Yes, I believe that’s the case. USB has a frame of lag due to how is implemented.
My wireless adapter dongle controller mashup had its own lag.
I have been an addicted mess to this game when it launched, and again when the queen cup content dropped last weekend!
The way the game uses 99 racers to create tension is quite remarkable. Make it to the front of the pack and it’s a test of mettle to remain ahead against a few other players who join your ranks. Fall behind and you’ve got to defend yourself with a spin attack, which creates sparks for other players to pick up and access the skyway.
Strategic use of the skyway is often key to victory for most courses, you can rinse the amount of time you’re on it if the game can’t let you off the skyway because it’s currently over the course itself!
My only complaint is that I’m pretty sure Golden Fox is by far the best vehicle due to how quickly it recovers energy. The others don’t seem to have many merits outside of maybe Wild Goose whose durability means you can score KOs without as much risk. This is vital for the Grand Prix where expanding your health bar over several courses is a key tactic.
There are two other things about the game that are quite intriguing:
- Miyamoto is credited as a supervisor, which is not something we see often outside of Pikmin and Donkey Kong games. He wasn’t supervisor on any of the Game Boy Advance titles, so it’s the first time he’s returned to work in some capacity on the series since GX.
- The game was primarily developed by NST (Nintendo Software Technology), who most recently developed Bowser’s Fury. Before that, they worked on Super Mario Maker for Nintendo 3DS which had a pretty creative single player campaign to play through. It’s great to see them work on big games again which isn’t something we’d seen since GameCube.
When Fire Field drops with the King Cup later this month it’s going to be mental!
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Bahaha same! I had a feeling you’d be playing this…
It’s strong no doubt, but in my opinion Fox, Goose and Stingray are all very competitive depending on your tactical approach and the type of track. Fox is a good front runner but Goose is better if you have to endure spells in the pack. Stingray has an advantage on tracks with tight turns like Red Canyon. I’m seriously impressed by players racking up wins with Falcon — a machine with no obvious advantages.
I won a Knight League Grand Prix yesterday after several excruciating near misses, usually messing up Silence in creative ways…
Holding multiple wins on each of the tracks in the regular mode is one thing, but winning a Grand Prix is something else entirely. I finally learned to hold back and race more conservatively, pacing myself over the five races. Results were solid if unspectacular:
Mute City 3rd
Big Blue 1st
Sand Ocean 7th
Death Wind 6th
Silence 4th
I also won a Mini Prix the other day. A three race competition suits an impulsive playstyle a little better:
Anyway, I need to take a break from this game. I’ve started seeing these machines amongst the clouds when I’m out running lately…
[Update] I have been unable to take a break from this game.
The weekend saw victory in the Queen League — White Land I and II back-to-back in this format is the stuff of nightmares XD
King League is looming…
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Congrats on the GP win! Closest I came was second and that was during the launch when a lot of newbies were about. It’s so tough now!
I guess I’d be more inclined to switch to Goose if a GP let you change vehicle mid race. I guess the issue I have is I’m too trigger happy with the boost button, haha.
Dude… over the past month I’ve been to hell and back trying to win the final GP. Countless second places. Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in the craziest ways imaginable.
Lining up against the best players in the world has been a huge buzz and it has made me a better player… but some of them possess a truly demonic level of skill that I could never attain even if I dedicated my life to this game. I practically have dedicated my life to this game over the past month!
Anyway, this afternoon I experienced one of the wildest moments of my gaming life. Head-to-head with an elite Japanese Goose, I had no fear. I can beat even the best geese at my best. A Fox, Stingray or even a Falcon can leave me behind at times, but not a goose.
So, I lose Mute City III and Death Wind II to this freak by a hair. I’m cool. Port Town II is about pure driving, it’s a long one, varied, I like it. I take the win and my rival is back in third place. It’s on! Yeah, the navy blue Goose is too good for me on Red Canyon II, smashing red bumpers like they’re candies… I finish second, again. Trailing by six points going into Fire Field, I know exactly what I need to do — win the race and make sure my rival does not finish second. Third would mean a tie. At this point I don’t even care, a tie is fine. Anything but another weekend of King League GPs.
We begin at the back of the grid, the navy blue Japanese Goose and Minasu, the Golden Goose. I hang back and collect as many sparks as possible. On Fire Field you need to manage your Skyway bar to perfection or you don’t stand a chance. Lap 3 is good, lap 4 is better. You need to ascend to the Skyway some time after the first turn, depending on how far away you are from first. Not a moment sooner.
My rival is hungry and gobbles up sparks voraciously. I see the navy blue Goose glowing — he has filled his bar too early! No more boosting for you! He ascends on lap 3, and descends in first place. Meanwhile, I still need a couple more sparks to fill my bar, I’m free to boost along and make up valuable seconds on the leader.
Then, a critical error. Just before my customary boost along the magnetic railing at the end of lap 3, I must have picked up one single tiny spark without noticing. My Skyway bar was full, and I hadn’t realised. I hit A to boost but I don’t boost… I ascend to the Skyway! A quarter lap early! Disaster! I’m screaming. How did I mess this up? I descend in fourth place with half the track still ahead of me and I’m fuming. I know my rival is in first place and cruising to victory on Fire Field and in the GP too. My boost bar is maxed out and I just start smashing A indiscriminately, careering into the other machines. I know I’ve blown it.
But… I’m so good at Fire Field that I’m just about in control even though I’m only half-looking at the screen. I’m no longer in fourth, but third. My survival instinct kicks in… ‘My rival may have crashed out,’ I think to myself. I pull myself together and blaze past the other two racers and take the W with relative ease.
I lucked out on that last race but part of me is thinking… how could my rival have crashed out? Maybe I scored a KO when I was on that rampage partway through lap 4? Surely not…
My jaw dropped.
Now I can rest.
What a game.
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Amazing post, big congrats!!! You’ve earned a holiday!
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I’ve only just started playing 99 in earnest in the last week. I haven’t won a race yet, but I’ve been up there a few times and ended up falling back. I haven’t made it to the final race of a GP yet but did come close one time.
It’s a pretty amazing game. Such a simple design that uses what seemed rather slight as a SNES game to make something brilliant. I’ve always been one to play games against other humans as much as I’m able and this game is just one more that confirms how that one addition can make all the difference in the world.
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Well this is interesting
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Classic Mode
- 4:3 aspect ratio
- 20 players
- no spin attack, skyway, K.O., power meter upgrade
- one turbo/charge per lap
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Amazing! I’ve only tried King Cup twice as it released while I was travelling but it’s hard as nails!!! Ended up crashing out on both attempts, still haven’t unlocked Fire Field yet.
It’s that unpredictability you described in your GP which separates games like F-Zero and Mario Kart from their peers, always loved how the huge starting grid means the winner can still up for grabs long into a GP.
Looking forward to this, does it rotate with the other GP modes I wonder? Booted the game up yesterday and didn’t see it.
I wonder if they are rolling it out because player counts have started to swindle though, seems almost anticlimactic that a game about 99 players has regressed towards 20 player matches, intentional or not!
After a month-long break from 99, I was reminiscing over some videos captured at the height of my obsession. It occurred to me that the Skyway mechanic is key to this game, so I thought I’d post about how to use it.
- Know where the Skyway is at all times:
- Know where the boost pads are — and make sure you hit them!
- Ascend at the right moment to skip the trickiest part of the track:
- Extend your time on the Skyway. You cannot be dropped directly over a sharp turn, so take advantage! This takes a lot of practice…
When you put 1-4 together, the magic of F-Zero 99 is revealed:
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I really should have made time to play some of this on Christmas day, bet the servers were packed again! Hopefully this week…think it’s still my GOTY.
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I’ve been playing Maximum Velocity on master lately and, dare I say it, this game is underrated.
Anyone who appreciates the original F-Zero should give MV a chance. These games are nowhere near as difficult in a post-99 world, but they are incredibly satisfying to play in short bursts. MV’s controls and sense of speed are refined, compared to the original’s.
The visuals and audio in MV are never going to be iconic but they are beautiful in their own way.
Shout-out to @Tchiko — try Maximum Velocity if you haven’t already!
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Still have fond memories of playing this one on launch day, and the graphics blowing my mind. Was probably like going from NES to SNES, if I were around for that!
Game used to seriously stress me out on Master though. From what I recall, the opponent racers can hit a higher max speed than you, so you spend most of the race guarding your tail and covering the check marker. Tense stuff.
Yes, very tense!
I’ve also come to realise that the F-Zero series can be split into two groups according to tone. On the one hand, there are the games with a minimalist aesthetic (OG, X, MV, 99) and they end up conveying a liminal atmosphere, almost eerie at times. Even the unhinged soundtrack of X can’t detract from this vibe, bizarrely it ends up enhancing it.
On the other hand, there are the games with a goofy aesthetic (GX, AX and the other GBA titles). Maybe the series was always meant to be this way and was constrained by technological limitations?
Regardless, I prefer the former style, whether it was the original vision or not. I feel a greater sense of immersion playing those understated entries. Every element plays its part right down to the menus, which are on point in Maximum Velocity too.
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This is exactly it.
The whole post is really interesting, but I think this might be the crux of why Maximum Velocity still captured the same atmosphere as the titles before it from Nintendo EAD.
Maximum Velocity shares almost no staff with the EAD games, and the impression I get is the team assembled to work on the game had to make it from scratch and improvise as they went along, right down to the ship and character designs.
Maximum Velocity’s pilot designer worked on some pretty interesting games, from Bit Generations to Fire Emblem and Teleroboxer:
Had they built on top of the existing series lore like GP Legend did, it would have turned out very differently, I reckon. It’s interesting how much autonomy R&D1 had in the creation of the game, since even its branding and logo are entirely separate to the main series, which is definitely a product of the era it was being made in. Modern Nintendo exerts a lot more control over the consistency behind its IP.
F Zero 99 being built on top of SNES F Zero certainly helped it retain the soul from that title.
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This thread encouraged me to go back to my launch day copy of Maximum Velocity. Must be the first time I’ve seriously played the game in over 20 years…
…and it’s fantastic!
- I like that there’s even more nuance to the handling of your machine than the SNES original that I’m now more familiar with. Taking the racing line in trickier courses is extremely satisfying when pulled off.
- Boosting! They’ve built upon the original’s boost system, rather than adopting the 3D game’s. There is now an inverse relationship between a machine’s boosting time, and the momentum it retains after boosting.
- This means machines like Sly Joker are super fun to drive. While it only boosts for 3 seconds it loses momentum far slower than other vehicles. I don’t remember picking up on this when I was a kid!
- And as mentioned, the liminal atmosphere. I like how little it shares with the other titles. It didn’t bother me as a kid familiar with F Zero X and it doesn’t bother me today. But it makes you wonder if that would go down today now that the audience is split between generations of players. Truly a product of the era.
While I beat the game on Master back in 2001, I clearly wasn’t great at time trialling - managed to beat my Championship course record by a full six seconds today! I guess I levelled up my F Zero game over two decades! Or maybe the Falcon Mk-II sucks.
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Although it was mostly new people, the director is the same as the original, arguably “the father of F-Zero”.
There’s been some interviews with him:
Since he wasn’t involved in F-Zero X, I get the impression he basically just ignored it completely when they were making the GBA entry. It’s unclear if he worked on the BS F-Zero stuff, but that game had some weird looking vehicles like MV. It’s as if MV followed it’s trajectory (also i’m sure this was due in part to the GBA hardware limitations basically necessitating a SNES-like game).
Then afterwards, he was only credited as Special Thanks on GP Legend, and none of the others in the series, and Nintendo pushed on with the X/GX characters etc. So MV comes off as like this ‘off brand’ F-Zero when you look at them all, but really it’s probably closer to the original creator’s vision than the 3D and later GBA games.
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