man, oh man. i finally had to set f-zero GX aside today, b/c after more than two and a half months of playing it pretty much every day i am -wiped out-. seriously, i think playing this game so much has permanently raised my blood pressure. when nintendo says “don’t blink and drive” they’re not kidding. more like “don’t breathe and drive”, ha. i don’t think any game has ever left me feeling so twitchy for such a long period of time during and afterwards. not sure that’s a good thing, but it’s def. a great game.
this morning i beat the diamond cup on master and thus unlocked the last 6 tracks, but at the moment i’m not terribly compelled to finish beating the AX cup or finish the story mode. not to mention tackling the staff ghosts (of which i’ve unlocked a few but haven’t sat down and tried to beat) or seeing all the character FMVs (which you unlock by using the character to beat any of the cups on the master level). this game really takes unlockables to the extreme: it seriously has enough unlockables and events to beat to keep you busy for a year. but as much as i loved playing the majority of it, man, i need a break!
at the time i wrote my first post about playing the game i hadn’t gotten very far into the higher levels, and those did prove to be reasonably challenging. of the four main cups the part that was the hardest (as i supposed you’d expect) was the last one (diamond) on master. i found ranking anywhere near the top 10 of that last course was pretty much impossible for me, but that may partly have had to do w/ the car i was using. i beat the first two cups using the hyper speeder, but for the other two i ended up using roger buster’s mighty hurricane (thus his place of honor at the top of this post) which gets a good top speed but accelerates much more quickly. as i got further into the game i enjoyed taking out other cars with attacks more and more also. haha. i’m not sure if it was just fatigue setting in, but i was def. bored by some of the tracks in the diamond cup, and when i played through the AX tracks i wasn’t so impressed by them either. the longer tracks in general were more boring to me which may be a big part of it.
anyway, i def. need a break, although i’m also def. looking forward to coming back to it and the others in the series at some point. i’ll prob. tackle the orig. SNES game before the N64 game though. amazon also has a listing for a 2-disc import soundtrack that has all the character songs. cool. i also heard about the f-zero anime which had some episodes aired in the US. i don’t think it made it to DVD, but i’ll def. have to track some of those down at some point. my only question is: how in the world is nintendo going to top this??
some links
– i mentioned f-zero world, an awesome fansite at smashboards.com, before, but some other sections worth noting that it has are: a list of arcades with f-zero AX machines (it says there are only 14 in the US but it’s prob. out of date and there are prob. even less) and a succinct list of secrets. the latter page lists the staff ghosts by the times to unlock. the times to beat are 10 seconds less (listed on this FAQ at ign.com).
– the message board FAQ at ign.com has some good info. in particular, it has a listing of the machines ranked by top maximum speed.
– wikipedia has a nice section on all the character of f-zero X (which are the same as in f-zero GX) including wallpapers for all of them (800×600). sweet. according to those bios (presumably from the f-zero X instruction book) roger buster “has 3 red marks on the side of his head as a sign of how many deliveries didn’t make their destination”. awesome.
– a FAQ at ign.com describing all the character FMVs
– a FAQ at ign.com describing how to use a glitch to fly around the course. haven’t tried it, but i’ve read about it elsewhere as well.
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I just don’t understand how much of the gaming community has just let the Gamecube settle into the dust. I think that the Cube is one of the greatest gaming consoles ever created with some of the best games I have ever played on it. F-Zero is a prime example. This is a game that in my mind will never become dated. Much like Nintendo’s other Gamecube games they are of an art style that shinier graphics can’t really improve upon. The gameplay is rock solid and ridiculously fun. I really like games that don’t wuss out and provide a challenge. Games aren’t supposed to be easy, but hard enough that if you put the time in, you’ll get good.
i agree that the gamecube in general is underrated and that it has loads of great games, FZGX being one of them. the gameplay in FZGX is def. solid, although some of the challenges get a bit too close to the border between being an immense challenge to being developing a completely pointless skill. i.e. if i’m going to spend so much time beating one ghost, i start to think i’d be better off learning how to play the trumpet or speak japanese. in general i’m kind of against challenges in games where only a fraction of a percent of people will ever be able to conquer them, although maybe i’m underestimating the number of people who have unlocked everything in FZGX.
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