Nintendo has announced the F-Zero 99 series' first new game in almost twenty years.
The SNES classic F-Zero is the inspiration for F-Zero 99, a multiplayer racing game with 99 players. The game will be available today and is free for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
Nintendo has stated that the player's Power Meter will be central to the game. It can be used by players to temporarily increase their speed, but if they crash, it will also decrease. The 99-player race is over once all of a player's meters have been used up.
Participants can also unlock the Skyway, a mid-air track that makes it simpler for them to advance to the front of the pack, by collecting Super Sparks, which appear on the track when racers collide. Courses and machines from the original F-Zero SNES game will be featured in F-Zero 99, but players will also be able to unlock cosmetic options for their vehicle by achieving objectives while racing. Additionally, Nintendo Switch Online subscribers will be able to play the game with the SNES controller.
Since the GBA game F-Zero Climax, the series' last installment, was released 19 years ago, fans have been waiting for Nintendo to release a new F-Zero game. The artist who created the F-Zero characters and vehicles, Nintendo veteran Takaya Imamura, stated in 2021 that he thought the series wasn't dead but that it was still "hard to bring back."