 Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss Restrunk. One thing I'd like to get a little more into is franchises that were featured on the Super Nintendo but continued onto other platforms. I've already looked into this a little bit with certain RPGs like the Breath of Fire series, which of course continued onto PlayStation with Breath of Fire III and Onward. I've looked at Mario Kart's continuation on Game Boy Advance with Mario Kart Super Circuit. at stuff that continued in arcades like the Battletoads arcade game. Of course, tons of Nintendo franchises continued from the Super Nintendo onto the Nintendo 64, so let's take a look at one of them in F-Zero X. You probably already know that the original F-Zero was a launch title that was released the same time the SNES came out in North America, and it wasn't just any launch title, it remains one of the very best launch titles ever made. It did an incredible job showing off what the Super Nintendo was capable of, where you could race at exhilarating speeds in a futuristic environment with four different cars to choose from, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, add on to all that a killer soundtrack and some surprisingly nuanced track design and difficulty balancing, and you have one of the very best Super Nintendo games ever made. Fast forward to 1998 and we get F-Zero X on the N64 and, impressively, the game does a nice job maintaining the same vibe the first game had. Of course, the controls, layout, and structure aren't the exact same, but they definitely feel familiar. The way the races are set up, have you race against 29 other cars at once, with you starting in 30th place and working your way toward the front, kinda like Top Gear, but in that game, you've only got four cars to choose from. In F-Zero X, you've got a whopping 30 choices, which is pretty dang cool, and gives this game a ton of replay value. There's also five different gameplay modes here, the traditional Grand Pre-Race where you have four different circuits to choose from, a versus battle, a time trial mode, a practice mode, and Death Race where you don't just beat the 29 other racers, you have to put them out of commission any way you can, and that's pretty dang cool. Now, I know what some of you may be thinking, why should I bother with F-Zero X when the series continued onto bigger and better things on the GameCube with F-Zero GX? Well, because F-Zero X has two major things going for it. Number one is that this is the only N64 game to run at 60 frames per second. Not only does that make this one of the very best looking N64 games, not that that means a whole lot, but it really adds to the sense of speed here. Even more impressively is that the omnipresent gray fog that seemingly in every N64 game is at a minimum here. This game is really well made. The other major thing F-Zero X has going for it occurs when you complete the first three Grand Prix circuits. The game unlocks what's called the X-Cup and it randomly generates a brand new track every time you race. Man, how cool is that? So yeah, not only do you have 30 different cars you can experiment with, you have a track randomizer as well. So even if you put a gazillion hours into this game and memorize every twist and turn of every track, you've still got a track randomizer to keep you on your toes. It's like F-Zero meets Excitebike. It's really freaking cool. It needs to be pointed out here as well that the music is fantastic, a blend of revamped and remade songs from the original F-Zero with some new music thrown in as well. So yeah, when it comes to games like F-Zero X for N64, it's always easy to just skip over the middle children of a series so to speak because it wasn't first and it's not the most recent. And besides, not all series continuations lead to good things. I mean, just look at Breath of Fire 5 or Mega Man X7. F-Zero X just has so much going for it though, with the best thing being the track randomizer. Yeah, you gotta put in some work to unlock it, but once you do, it is awesome. It's the perfect way to keep games like this from getting boring. What really impresses me though is that the game keeps the look, sound and feel of the original F-Zero consistent. It really does feel like a natural evolution of the series. So to answer the question, does F-Zero GX on Gamecube render this game obsolete? I certainly don't think so. F-Zero X doesn't render the original F-Zero obsolete either. Each game is comfortably its own thing and they're all well worth checking out. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.