Apparently, Nintendo was approached for an "ultra-realistic" F-Zero, which they turned down.

Nintendo Life

The Nintendo community often finds itself reminiscing over franchises that seem doomed to never return, and while the likes of Pokémon Snap, 2D Metroid, 3D Metroid, Famicom Detective Club and more have actually made grand returns, one series that remains on the sidelines is F-Zero.

The last F-Zero game, F-Zero Climax, launched 16 years ago now and was exclusive to Japan; Europe and North America received F-Zero: GP Legend in 2004, with the last main series release to arrive in the west being 2003's F-Zero GX. It's hardly surprising that fans of the franchise are getting pretty desperate for something new.

As it turns out, there are developers out there who'd love to make a new F-Zero for Switch and ideas have been passed on to Nintendo – unfortunately unsuccessfully. In conversation with GameXplain, Vitei's Giles Goddard – who Nintendo fans will know as developer on Star Fox, Stunt Race FX, 1080° Snowboarding, and Super Mario 64's stretchy Mario face (yes really), has revealed that his team pitched an "ultra-realistic" F-Zero to Nintendo:

"At Vitei, after I'd left Nintendo and started my own company, it was after Steel Diver and Sub Wars, we were trying to think of stuff to do and I thought it would be really cool to have an ultra-realistic F-Zero, still with sort of really cool futuristic graphics, but just really realistic physics – we thought that'd be a really interesting thing to try out.

"So we made a demo for the Switch and PC. It was also more to show the capability of our engine – we had a multiplatform engine that was running on 3DS, Switch, PC, whatever – so we just made a demo of some really cool F-Zero cars going around this crazy track... Just hundreds of the cars using AI to race each other.

"But they'd all have realistic physics, like, really ultra, a bit too over-the-top realistic, so the hovering was actually caused by four jets in the bottom sort of adjusting themselves... Way too over the top. But it meant that if you killed one of the jets it would end up sinking, and if you killed the other one it'd flip over and all this kind of stuff. And it was just really fun – it was like a sandbox type thing just playing around and seeing what would happen if you caused a crash there and whatever."

When asked whether or not Nintendo ultimately turned the idea down, Goddard delivered the bad news:

"Yeah, Nintendo are very wary about using old IP because it's such a huge thing for them to do. It's much easier to go with a new idea, a new IP, than to reuse an old one.

"We were stuck in a catch-22 working with Nintendo because we'd say to them, 'we wanna do this F-Zero game, can you give us all this money?' And they'd say, 'well you don't have enough people.' And I'd say, 'well if we had the money we could get the people,' you know. So it was forever this ridiculous catch-22 with them wanting us to make a game, us pitching a game, and then them saying you don't have enough people."

In the same interview, Goddard also revealed that he'd be interested in making a new Star Fox without the "gimmicks". You can watch the entire thing here.

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Again, I want a new F-Zero as much as the next guy, but by god, this would've been a terrible idea. F-Zero is an arcade racer. If I wanted a simulator, I'd pick up a Forza Motorsport game on XBOX ONE (I've heard Horizon is more arcadey though, so I'm considering checking that one out at least).

Until Nintendo DOES do something with the IP OTHER than Falcon in Smash, just move on, I'd say. Plenty of alternatives right now on Switch, from indies to retro.

Ultra realistic with specs that have trouble rendering shadows, no AA, no AF, textures from 2007,etc🤭Good luck with those "ultra realistic" things.

Nintendo owns the IP of F-Zero and it can do what wants, regardless of what F-Zero or Nintendo fans think of the matter.

Never really got all that into the F-Zero franchise myself but yeah the sound of an “ultra realistic” game in that franchise doesn’t really seem too appealing to me either.

Why would Nintendo let these hacks do F-zero?

Because Nintendo themselves will only invest in what prints them money, and that only pokemon, zelda and mario. Pretty sad.

And Metroid Dread, Bayonetta (which they funded), Prime 4 ect.

Nintendo is still rehashing 1980s cartoon franchises. They know their fanbase that collects happy meal toys and funky pops would never buy a realistic racing game. Those dudes know nothing about cars.

Dread was just announced. First game in how long? And for Bayo and Prime 4, where are they at?🤭Be happy if these two come out before ES6, a game that Todd Howard is just think about making it.

What? Nintendo games have actual physics in them. That would be way more important for a realistic racing game than shadows. For all their pretty textures, Sony still hasn't figured out how to make grass that moves, rocks that roll downhill, or water that snuffs out flame.

This video is being spammed on weekly basis in here. It is obvious that Horizon devs didn't give a damn about the attention to details while Nintendo did as well as they could. Not too sure how ultra realistic and physics have anything to do with eachother, tho. The visuals of botw are certainly the extreme opposite of ultra realistic.

@nintendoboy16: I'm definitely more an arcade racing fan, but Forza Horizon is great. I especially recommend FH3 with the Hot Wheels DLC if you can track down a physical copy or an unused download code.

Why did he pitch an "ultra realistic F-Zero" to a company like Nintendo that passionately refuses to make photorealistic games? It's like pitching a live-action Cars to Pixar.

Nintendo (and Japanese corporations for the most part) can be so weird about intellectual property rights. I'd call them chicken for not wanting to gamble and try something fun, but it's worse than that...they almost deify their own creations. Like if the risk didn't pay off, they'd be disgraced or something lol.

Anyway, I like "realistic" attempts at highly unrealistic games. There was a sci-fi spaceplan sim 20 or so years ago that was a lot of fun because it had this really good flight model, and yet you were flying around on planets. It modeled all these different components that planes have (except in sci-fi, of course :D) and I really admired their attempt. They asked you to both suspend your disbelief, and to keep yourself grounded in "realism".

I agree with Ninty and will go as far to say that F-Zero is not worth reviving. It was never a big seller and the market isn't screaming for another game of it's type, including the Wipeout series. It just isn't worth their time imo.

Worth noting that I love the series, and F-Zero X was a masterpiece for it's time, but way to difficult for most to get into it. The difficulty is like the opposite of what Nintendo is going for.

I think thats an interesting idea (maybe not for Fzero as that is about outright speed). a theoretical simulator :P. take something like Fzero or wipeout but apply more real world physics too it and have a driving model more akin to a GT or Forza.

how would a flying card actually handle? how fast could you realistically go while still being able to operate in the confines of a more normal race track? how would breaking actually work? what kind of upgrades could you actually bring to such a car/race series? maybe allow players to build cars that have to comply to a formula (an F0 if you will.....sorry :( ).

e.g. would it be faster to turn the car on it's z axis rather than banking? or would taking a tight corner be better by initially banking then pulling up on the steering wheel (or joystick?) as you approach the apex? will the car just fall over if you over do it?

As for starfox: i agree with the developer that the IP needs an overhaul. nobody cares about on rails shooters. fewer still care about on rail shooters for 50+ bucks. It needs a complete rethink. there is a lot of interest in space flying games out there now (star citizen has raised stupid money, elite dangerous has doe well for itslef as has no mans sky) so its probably something they should at least poke again.

You know Metroid, the one Nintendo IP you claim to give a f*** about is an 80's franchise, right?

@nintendoboy16: Lol, that cow says the stupidest stuff.

Realistic sounds dumb tbh. And not very "Nintendo".

Nintendo never give me what I want is it too much to ask for a new f zero and diddy Kong racing.

At this point, I would take out Captain Falcon from F-Zero and put him somewhere else as he was the main focus of F-Zero, he be better off doing his own thing. Even I can say I never heard of F-Zero at the time when SSB N64 came into the fray, it made me discover Captain Falcon and F-Zero so I ended up playing F-Zero N64 and I enjoy it but it wasn't the selling point for me moving forward.

Other than that, I'm kinda on the side with Nintendo here. A novel idea, but when I think F-Zero, I don't think ultra-realism. Really, it's the opposite of that, and from the sounds of it the pitch sounded more like a sci-fi Wreckfest and not anything resembling F-Zero. Nintendo were too cryptic for a business partner though. It's obvious they weren't interested in the pitch so they turned them down gently and suggested a smaller project, something suited to the team size. Apparently this guy expected Nintendo to simply give his company money in the hope they could grow, which is pretty naive and foolish.

I will be honest, I don’t a game like F-Zero makes any financial sense, just like Starfox.

@hardwenzen: The guy in the article says they put together a demo where the craft had "ultra realistic physics". They were talking about how the game plays, not how it looks. So that's why I brought up physics.

And seriously, if you are going to say the same things in every forum, don't be surprised when people keep giving you the same responses back.

"Ultra realistic F-Zero" has already been done. It's called wipEout. 🤷🏽‍♂️

BoTW physics don't all make sense either...i mean its not easy to cut grass with a sword...realistically its almost impossible. And taking down a tree with a sword is also impossible. Using an axe, would take more than 2 swings too.

Id rather like to see a hyper realistic Super Mario Cuntry.

I think WipeOut is basically an F-Zero GX with better graphics. I believe his ultra-realism meant like this:

Why would Nintendo make a game that's not going to reach even a fraction of Mario Kart sales ... financially makes Zero sense.

Personally, i think it's a mistake. There are so many good studios willing to work with Nintendo IPs even on small projects. Not everything needs to be a full priced game ... sadly, Nintendo is so obtuse, they are like scared to death to make a smaller game that goes below $40 for their dumb sense of value.

@blaznwiipspman1: Sure it's not realistic, because hitting a tree 100 times to cut it down would get old quick. The post I was replying too said Switch couldn't have a realistic F-Zero because it can't render shadows or something (it can, but whatever). My point was physics are more important to a racing game than shadows, and that BotW already has better physics than most big name releases on more advanced hardware. A competent dev could make a fairly "realistic" game about hover cars from the future work on Switch if they wanted to. And apparently, this one did get something up and running.

I don't know what's stopping the developers from creating an original game inspired by F-Zero. Why give up just because they couldn't get rights to the IP?

When people over-promise, they usually can't deliver, that's likely why Nintendo passed, like when people say they can double your investment in six-weeks, insane right, but not as insane as having hundreds of games to download and stream for the ultra low cost of $9.99/month, including day one releases of many games including but not limited to all of Microsoft's first party games, Game Pass is an insane deal, but what's even more insane is you can try it out right now for thr ultra low introductory offer of just $1 dollar for the first 3 months... I mean, where do they come up with this stuf?

I would love a new F-Zero. GX really is an amazing racing game. Really liked the fast pace the game offers. Cosmo Terminal being one of my favorite maps from the game.

@st_monica said:

@UnnDunn said:

"Ultra realistic F-Zero" has already been done. It's called wipEout. 🤷🏽‍♂️

I think WipeOut is basically an F-Zero GX with better graphics. I believe his ultra-realism meant like this:

Speed Racer as Captain Falcon? I'm totally sold on that. Sadly, Speed Racer is just as underrated as F-Zero.

Edit: WipeOut is kinda more of an F-Zero successor in terms of ultra-realistic game as they come for its time. Truth be told, I think futuristic racing games don't sell well anymore and standard realistic racing games are more popular due to Forza & GT alone sell. Besides getting an new F-Zero, WipeOut is another series we won't see ever again from Sony as they shut Studio Liverpool (formerly Psygnosis) who made all the WipeOut games except the Omega collection (though this was a remaster of the HD and 2048) in 2012, so both F-Zero & WipeOut are a thing in the past.

Well, he's pretty much a Smash character now. Most of his most notable moments ("Falcon Punch") are from Smash before they made it to the F-Zero series. So...

Yeah, Speed Racer is a very fun movie IMO, and I hope it will be made into a video game someday, haha.

The racing game market seems to be polarized. On the one hand, photo-realistic AAA racers like GT and Forza have consistently had a big market. On the other hand, cartoon-style racers with popular characters like Mario Kart and Crash Racing have also been hugely successful. Unfortunately, futuristic racers like WipeOut and F-Zero, which don't belong to either of them, didn't seem to find enough audience to keep the series going.

Well, I admit that I have oversimplified them, and if you compare their details, each one has its own personality including gimmicks, physics and maneuverability, as you say.

The miserable fuks won't even release a HD online GX port, they certainly aren't making a new one.

The multi trillion yen company is so lucky to have forum lawyers to defend it.

I like the reason why they aren't doing an F-Zero. "We don't know what to do with it".

Better graphics? New and old cars? New and old tracks? You know, like a new fucking F-Zero game?

I have seriously no clue wtf Nintendo's problem is here. I think they just say some bullshit instead of the truth which would be "we don't think it will sell much".

"don't know what to do with it".. Almost like they haven't made videogames for 46 years.

lol its not Pokemon, Zelda or Mario. Why invest money and time on something that won't get them 10mil plus sales? This is their current mindset as of late. You invest in the three, and if not, its rehash old shit with barely any upgrades because the buget they have for these emulators/hd ports is like $1000 per game.

It's Nintendo. They make my favourite games ever but they are also by far the most frustrating game company. For every joyful masterpiece like Breath Of The Wild or Mario Odyssey, there's 2 or 3 annoying or outright hostile-to-gamers moves, like killing the Virtual Console, locking DLC behind Amiibos or time-limiting how long a game is purchasable.

They make their money though so what do I know? I guess more gamers like it than not!

Realistic isn't the word you should come up with when dealing with Nintendo. They're all about one thing : Fun. Fun gameplay to be exact. Through originality, innovation and style. You can give them realistic stuff, if they feel the game is boring, they'll just dump it. BOTW had a lot of details not because they wanted to make it a technical demo (I mean the game was even having lag peaks on switch after release) but because it was serving the gameplay and they expected the players to have a lot of fun with it. I think also that their interest in racing games is much more focussed on Mario Kart since well... Mario is selling more than Captain Falcon.

The issue with Nintendo is that they're focussing on cash-maker licences and letting other good but less profitable licence in the shadows. And it's sad. But well, as long as money is coming...

Nintendo sticks to what Nintendo does best: Creating games with a cartoony-feel.

Their games will always have a place in my heart, but man am I getting tired of their underpowered hardware strategy.