 Feature: F-Zero AX Report
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 There are fifteen cars to choose from, including eleven that are exclusive to the AX version (but can be unlocked in F-Zero GX). Some of the notable AX vehicles include imaginative creations like Pink Spider, Groovy Taxi, Silver Rat, and Rolling Turtle.  After making your selection, it's time to set your preference for the balance between acceleration and maximum speed. Shown above is my personal favorite AX racecar, Groovy Taxi. What is it with Sega and crazy taxi drivers anyway?  Finally, it's time to pick a race course. F-Zero has six tracks divided into three difficulty categories: Easy, Normal, and Advanced. Here's a brief run-down with impressions for each course:  Mute City: Sonic Oval - The first Easy mode course is just what it claims to be: a nice easy oval. Very mild turns around a circular raceway, set against the backdrop of a graphically eye-pleasing city of the future. Shades of the movie Bladerunner abound; the sky is dark with pollution and huge glowing billboards sail by as you race. Plenty of boost arrows and energy strips, all straight down the middle of the wide track. It's not much of a task to get first place as long as you stick to the center and never let up on that boost button. Aeropolis: Screw Drive - Another big city track, but this time it's in bright daylight and the track is surrounded by tall skyscrapers, giving you the feel of racing through downtown at rush hour. A bit more advanced with a few minor jumps and some tighter turns. Aeropolis is a well-designed course in that it's not too simple, but you can still catch up with the pack if you fall slightly behind. The feeling of boosting and slaloming your way through a crowded freeway on a tear towards first place is exhilarating. Outer Space: Meteor Stream - The first Normal difficulty track introduces drops, and the early part of the lap is a tunnel where zigzagging back and forth (and sometimes up walls) is necessary to hit all the boost zippers. After the tunnel section opens up into a big drop-off, a fork in road appears where you can either go right for a slightly shorter (but twistier) track with many zippers, or take the high road to the left where there are two generous energy recharge strips. A car with a good boost rating (such as Silver Rat) would probably do better to take the high road to the left and jam on the boost as it's simultaneously replenished. Paying attention not to hit the sidewalls now becomes a factor, which will slow the car to a crawl and cause you to take damage.  Port Town: Cylinder Wave - Port Town features lots of tubular sections where the car is racing along the outside of the track's curved surface. You'll need to wind your way around the outside of the tube to find zippers and energy strips that can't always be seen from the top of the track (although the track's "top" becomes relative). Several big drops, including one where you have to tilt the steering wheel up and down to aim the craft's nose through boost circles in the air. It's relatively easy to go off the track during a tube section or a big drop if you take off fast at the wrong angle. Lightning: Thunder Road - Expert difficulty opens with a nighttime industrial course, complete with nice thunderstorm effects in the background. Many hairpin turns; often you'll quickly come upon walls that abruptly appear in the middle of the track, with flashing arrows pointing the way to detour around them. Drivers will have to react quickly and pull those yellow drift levers hard to dart to the side or else ram straight into a dead stop. The intertwined relationship of the car's boost energy meter and damage shields becomes a big factor here. Use too many boosts, and your car may not have the shields to withstand that high speed collision with a guardrail. But be too conservative with the boost and the time will run out before you reach the next checkpoint. The laps in this course are very long (well over a minute, especially if you don't know the track) and with a crash or two, time can expire before you get very far. Green Plant: Spiral - The final course is TOUGH. Extremely long course laps, tight hairpin turns all over the place, lots of abrupt walls to smash into, and more tubular sections where it's easy to fall off the course to your death. Green Plant is possibly the best looking course, taking place on a track of arching bridges and clear glass tubes that wind their way through a post-modernist greenhouse. The lush jungle vines and towering trees surrounding the track are a sight to behold, but if you take the time to appreciate them you'll be chewing on a course wall or tumbling off the track! This one earns its spot as the hardest track in the game.  Now this is what you want to see when you finish a race!  The fact that you can save a record of your arcade times using the license card and the GameCube memory card reader add to the appeal of F-Zero AX and are the icing on the cake. It's much easier to gain the extra AX drivers and tracks for use in F-Zero GX if you simply save onto your GameCube memory card after winning a race on the arcade machine, rather than if you try to unlock them by accomplishing more arduous tasks in the home version alone. Then again, it could take quite a few quarters to place first in the tougher AX tracks if you go the arcade route, so it'll take some degree of effort either way.  Let me see your license and registration, son! Try showing this to a cop the next time you get pulled over. The AX card reader will actually mark your license card as you accomplish certain goals in the game. Notice the black circle emblem next to Mute City that represents a first place finish. It seems as though there are also areas to visibly record time trial ratings, ship upgrades, pilot rank, and other accomplishments. Actual game data is probably encoded magnetically on a strip embedded within the card. The username and ID number at the top is what you'd enter to rank yourself among drivers worldwide at the F-Zero website, but you also must take note of a unique password that is generated onscreen after each winning race.  How do you stack up against F-Zero racers all over the world?  F-Zero AX is the most innovative arcade racing machine to come along in a long time, and it's well worth the price of admission (at least a few times) for the immersive experience. It really does outshine the GameCube version of the game for its presentation value alone, and the graphics are a noticeable notch up. But what really separates AX from GX are the cockpit controls-- they heighten the effect of the game, and the steering wheel in particular is a great accomplishment in intuitive design. You might have a tough time going back to the GameCube pad after driving with it! F-Zero GX does have many more options and courses than are available in AX, but it's tough to compete with the arcade version for pure thrills. This is the first time gamers have had a chance to control F-Zero as if they're in a real race car, and every fan of the series ought to get out to the arcade and try it at least once.  It looks like we've just about run out of quarters for now, but American drivers can look forward to getting behind the wheel themselves soon enough. F-Zero AX speeds into U.S. arcades this September! |
