Hey, I liked it is a series where I choose games that very few people really appreciated. Very often these games are within very popular game series as well. Should you read on you will discover why I love this game and why I believe you should give it a fair chance. What's more I tend to choose games with some interesting backstory as well.

On the GBA there came a racing game, flying down from above in a flurry of ass kicking. As a handheld racer it was exceptional, and what's more it was F-Zero. Yet nobody played it and I personally question if many even knew of its existence. The game sold so poorly that you can actually still buy it new for 1.25 on Amazon. Now we must ask ourselves, how could an F-Zero game perform so poorly?

Oh, right... I like to pretend that didn't exist
F-Zero GP Legend is technically a licensed tie-in game based on an anime shown on the FoxBox, Fox's new saturday morning lineup. Admittedly despite being 14 or so, I was watching. I always loved the Saturday Morning Ritual and was loyal to it, or at least I was before. The sort of shows they started airing bordered from lack-luster to god-awful. F-Zero GP Legend the was far from the worst of the bunch, but that wasn't saying much. You're free to sample for yourself, but you don't need to watch long to realize it's just kinda lame.



Admittedly F-Zero is home to a lot of really weird character ideas that could have potentially lent themselves well to an animated series. Some F-Zero characters like Mr. and Mrs. Arrow already feel like they ARE cartoon characters, but this was hardly genuinely tapping into the potential of the series. The show wasn't such a big success. It was canceled after a mere 13 episodes. Very shortly after the game was released, the anime was already fucking gone. Yeah, this shit was doomed from the start.

Pretty weird circumstances, huh?
So we have a Nintendo anime based on a Nintendo game, that now has a Nintendo game based on the Nintendo anime. We have come full circle and before us stands a Nintendo-videogame-Nintendo-anime-Nintendo-game. Clearly Nintendo wasn't going to bother to make a licensed game themselves, considering this idea is already batshit crazy. They got a second party developer. Oddly they didn't pick the team that made the previous GBA F-Zero. GP Legend was handled by Suzak, whose previous only claim to fame seems to be developing a spin-off Shin Megami Tensei game. Interesting what you find out with a little research.

Second party developers, gotta love 'em.

F-Zero GP Legend the GAME, a superior licensed product
I picked up GP Legend on GBA without even quite realizing the connection to the anime at first. All I saw was an F-Zero game and I fucking pounced on it. Maximum Velocity didn't do it for me, so GP Legend was my final hope for high speed racing on the go. Man, it kicked ass. GP Legend improves the music, track design, graphics, controls, and even vehicle selection by bringing back all the signature racers. Total vehicle count: 34. None too shabby. Simply put, GP Legend is better in every respect and gives you a real sense of speed. The fact that it's a licensed game hardly matters.

The only connection at all is in the story-mode and a few bonus characters. This is an F-Zero game in every respect. If you don't believe me then see for yourself:


Excellent track design. Boost arrows and rough patches are strategically placed to send you flying through the earlier portions while tossing hard turns at you. The jumps allow for shortcuts and getting past certain obstacles. The health points are small and can be missed using said shortcuts. The final stretch requires precisely running between strips of rough, potentially losing you the race if you get snagged.

Sweet tunes
So I've pointed out the great track design, and you've surely noticed the tight controls. Were you listening to the music though? F-Zero GP Legend had a great soundtrack of F-Zero remixes and the occasional original song. They were fast paced and elaborate, and almost all of them made you want to kick ass and go as fucking fast as you could to do the music proud. The team over at Suzak did absolutely everything they could to infuse the game with little synthesized guitars, and it's all well deserving of a listen outside of the game. I highly recommend you listen to this song in particular, which I think is just too fucking good:



Plenty of features
Racing games are usually quite light on features, and even moreso handheld ones. F-Zero GP Legend on the other hand has a good number, including the ability to get in 4-player races with 1 game pak. Grand Prix is mostly interesting because it's got a bonus cup containing 8 classic F-Zero tracks, which is just great fan service. Story mode is the main attachment to the animation. Anyone that's played F-Zero GX already has a basic idea of how important the actual stories are. But that aside it's actually not that bad. There are certain goals and scenarios that are unique, and there's actually a lot of tracks that you can only play here. A couple of my favorite tracks can only be played in story mode.

Admittedly once you become good enough at the game Expert Grand Prix just isn't much of a challenge anymore, and sadly there is no Master difficulty. That's why you have Zero Test, which is easily the most interesting mode in the game. Zero test is an intensely challenging mode that requires you to zip past select strips of track in as fast as humanly possible. These challenges are so quick that they can start and end in about 6 seconds, and they are fucking brutal. The bite sized nature of the challenges is perfect for a handheld, and if you're seriously looking for a challenge getting all Gold Medals is I swear a superhuman feat.

Pinball wizard
I've met a couple of people who tried playing GP Legend and suffered from the fact that if you crash, you crash hard. Hitting the wall will basically send you bouncing back and forth like a pinball, and this much can be very frustrating to a beginner. The thing is, you're kind of not supposed to hit the walls. Bad things will naturally happen.

It's dirt cheap, try it out
So yeah, GP Legend is a game that just about everyone but me seems to have forgotten. If you want to take a shot at it, I recommend it as an excellent F-Zero experience on the go. And you can buy it for a fucking dollar and twenty-five cents.

BONUS ROUND - FALCON PUNCH!!!
The ironic thing is that the anime that had itself failed after about a month in the states is more famous than the game by a long shot, having become an internet meme that was pretty popular on video sites for a while. It blows my mind that just about everything gets more recognition than the game. The show's actually getting more credit for being incredibly ridiculous than the game gets for being damned good.



Okay, fine. It's kind of awesome. Falcon Punch is superior. It punches fucking holes in the universe.