a 2000 AD Comics adaptation of Death Race 2000 that uses the word “Death” far more casually than just about any other Nintendo game that’s ever existed.
It’s interesting to me that some of EAD’s biggest mold-breakers (Starfox, F-Zero, Pilotwings) ended up being sourced out to Namco and Sega in the succeeding games generations, as if Nintendo were afraid of being directly responsible for games where your soul could run wild, blow big things up and flirt with death-destruction. I was very much in the “Mario Kart 8 IS the next-gen F-Zero!” camp until I replayed this at the weekend and realised that X is as much about its presented attimood as it is its precise handling. It’s hard in ways Nintendo games simply aren’t, usually - in MK8 you can’t make Mario break 1400mph and lose his fine-tuned grip on a deep-space heavy-metal mag-lev, screaming “noooOOoOooOooOoo!” while plummeting painfully into explosive oblivion. This is a once-in-a-lifetime Nintendo experience - GX carries its torch, but it isn’t really a Nintendo game; this right here is something you could plausibly imagine Shigeru Miyamoto observing on his coffee break, and that makes it particularly special.
As far as an actual game review goes - Santa gave me Ocarina of Time and my brother F-Zero X on Christmas Day, 1998. 24 years later, we both still refer to this day as “the best Christmas ever”. That should tell you everything you need to know about this game and its quality.
It’s interesting to me that some of EAD’s biggest mold-breakers (Starfox, F-Zero, Pilotwings) ended up being sourced out to Namco and Sega in the succeeding games generations, as if Nintendo were afraid of being directly responsible for games where your soul could run wild, blow big things up and flirt with death-destruction. I was very much in the “Mario Kart 8 IS the next-gen F-Zero!” camp until I replayed this at the weekend and realised that X is as much about its presented attimood as it is its precise handling. It’s hard in ways Nintendo games simply aren’t, usually - in MK8 you can’t make Mario break 1400mph and lose his fine-tuned grip on a deep-space heavy-metal mag-lev, screaming “noooOOoOooOooOoo!” while plummeting painfully into explosive oblivion. This is a once-in-a-lifetime Nintendo experience - GX carries its torch, but it isn’t really a Nintendo game; this right here is something you could plausibly imagine Shigeru Miyamoto observing on his coffee break, and that makes it particularly special.
As far as an actual game review goes - Santa gave me Ocarina of Time and my brother F-Zero X on Christmas Day, 1998. 24 years later, we both still refer to this day as “the best Christmas ever”. That should tell you everything you need to know about this game and its quality.
2 Comments
when I was a kid the idea that you could go so fast that you just fully separated from the road and planed off into space was the coolest thing ever, and guess what it still is
Hylianhero777
2 years ago