F-Zero X asks one question before every race: how fast can you go before the machine under you stops being a vehicle and starts being a liability? The answer, in 1998, was over 1,000 km/h, thirty hovercars, and a framerate that held together when the tracks looped back over themselves. Nintendo’s sequel to 1990’s F-Zero is the first in the series to render its racing in 3D, and it wears that fact like a badge. It is also, by the standards of the Nintendo 64, a strange and unforgiving piece of work.
Thirty Machines, One Plasma-Powered Grand Prix
The setup is simple. Thirty competitors race high-altitude circuits in plasma-powered hovercars in an intergalactic Grand Prix. The original tournament was discontinued for several years because the sport was too dangerous. F-Zero X begins after it is brought back with the rules and regulations revised under the same name.
Your competition comes from every corner of the galaxy. The summary puts it plainly: they won’t shed a tear at the thought of smashing you off the track. That is not marketing copy. It is a description of how the game plays.
The tracks are the argument. Hills, loops, tunnels, corkscrews and pipes, stacked high above the atmosphere, and the game expects you to hold your line through all of them. Players drift into turns using the control stick and trigger button, which keeps momentum instead of scrubbing it off. It is a small system that rewards a specific kind of nerve.
Twenty-Six Vehicles and an A-to-E Grade
F-Zero X introduces 26 vehicles and brings back the 4 from the original F-Zero. Each machine has its own performance abilities, shaped by its size and weight, and each carries three graded traits: grip, boost and durability, scored from A down to E.
Before a race you can shift a vehicle’s balance between maximum acceleration and maximum top speed. That single dial does more work than most tuning menus manage. A machine tuned for top speed is a different animal from one tuned for acceleration, and the track decides which one you wanted.
| Trait or feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Grip | Graded A to E on each vehicle |
| Boost | Graded A to E on each vehicle |
| Durability | Graded A to E on each vehicle |
| Energy meter | Measures health and doubles as the boost meter |
| Recharge strips | Restore energy at points around the track |
| Dash plates | Give a speed boost without spending energy |
The energy meter is the smartest thing here. It measures the machine’s health and drops when you hit another racer or the side of the track. It is also the boost meter, so manually boosting usually starts with the second lap. Health and speed come out of the same tank.
Recharge strips around the track refill it. Dash plates give you a boost without spending any energy at all. Every decision about when to push is a decision about what you will have left.
Side Attacks, Spin Attacks and the Spare Machine
F-Zero X introduced the ability to attack other racers, with either a side attack or a spin attack. The series had been a race before. Now it is a race with contact in it.
Courses add their own hazards. Obstacles reduce your speed. Traps launch vehicles into the air and cut into their energy. None of it is random. All of it is readable, and all of it costs you.
The spare machine is the safety net. It works as an extra life. If you fall off a track or run out of energy and you have one, the race restarts. You earn another for every 5 contenders eliminated. That last detail quietly changes how you play. Elimination is not just aggression. It is insurance.
Then there is Death Race. The objective is to rapidly annihilate or pass the 29 other racers. It is the purest expression of what F-Zero X is, and it strips away everything that is not speed or violence.
The X Cup and the Expansion Kit
The X Cup is a random track generator. It builds a different set of tracks each time you play, which means the game never runs out of circuits to throw at you.
The F-Zero X Expansion Kit went further. Released in Japan in 2000 for the 64DD, it added 12 more tracks along with track and vehicle editors. It never left Japan, which remains the sharpest edge of the whole story for anyone who loved the base game.
Multiplayer is here too, four players at once in split screen, with the Rumble Pak accessory feeding the crashes into your hands. It is the fastest racing game on the N64, and the split screen does not talk you out of that claim.
A Steep Curve, a Thin Coat of Paint
F-Zero X has a steep learning curve, and its gameplay experience is similar to that of the original. That is worth stating plainly, because the 3D graphics are the headline and they are not the substance. What carries over from 1990 is the feel.
The criticism that has followed this game for its entire life is its lack of graphical detail. It is a fair complaint and it is also the least interesting one. The game holds a high framerate while rendering loops, corkscrews and pipes at absurd speed, and that trade was made on purpose. A racing game that stutters is a racing game that lies to you about where the track is.
The port history is long. F-Zero X came to the iQue Player in 2004, then to the Virtual Console for Wii in 2007, later to Wii U, and to the Nintendo Classics service in 2022 with online multiplayer. Each re-release has kept the thing alive without ever sanding down its edges.
This is where the verdict sits. F-Zero X is a hard game with a thin coat of paint, and it is still the standard for the genre on the hardware. The energy meter that doubles as a boost gauge, the spare machine that turns elimination into a resource, the tracks that fold over themselves at speed — those are design decisions, not nostalgia. The graphical detail was never the point. The framerate was.
The X Cup means the game does not end when you finish the cups. The Expansion Kit means it never got finished properly outside Japan. Both facts matter more than the polygons.
F-Zero X is not a game about looking good. It is a game about the moment a turn arrives faster than you planned for, and whether you drift through it or hit the wall. Thirty machines, twenty-six vehicles, one energy meter doing two jobs at once, and a framerate that keeps its promise. That is the whole pitch, and it holds up.
Score: 8.5 of 10.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.
