People will talk about all the unhinged attention to detail in Metal gear, and that’s true.
But every single racer in F-Zero GX has a theme song that plays on one menu, and one menu alone. This menu isn’t part of the actual game-play, it’s just on one character bio screen.
Each of these songs is great. Each one is unique to each racer.
as a nearly perfect videogame, my biggest and maybe only real issue with GX is how it caused everyone to forget that X is probably still the superior game
it’s very good, but it in no way supersedes its predecessor. it only stands comfortably alongside it. of course, it doesn’t require the use of the polarizing N64 controller and isn’t so “early-3D” - along with the perceived obsolescence, these are reasons i suspect people talk about GX but not X
whatever the case, from nearly any critical perspective perspective outside of an ineffable “triple-a polish” feeling, i think X is still the better game overall. certainly if you can get past the very spartan graphics
F-zero GX feels faster but I think F-zero X is actually faster in terms of inputs required per second. I love both, maximalist vs minimalist pretty much.
n64posting continues - World Driver Championship is really pretty on N64. It has a fancy Hi-Res mode - excessively letterboxed but it does look excellent
MGS2 is really interesting. i’m OK with that winning over F-Zero even though F-Zero has my heart
some nonsense about Phantom Road that I’ll break out of this spoilerpop once I get home and can verify it EDIT: okay yeah i think this is right:
One subtle yet crucial difference between the driving models in X and GX is that in GX your machine’s pitch and roll relative to the surface of the track has a large effect on how it handles. In general, an off-kilter ship has to take a few moments to recenter itself to recover it’s speed and handling, which is only really relevant after collisions, on really bumpy tracks (like that one part of Fire Field Undulation), and (most infamously) on Phantom Road. That course’s name, Slim-Line Slits, refers to the thin slits along the middle of the track. While you can’t fall through the slits, they prove incredibly troublesome because they can destabilize your ship along the aforementioned pitch and roll axes – easily cratering your performance if you aren’t careful. The cause of this effect is non-obvious to the average player, and is neither taught nor especially relevant on any other course in the game, making it the most difficult course in the game by a long shot – and I think that’s just beautiful.
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Also, while I really love the background colossi and everything else about Big Hand, I think GX deserves some credit for giving us the best possible interpretation of Rainbow Road:
both games contain incredible depth and complexity along various axes. the only implication i want to push back against is the idea that GX is uniquely complex or deep. it is a topic that is very much up for debate