And finally, there’s this: the Grand Prix. Just as we had the Frozen Knight League Grand Prix back at the end of 2023, halfway through 2024, there’s the Festival Queen League Grand Prix. As I mentioned in the video description covering the regular Festival races, nothing is different about these courses except that fireworks drop Festival Gems onto the track, both on the ground and on the Skyway, which can then be collected and earn you certain things upon reaching certain milestones.
However, a Grand Prix is guaranteed to have at least one special guest, one of the original pilots of the four vehicles usable in this game. In this case, we finally got Captain Falcon himself, the man who was conspicuously absent in the “Festival Races” video I put up earlier.
This is the last one I’ll put up for the Festival event, unless you want me to put up more, as this is also the last one I was able to pull off. You see, the Festival Grand Prix always seems to bring in a HUGE amount of really good players, much like Tetris 99 when a Maximus Cup turns up. I’ve seen up to 78 S-Star ranked players or higher, and the result is that as the Grand Prix goes on, everyone’s fighting for scraps as heavyweights get eliminated. By all means, I am not an elite player, but even this one had 49 S-Star players, almost half the room. By the time you get to White Land I, a lot of them will have been eliminated, as well as almost every player who’s S or below, so the competition becomes fierce.
I used my go-to vehicle, the Golden Fox. Can you spot my vehicle in the lineup?
00:11 - Race #1
Course: Mute City II (Festival)
Rivals: Captain Falcon, Ludakrzyś, Ed, unceth
(I had a bit of trouble finding the “s” with an acute accent in Unicode. My keyboard doesn’t recognize the character.) Look at how densely packed this crowd is! This is probably F-Zero 99 the way the development team envisioned it. And unlike in most other races I’ve done prior to the Festival event, it remains densely packed all the way to the end. The result is that I don’t get to use as many boosts as I’d like because of constant wear from vehicle collisions, and because of the lowered top speed for the Golden Fox, I am constantly losing positions if I’m not boosting or on the Skyway. But one consequence of that density? I KOed another player at the very end. (You can slso see how tough this group is in that they collectively eliminated Captain Falcon on the very first race!)
03:15 - Race #2
Course: Port Town I (Festival)
Rivals: Dongle, arrrtai782, Ludakrzyś, bimblor
I was actually at risk of elimination in the fourth lap in this race-that’s because there were two Lucky Bumpers, traveling side by side, who were effectively blocking me from going any further. Because Port Town I has a much narrower road than Mute City II, it was very hard to try to get past them. I don’t know if they were working together, but I’ve never been this hindered by a Lucky Bumper before.
06:04 - Race #3
Course: Red Canyon I (Festival)
Rivals: Falcon9559, JeffChao28, jp, bimblor
One of my rivals had a Crash Out before the race even began…how did that happen? And with a Wild Goose, no less. Did they fall off course on one of the jumps? I also made an error that effectively preventwed me from reaching the pit zone in the third lap. For a Golden Fox, that is effectively a death sentence, especially with almost no Suepr Sparks collected, but I somehow made it to the following lap anyway.
08:52 - Race #4
Course: White Land I (Festival)
Rival: Z.D., ペーヤン (Pehyan), rho, XandaPanda
For most of my attempts up to this point, I was eliminated in White Land I, either on the second lap or the third lap. One reason is what you see right at the start, after we start moving: another racer Spin Attacks me in an attempt to get me to miss the boost pad, but I take the one to the side. (It seems this player’s name is Joe Rogan. Probably not the real Joe Rogan, but definitely just as obnoxious.) And you’ll see that I was facing elimination right there at the end of the second lap, but this time, my Skyway meter was filling up.
11:57 - Race #5
Course: White Land II (Festival)
Rivals: WAC-JUAN, H1, ペーヤン (Pehyan), Falcon9559
Would you look at that! There were 9 Golden Foxes out of 40 racers beginning the White Land I race. Two-thirds had been eliminated, leaving only 3 Golden Foxes out of 20 racers beginning the White Land II race. This vehicle went from representing 22.5% of players in White Land I to just 15.0%. I think other people using the Golden Fox were having a rough time in White Land I too-though the winner of that race (and of the Grand Prix overall) was using the Golden Fox. As for me, I decided to play things safe and avoid unnecessary risks, as there’s no further elimination here. No bouncing heads at the beginning though! Everyone is assembled in front of the normal start/finish line here.
9 сен 2024
