Why I'm better than you at F-Zero: Maximum Velocity

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (2001)

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (2001)

You might think you’re a top-notch gamer, alright. But can you claim to be the very best in the world at any particular game? It’s a tougher ask than you might think. You probably reckon you’re the only one who’s played Super Formation Soccer ‘96, and that therefore you’re the best. But you’re crazy if you think you’ll get anywhere near the final bracket of a tournament - trust me, there’ll be hundreds of players better than you.

And I know what it’s like to be a failed gaming athlete because, despite having played GoldenEye 007 in my childhood for more hours than God was sending, I was still nowhere near the top. Not even top 50,000. And this tragically meant that I never got to join the pro circuit, the GoldenEye circus, travelling the world with other pros and playing each other in thrilling deathmatches for mega money.

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No, I never did get to achieve game fame, nor could I take home bundles of cash for manipulating pixels on a screen. I did come close to gaming greatness though, with F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, a launch title for Game Boy Advance.

You absolutely won’t care, but I’m going to go into full boast mode now and proudly tell you that, according to my lap times, I was once the best player in Ireland at this particular game. I expect to see some royalties and prize money for this feat any day now. Maybe even some documentaries, and a screaming posse of girls. It’s the least I deserve.

I came from adversity as well, like most great athletes. Mike Tyson lost his family at a young age. Diego Maradona came from a terrible shanty-town. Lewis Hamilton was born in London. It’s all against-the-odds stuff when it comes to the all-time greats. And for me, my own disadvantage was the terribly dark GBA screen.

Honestly, it’s no wonder my eyesight is shot to pieces. To get an idea of what it’s like to play a racing game on Game Boy Advance, try putting your phone or PC monitor to its lowest brightness setting, go outside in some thick fog, put some sand in your eyes, and then catch the next space-shuttle to Jupiter.

When you’ve done all that, try getting your futuristic F-Zero machine around all five laps of the race, and see how well you do. This is pretty much what I experienced back in the day, trying to make out what direction my F-Zero machine was pointing. Nintendo did bring out a backlit machine, the Game Boy Advance SP, a couple of years later. But the damage was done by then, wasn’t it?

As a young lad, back in 2001, I was often to be found hanging around with my childhood pals, playing with them. Except I wasn’t really “playing” with them; more likely, I’d be playing with myself. That’s right, while my pals would be playing WWF Wrestling and putting each other in chokeholds and sharpshooters, I’d be off to the side, throwing F-Zero machines at top speed around the game’s 21 tracks.

That might sound pretty heartbreaking and sad to you, but you must understand – I needed to shave those milliseconds off. I was this close to joining the international F-Zero pro leagues, you know.

Such leagues don’t exist, and this was in the days before eSports, but nobody was there to tell me. And anyway, that’s what portable gaming is all about, right? Bringing the game outside? Lots of people here in Ireland lament our terrible weather – but I never did, because rainy days meant that I’d have to stay indoors, which meant I could see what I was doing.

I wasn’t always so good at this game, though. I did cut my teeth on the immortal F-Zero for SNES, the starting point of the series, and a game that I’ll always love. But when I first played Maximum Velocity, I couldn’t get my car around any of the corners. I’d keep flying off into the abyss below the tracks, which was dreadful for my insurance premiums. Even if I managed to keep it on track, I was slow as hell, trundling around the track with the urgency of a fed-up rhino in Fred Flintstone’s car.

As it turned out, I needed to invoke the use of a brand new manoeuvre called Blast Turning in order to win. Essentially it just means that you tap the accelerator a million times around each corner, and this allows you to retain traction.

Pretty technical stuff. Although I don’t know how one can suffer from understeer or oversteer, considering there’s no tyres and probably no steering rack on an F-Zero machine. Anyway, once you’ve learned this mechanic then it quickly becomes second nature and you can finally start to win.

I loved this mechanic, personally. I used to try Blast Turning in my old Volkswagen Polo on my way to work, in a desperate effort to counter the traction control system and make my commute quicker. I’m joking, of course - something like traction control was a complete pipe dream for that grey old snail of mine.

But I did learn that stamping the gas pedal in the middle of a turn gives “unpredictable” results, which only adds to the driving pleasure. I can attest to that: last time I tried Blast Turning, a taxi driver excitedly shook his fist at me, and the van driver behind him seemed to be shouting impassioned words of encouragement at me.

I had competition in the murky world of F-Zero, though. Stern competition. In my search for Maximum Velocity’s best man to humiliate and destroy, I encountered web forums in the first time. I signed up for these message forums to trash talk my opponents, and proceeded to get “flamed” by all and sundry. They were just embittered rivals, of course, sent reeling by my intimidating swagger. My gorgeous lap times proved this.

But my learning of the game wasn’t over. I studied user-created MS Paint drawings of the course maps to learn the best racing lines. I even unlocked new vehicles and a whole new cup, which was an amazing feeling: F-Zero SNES had almost nothing to unlock, yet here I was now with 10 vehicles to choose from in Maximum Velocity.

The soundtrack was fabulous too, even with the usual limited GBA instrumentation – I particularly enjoyed the funky End Credits theme. And you’ll have to be pretty damn good to listen to that theme, because the tougher difficulties of F-Zero definitely don’t let up, which is a series tradition.

All jesting aside, I really do love this game, and I love how it took the wonderfully simple, fast and clean F-Zero SNES formula, and expanded on it in the best possible way. It’s one of my favourite ever racers, maybe even the best racer available for a portable system. I really do love it that much.

It’s just a real shame that F-Zero: Maximum Velocity seems to have passed into obscurity, and I mean obscure by F-Zero’s standards, which is pretty damn obscure indeed. Still, for those who are looking for it, there’s a huge amount of fun to be had here.

And even after I was done beating the computer AI, and after I was done beating the very best that Ireland had to offer, the fun wasn’t over for me. No, I very happily spent quite a bit of time playing this game with my pals using the GBA link cable, pals who I haven’t seen for a very long time. And in those days, it didn’t matter who was the best - all that mattered is that we had fun, and that’s something F-Zero: Maximum Velocity has always delivered in spades.

21 February 2025