A small analysis of F-Zero 99
A small analysis of F-Zero 99
So this is a short analysis of the tracks and cars in F-Zero 99, especially under the impression of the original game.
Regarding the original game: I finished the game in master mode with all cars (with the notable exception that is Death Wind I and the Golden Fox; all I can say is, that it is humanly possible to beat Knight League with the Golden Fox, but I didn't). As for 99, I now have 30 race wins, multiple Grand Prix and Mini Prix, and I'm currently S tier/level 42. I'm a Blue Falcon-driver, but I won a race with every car, and a few races with the Golden Fox.
Now that I tested everything I have to say that it seems that the cars handle the same way as in the original game (with an exception) and the Fire Stingray has not been nerfed. The relative performance between the cars seems to be the same as in the original (aside from power management). I now understand that they balanced the cars with the boost and recharging, so the Golden Fox stands a chance on long straights.
First, let's talk about the tracks: I have the impression that they are virtually identical except where narrow passages have been widened (Death Wind I and Port Town II). I think Death Wind I is wider overall, making it much much easier than in the original game. In the old game I struggle with avoiding a single bumper, in 99 it's pretty easy to avoid two bumpers driving side by side. The boost arrows in Death Wind I have a bigger trigger radius, where in the original you had to touch them perfectly.
One hint that the tracks are almost identical is the monster jump in White Land I: You want to take the last jump platform as far left as possible and turn to the left and skip a huge part of the track. Not only is this possible, the game seems to be more forgiving: When you land on the barrier, the new game will put you onto the track (there are cases in the old game where it looks like you made the jump but you crash out: for example Red Canyon's jump arrow).
So let's talk about the cars. Although I prefer the Blue Falcon, I think the Golden Fox is the best car in the game. I also thing that the Fire Stingray is the worst car and I think I can explain why. It has not been nerfed, it's just a victim of the game's mechanics and the players' behaviour.
So if I had to rank the cars:
- Golden Fox
- Wild Goose and Blue Falcon
- Fire Stingray
The Golden Fox is absolutely not beginner friendly, but it's extremely powerful in the hands of an expert driver. The Wild Goose is more beginner friendly because of Mute City I. Blue Falcon is utter shit at Mute City. I think that overall the Blue Falcon has a slight advantage over the Wild Goose, but it requires a higher skill to exploit it.
Fire Stingray
Let's get this out of the way. The Stingray was the king of the original game. It accelerates very slowly, but once it is going, it will obliterate every other car. You wanted a lap record? You used the Stingray.
So, in 99, how do you defeat the Stingray?
You touch it.
That's it, all you have to do to defeat a Stingray driver is simply touch them. The reason is that the Stingray is actually two different cars. The Stingray's top speed is 478 km/h, and once you reach the top speed, it starts to understeer massively. So below 478: The Stingray can take every corner on throttle. At 478 the Stingray will drive into the wall.
There's a nuance though: If you're at 478, you still can take sharp corners at full speed by turning and using L/R. This needs lots and lots of practice and you need to drive a perfect line. But if you do put in the practice, no car will be able to keep up with you, even with boost.
Let's look at a brawl: In the Stingray, when you're in a brawl, there will be cars driving into you from behind and you will accelerate to 478. But at the same time you will bump into someone else, will slow you down to below 478. I hope you see the problem. When there is a sharp corner coming up you don't know if you will understeer because you're at 478, or if you will become unstable when turning while using L/R.
So you have to go off-throttle and lose speed. And you are shit at accelerating. Which means you cannot exploit the superior cornering ability while retaining high speed.
I have honestly no advice on optimal strategy in the Fire Stingray. The only thing I can think of: You need perfect sky lane-strategy. Skip the pack on the sky lane, and try to find clean air and avoid opponents.
Golden Fox
The reason why the Fox is beginner unfriendly is its instability when turning on-throttle. When you turn and you stay on throttle it will start to lose speed. Then it will start to swerve out of control. So you need to learn pulsing your throttle, especially in long corners (like the long left-hander in Sand Ocean or the S-curves in Port Town). In sharp corners the Fox is basically "turn as sharp as possible, straighten out and commit to driving in straight line." You know the slip surface in White Land I? Driving the Fox is like having the slip surface at all times.
So, let's talk about driving strategy. The Fox accelerates the best. You win the race at the start, you lose the race once you're in the pack. The Fox has the lowest top speed and in case you're wondering how Nintendo balanced this weakness: Power Management. The Fox recharges rapidly in the pit lane. And I mean really really fast. And you're lucky, because straights are the weakness of the Fox, but usually there is a pit lane on the longest straight.
So your strategy is: Boost into the pit lane, let it charge until it is almost full, then boost out of the pit lane. Yes, you won't have full energy after leaving the pit lane, but if your power is full and you are still in the pit lane it's wasted energy and it's more time on the straight where everyone will catch up to you.
And you want to use your energy for boosts. This means don't touch the barrier, don't touch other cars, and don't drive into the red bumpers. Every energy lost to a collision is energy missing for a boost. The most important thing in your race: You drive into the pit lane and you recharge the full strip. You need to drive the full pit lane. This means you need to defend against being pushed out the pitlane or even being denied entry into the pit lane.
Also: jump pads are your friend. A jump accelerates you to 478 km/h, meaning you are faster while in air. Stay longer in the air by moving the stick down (boosts are useless while in air).
Wild Goose
When I was young and played F-Zero for the first time, this was my favorite car because of its armor. I could drive into walls and ping-pong around and I would still survive. Also it is relatively stable while turning on throttle. It will lose speed though in longer corners, so you also need to learn pulsing.
But it's really a solid choice and it's great for Mute City. It's very similar to the Blue Falcon (which is the actual beginner's car, but the brawl in the pack changes that) and if I had to give the Falcon and the Goose names, then it would be "Drunken Brawler" for the Goose, while "Bastard Assassin" for the Falcon, I will explain later why.
The strategy for the Goose is pretty straightforward: Just drive, even in the pack, don't care, collect sparks, use your boosts sensibly. Your weakness is the slow acceleration, but it's made up with speed stability in the pack (compared to the Stingray) and the cornering off-throttle with L/R applied is pretty good and it retains enough speed.
My personal problem with the Goose is the slow recharge speed which makes it difficult for me to judge when exactly to use boosts without risking running out of power. The best strategy I can come up with is to get sparks in the brawl, use the sky lane and keep the energy for boosts in the last lap.
Another advantage for the Goose: It has good chances at getting a high points finish in Mute City I and Big Blue, while the Blue Falcon struggles on those tracks. This puts pressure on Blue Falcon drivers because they must finish high up in the points on the remaining 3 tracks to have a chance to win.
Blue Falcon
First of all: It's really shit in Mute City I. I think it will be excellent in Mute City II when Queen's league drops, but right now, if you finish top 20 in Mute City I, you're lucky. I mostly finish in the Top 30 and rarely in the top 5. The Falcon is much better in Big Blue, though, a top 10 is possible and necessary.
The Falcon is kind of a jack of all trades, which implies master of none. So what is the specialty of the Falcon? I called it "Bastard Assassin" and the reason is that your job is to be a bastard towards the other drivers. You have to be dirty, you need to pull out all the tricks, you have to abuse the others, you need to apply psychological warfare.
The Falcon will keep the Golden Fox honest. You've seen how the Golden Fox runs away on Death Wind I? Well, the Fox is the best car in Death Wind I for 3 laps. On the 4th lap the Falcon will catch up to the Fox, put pressure on its pilot, make them make an error.
The Falcon has slightly lower top speed than the Goose, but it has a massive advantage in acceleration. It's cornering is much better and it has a much much higher recharge speed than the Goose. Although it can't brawl like the Goose, it can take hits, and it stands its ground in a knife fight.
"Hostile power management" is the advantage of the Falcon. The Falcon can push aside the Golden Fox, thus deny it entry into the pit lane (and ideally make them bump into the barrier, losing further energy). It can spin attack or boost into a Goose or Stingray and reduce their time in the pit lane, which will make them suffer because of their slow recharge speed.
If someone pushes you out of the pit lane or delays your entry into the pit lane, you don't suffer as much as the others. On technical tracks you can still make a good lap time, just because of your good acceleration, your acceptable top speed and great cornering (you can survive a lap on Sand Ocean without boosting).
So I'm interested in what your strategies are, especially for the Stingray or Goose. Although I currently lack the experience with the Goose, I can see myself mastering it. I'm at a loss for the Stingray though, although I got a freak win in Mute City, I struggle to get good results. I get better results in Mute City than in the Falcon, but I can't replicate my success.
Also, if you need track related advice, just shoot.
Damn this is a great analysis. And you taught me a thing or too along the way.
I dont have any thoughts unfortunately because I havne't really dived in yet. But ived watched streamers and Its just absolutely a blast to be a spectator too.
The amount of strategy that this game has makes me think this "99" game might end up being the best.
Tetris also had a ton of aggro strategizing and timings. Top players weren't playing Tetris anymore, they were playing duels. And Mario had a couple stupid way to cheese matches.
It's really only Pacman that felt like it didn't have depth.
This took me back to the 90s and my SNES. What an amazing, enduring game.
Oh and thank you for the excellent article, I enjoyed reading it.
Honestly I didn’t read your full breakdown, but you deserve an upvote and a comment purely for how in-depth and high-effort your analysis is. Cheers for writing this up, I’m saving it to refer to if I get keen on F-Zero any time soon!
If you’re in the Fox, feather the throttle in tight corners to retain speed but prevent under/oversteer. Throttle whacks stop lateral skids and grip you forward in the direction you are pointing; if you get around the corner and are facing the right way a simple regrab on the throttle will send you forwards with no slide.
Yep, pulsing the throttle is a technique you need to learn for every car, but it's more important for the Fox and Falcon. In the Fox you want to prevent lateral skids at all times, but in the Falcon you sometimes need to induce oversteer.
So, basically all cars will get unstable if make a sharp turn when turning and pressing L/R while being on throttle. Normally you want to avoid this behaviour, but sometimes you want to use it. In the Falcon you can take very sharp turns (like the U-turns at Sand Ocean and Port Town 2) even tighter when using this technique while compromising your exit. So why would you want to do that? To avoid red bumpers. So at exit the Falcon will get unstable which can be caught by pulsing. The Goose can also use this technique, but the Falcon is better at it because of its acceleration. The Fox can't use this technique (and doesn't need to) because it will slam into the next wall.
Has anyone here unlocked the "Be the last pilot to qualify with a Safe rank" badge? I have no idea if it's referring to the per-lap safe rank or the Grand Prix per-race one. I deliberately sandbagged to come in last place in both situations but it didn't unlock...
Interesting, I'm going to guess it's 20th place at Death Wind in the Grand Prix.
That's a good idea, I'll have to try for that. I'm hoping it's not, because that would be obnoxious - It'll be painful to wait to run it back in case I miss it.
The more I think about it, the more terrible this badge's criteria becomes:
- Is it the per-lap Safe rank?
- Is it the per-race qualification Safe rank in GP/MP?
- Does it apply to Mini Prix?
- Is it "last" in the sense that it's the last qualifying racer in the penultimate race?
- Is it "last" in the sense that it's the last person qualifying on the penultimate lap of a race?
- If the number of racers drops below the threshold of the Safe rank, does it still count?
- Does it have to match the Safe rank exactly, thus making it unobtainable if the number of racers drops below the Safe rank?
Could you elaborate on why you think Blue Falcon is bad on Mute City?
Also any tips on when to use the skyway, other than maybe save it for the most difficult part of the track?
Could you elaborate on why you think Blue Falcon is bad on Mute City?
So, the part of the track which is the most technical (and thus favors the Blue Falcon) is between the jump pad and the main straight. There is one problem though: Boosting through the dirt. Everyone boosts through the dirt every lap. Which forces the Falcon to also boost, taking away a strategic choice for a boost.
Which leaves only one technical corner in Mute City 1. The final corner before the main straight. Where the Falcon also loses its advantage because people don't lift off and they normally wouldn't make the corner. But the pack will push you onto straight and the pack will help you with acceleration for the Stingray and the Goose by pushing them.
There's also the problem that you will end up in pack with the Falcon no matter what you do. If you keep boosting to stay at the front, others will also keep boosting thus creating a small pack at the front. Which creates sparks for those behind, who will overtake you because at some point you won't be able to boost anymore. The Golden Fox has an advantage because of its rapid recharge rate: It can take more risky boost strategies, while the Falcon does not recover enough energy. The long pit lane also somewhat mitigates the slow recharge rate of the Stingray and Goose who have the speed advantage over the Falcon, and the Goose obviously loves living in the pack.
Thus you need perfect power management in the Falcon and you need the sky lane at the perfect moment, while you also need to be in close range to the race leaders. And sometimes even that is not enough because the races are really chaotic; you just don't know if a Goose has KO'd multiple cars and can keep boosting through the last lap.
Also any tips on when to use the skyway, other than maybe save it for the most difficult part of the track?
If your energy bar is low or you want to save energy for a push in the last lap: Save the sky lane for the most difficult part. If you have a full energy bar, then saving the sky lane prevents you from using your normal boost. So the Golden Fox wants to use the sky lane immediately. The Goose and Stingray want to save it, so they can push with normal boosts later. The Falcon is a difficult one: You want to save the skylane strategically in Mute City, Big Blue and Port Town; at the other tracks you want to use it immediately and you should be at the front in Sand Ocean, Death Wind, Silence and White Land 1 anyway.