The Shrine

I love F-Zero 99!

I’m coming at this as someone who’s not really an F-Zero fan. I always saw F-Zero as kind of like the game series that comes after Pilot Wings and Excitebikw, I get the appeal for some players, but it’s not really my thing… Kind of like how I love Ice Hockey even though many see it as kind of a throw away simple game.

• 99 racers on the track across a number of different style races and remixed tracks.
• IMO the best of the 99 franchise (which has included Pacman, Tetris, and Super Mario Bros)
• Lots of reward stuff.
• The first 16-bit game in the 99 franchise.
• I’m now wondering when Mario Kart 99 will land?



Nintendo did another surprise game release, high has become more and more common these days - and I think for the better - where the game is announced usually within a few hours of release.

My initial experience was “I suck at this” with all of my races usually being below the rank of 70.
I think after about 40-50 races I was hitting top 60 consistently. And it didn’t take me long after to realize this is a game about gambling.

The game gives you a shield, and if you boost you lose some of your shield. You can run over certain stretches to recover. If you KO an opponent, you recover all of your shield PLUS you get a bit of extra - for a total of 3 levels of shielding. You can collect these things called sparks that fall out of every car from every collision, and when your meter fills you can get basically a bullet bill type booster. Where does the gambling some in? Figuring out when to use your boosts and if you should be boosting. Because of your shield runs out, any hit will blow you up - I once blew up on the final lap finish line.

Once I learned that the game was about gambling, I quickly improved my game, and learned about what to do depending on where you are in the race. If you’re near the back, collect as many sparks to be in the race, and try to boat on every stretch to try to get into the top 50. If you see a big gold car, bash into the back of it three times to get A LOT of sparks, and I think spin attacking it gets extras too.

50-10 - keep spin attacking your opponents and stay near the beginning of the track collecting sparks, it’s OK to stay low on your shields but try to KO an opponent, because if you do, that’s your ticket into the top 10.

Top 15 - I don’t boost here unless I have higher shields. But the goal is to race as smoothly as possible, try not to hit anything. Sparks are much rarer and so will KO’s unless…

Top 15 and final lap - desperate racers are blowing their load here, it’s easy to get KO’s, and if you do… then it’s time to blow your load. That’s usually how I get up to top 3 - I still have yet to take #1, but I have snagged 3rd a few times now.

A tip - don’t hit the gas until about 1 second before the start of the race, or about 2/3rds to 3/4ths between the last beep and the start of the race. Hardly anyone lands this, so I usually find myself top 5 or 6 at the start of every race… and from my searching, this is the only place you’ll find this advice on the Internet - some people say hit it just as the race starts or just before - but they’re not accurate or straight up wrong. The specific moment is 1 second, enough for your engines to heat up and the GO is when they hit max about 1 second after hitting ignition.

Another tip: all jumps recharge your spin attack, otherwise it charges up in like 8-10 seconds. You can hit it with an LR button.

Another tip: Tap the accelerate to get out of pinballing (bouncing around all over the place).

Another tip: Hit the appropriate L/R and release accelerate on sharp turns.

I'm not paying for Nintendo online but if I did I'd be all over this game, looks super fun.

This game is addictive as hell.
Yesterday, I was on the verge of getting first place on the Gran Prix, literally, top 5 (out of 99) all the way through, and I nearly closed out the final race in first place, which probably would have taken me to first overall since I was like 6 points from first (basically, the game scores like 200 points for first, 196 for second, 194 for third, 192 for fourth....) and I crashed on the motherfucking line!

About Nintendo Online, funny enough, I get it because of local play as I'm not much for online gaming. I was into Star Craft and Utopia when I was a younger, but that's about it. The online play is so in games like Mario Kart, rather than playing strictly local, we play online and fill up the slots with online players. There's also Animal Crossing and some other features I like.

Why you might want to consider it is the voucher program. You buy vouchers in sets of two which can be used on select games, and save about 10-20 bucks on each game. So, if you get a set of vouchers for two games, you'll be saving money by getting online+vouchers. 5 bucks Canadian (not sure how much that works out American) for 1 month online, and 25 bucks for a year (or like 42 for the family plan, which is what I get). So, think of it as free online with your discount on the Nintendo published retail level games.

All these years I’ve never really been a fan of F-Zero games. The original SNES one is probably the one I played the most - about 2-3 hours worth in my youth, and maybe another hour or so on stuff like the SNES mini. Then there was F Zero X on N64 and its sequel on Gamecube or Wii, neither of which held my attention longer than 20 minutes—not saying they’re bad, those games have their fans, I’m just not among them. People had a lot of fun with these games, and that eluded me. High speed racers were really a 1990s thing, for a time they were one of the biggest things at the arcade, and later on became massive in the latter part of the N64 and PSX generation, but that was a short lived period, as the Wii caught the tail end of this, and by about 2010 or so, the genre was dead. Granted, there are a few niche high speed racers on the Switch

This game is really something else. I don’t think I ever had anywhere near this much fun with Xtreme G, Wipeout, Podracer, or any of the other similar games. I’m just glad I can finally experience F-Zero on the level that its rabid fans did 30+ years in the past.

Update went through today that includes 4 new tracks and a new GP (Queen Cup).

This might already be the high speed racer I’ve played the most in total.

I’ve played 3 of the 4 new tracks, I’m guessing the fourth is the end of the Queen Cup - kind of like how Silence is the end of the Knight Cup. I enjoyed them all.