How Hard is F-Zero (SNES) on MASTER Difficulty? 

You’re doing the world a service by showing off F-Zero! Respect.

Also FUN FACT: On Practice mode, it shows your position and the CPU position on the minimap. If you boost way ahead of the CPU, you can actually see their machine teleport on the map to your position if they get too far behind. Explains how they always manage to stay behind you in the Grand Prix :)

If you think the rubberbanding is bad, one time on Port town's big jump I legitimately knocked one of the main 3 opponents off the track and saw the explosion.... And he was back on my ass in seconds. EDIT: And then it happened to you! No explosion on your screen, but Gold clearly went out of bounds. It's still a crazy fun game! There's no sense of depth, but the lore is that these tracks are supoosed to be hanging high up in the sky.

There is actually a 4th cup: the Ace Cup. But it was only available on the sattellaview extension BS F-ZERO, exclusive to Japan. There were 2 BS F-ZERO extension actually, with new maps including Mute City IV and Big Blue II in addition to some exclusive ones. A dataminer who looked up on F-ZERO's game data has found a few things related to BS F-ZERO contents, so I really hope these tracks will be released in the future, little data are known about them!

I love the new F Zero hype that 99 created, let's hope that Big N hears our wishes even louder now and gives us a whole new F zero game.

The "spin attack" and boost via your power came to us initially in F-Zero 64, then stayed with us through F-Zero GX and the Gameboy F-Zero 's. For such a limited series, all of them were so good. Honestly they're right up there with Zelda and Mario for me. Excellent series, very happy to have a new release and new breath into the original.

I love this F Zero resurgence, also getting knocked outta bounds twice in a row was evil asf😂. Samurai goroh said Welcome to the original game bitch!😂😂😂

This guy really just got first place on death wind II on his first ever attempt... on expert

If I remember correctly in the original game, the AI ramps up in difficulty considerably once you start setting some fast lap times. Similar in SNES MK. So you being able to do well in expert mode right off the bat was purely because you had not set any lap times yet

In Red Canyon II, that arrow in the middle of nowhere is another bounce pad. There's a ramp leading to it. If you plow straight into the ramp and you've got decent speed, you'll land on the bounce pad and keep jumping. It bypasses the minefield entirely *and* tops off your speed.

For the really tight turns, it seems counterintuitive, but press the opposite shoulder button when turning into the turn. This helps orient your car such that you can tap the accelerate button to straighten out versus laying off the button and losing a lot of speed.

F-zero was one of the roughly 12 games I owned for about 6 years. I probably had over 2000 hours in this game as a kid. It was always hard. The AI rubber band was always a thing. The computer characters will just about break check you until you're in a podium position, and then haul ass and require damned near perfect driving on tight tracks with "bumpers"

I remember raging so hard at this game back in the day.

It's kind of impressive just how much variety the original f zero tracks have given that it all takes place on a 2 dimensional plane.

I LOOOOOOVE THE FZERO RYU CONTENTTTTT

Master difficulty in FZero GX on Gamecube is known as the hardest difficulty level in the history of videogames. Watching you clear all Grand Prix cups in Master would be epic. Also, the story mode is difficult too. So you should clear that one too.

Watching you select expert then ask the question "How do I boost?" is hilarious for those of us old enough to have been scarred by this game as a kid. Glad they brought this game back!

"Why doesn't it show anybody else on the mini map?" Because, bruh, this game invented rubberbanding as we know it. 2nd place is always RIGHT behind you. ALWAYS!! 😂

Watching the struggle all I got to say is welcome to the real f-zero. F-Zero 99 is good but a lot of the mechanics were made a lot more forgiving and the margin of error in every major F-Zero game is next to nothing. One of the biggest accomplishments I ever had as a gamer was completing F-Zero GX’s story mode on very hard which to anyone that has played it knows how hard that is.

Man watching this makes me realize Death Wind 2 is gonna have a shit-ton of casualties when they add it to 99

It’s always a treat when a skillful player finds an interesting game to play for broadcast.

Okay, so, for Port Town: Don't use the boost right as soon as you get it. Either save it for speed recovery if you wipe out (it nearly instantly puts you above top speed) or for when you enter the home stretch. You're losing at least half of your boost time because you're airborne (and going airborne actually increases your speed naturally if you're not boosting), and you're screaming through the pit at boost speed, gaining very little HP back.

My friend used to refer to the NPC bumper cars as "camera men" back in the day, a term I could never forget upon hearing it. Like they're just trying to film the race and always getting in the way. xD

Try fire stingray for the original, it doesn't drift when sliding around corners. You're losing speed every time you let off the gas when cornering with the wild goose.

You get one boost per lap in the original, but wild goose basically can only boost once a lap normally in 99 unless you have KO’s, so its not that different lol

I loved this game. I went through this game and was determined to get 1st in all of it, then not just 1st overall, but 1st in each race. Then getting 1st in each lap of each race. Then, as the final challenge that took me months, I set myself up to get 1st in all laps with no warmup, just sit down and win. Only one chance per day. So much fun.

i feel like it’s good to mention that in the f-zero anime, in the japanese version the protagonist is also named ryu. funny how that works out. been really loving the f-zero content!

General note about boosting: If you have the boost active you can just about ignore most small patches of dirt. They functionally become shortcuts in a similar way to the dirt in Mario Kart while using a Star.

I played this original as well as F-Zero X extensively. They'll always hold a special place with me. I do have to say that if you were looking for some streaming content, F-Zero X has a *deep* well. The difficulty gets completely insane at the highest levels. I remember back then I'd have to systematically attack and kill the highest ranked opponents so I could keep up in score to win by the end (yeah, it was that crazy..)

As someone who plays the original quite a bit, I immediately noticed the differences in 99. It makes sense though, you can't have it be as tough for the switch/99 version otherwise casual people won't enjoy it. I wish it was a 1 to 1 for difficulty (car knock back, dirt/snow, etc), but it wouldn't be as good for 'everyone' if it was. imo the difference between expert and master is the 'room for error'. you are given a little grace for mistakes in expert. In master, if you barely hit a cpu or take a turn wrong, u'll get the check mark for the enemy car being right behind you or passing you.

Each lap you complete you gain a boost

I also played this as a kid and I noticed they really improved a lot of the aspects of this game in 99. Combining the boost with your HP is genius, makes the game so much more fun.

@Ryu, as someone who grew up on original F-Zero, I can tell you're not using all the tools haha. When you go around really tight turns, hold L or R into the turn to turn even tighter. Also use your brakes more too, I believe is B button on super nintendo. Braking while turning helps a lot!!! Also, now this is really important for jumps and ramps, especially with the HUGE jump in White Land 2, which you will see on the 1st lap right away and won't have a boost to help you clear the jump, because you're not meant to. But when going over jumps, or little ramps in the tracks, hold down on the D pad and your car will nose up like an aircraft, bc down is like pulling up on a stick, and you will go higher and clear jumps better and maintain top speed when you actually land. Also push up on the D pad, like pushing forward on an aircraft stick, to nose down. Dipping right away can help on certain courses bc you will hit the ground to make quick turns, like in Red Canyon 1. Another spot this helps, is in Port Town 1. When you hit the jump right before the dirt that is just before the big jump in that course, hold down on the D pad to nose up and clear the dirt better bc dirt slows you down... Oh also on Port Town, those lasers that kinda suck you in, use the L and R buttons while driving straight bc you will drift/lean left and right away from the lasers while maintaining your speed. Do this instead of trying to turn away from them, which will almost always get you hit by another car, the lasers themselves bc you are turning you car, and you lose speed this way... Also take full advantage of the L and R button's on the Death Wind courses as well, the sides suck you in the entire time!!! I'm probably the only person in the world without a Switch, haha. But I also play guitar and have other life thing's to maintain and just paid off my Xbox, but will have a Switch and F-Zero 99 by Christmas haha. Have fun and keep killing it in F-Zero 99!!!

It’s been decades since I’ve played this game last, but the one thing I vividly remember is the rubber banding! I played the hell out of this game back in the day, but no matter how good I got, the CPU was ALWAYS right on my ass! IIRC, I would try to stay in 2nd place with a couple boosters saved for the last lap to pull out a win.

I think the best way to describe the difficulty of F-Zero is not super hard, but very unforgiving. Once you get the handling figured out and learn the tracks, It's not too hard to have a clean race and pretty much cruise through as you discovered. But if you do make any significant mistakes, it's pretty brutal and hard to recover lost ground.

I may be wrong, but I *believe* that in the original F-Zero, to safe on performance, the SNES doesn't actually keep track of where on the map your opponents are. It just has them catch up when you slow down, and has them spawn in ahead of you when you go fast.

This was really fun, I'd love to see content like this on F Zero X, the GBA ones and GX as well!

You made the absolute best call going to practice on the original!! The main skill is being absolutely sure you learn how to NOT screw up the hard parts of each track!

Well played! I always struggled with this game as a kid and never revisited it, so may have to give it another shot! Ryu just makes it look so easy! I hope Ryu has the opportunity to also play F-Zero X on the N64 as well as F-Zero GX on the GameCube. F-Zero GX is no joke in terms of difficulty, but it is an adrenaline rush!

This game was fun to watch you play! Hope you do more of it & F zero 99 content

Dude.. impressive stuff. This was the 1st snes games played...one of my faves and you dominated master mode

I have now completed King League on Master difficulty. You have earned a subscriber today for making this video.

Tears... 🥹 I loved this game, that sound tracks kicking me right in the feels. I drove the purple beatle and sadly I never aced fire field on master... kudos bro!

I remember the physics the being wonky (the bouncing, but also being unable to pull away from the walls) AND HOW SLOW THE REPAIR SHIP CAME IN. IIRC trading your health for boosts came in the Gamecube game. I both miss and am glad they got rid of directly killing your opponent from the Wii game, it made getting top rank super cheesy.

In the original game, I think you can use the shoulder buttons to bump opponents into the wall.

This is fun. Watching the great Ryu realize how HARD F-zero can be with it’s bump into oblivion physics. 🤣❤️

Awesome job, this is a super difficult game!! I would love to see F-Zero X next, I think you would be surprised by it!

You’re awesome to watch. Keep the vids coming on RU-vid!

Great idea man :) Glad you're having fun with F-zero. Yep on the snes if you bop people it's like bouncy bumper cars. You should try Fzero 2 not sure if it's an import or not but it's just mostly of the same.

Really nice driving. Can't wait for the new leagues in 99. Hope to see you there

I come back to this video to watch his reactions at 8:05 & 8:25 when the pink car bops him out of bounds on the ramp. It was almost as good as when he blew up on FZ99 right at the finish line. This is the content I subscribe for...

F-Zero and Mario Kart for SNES are notorious for AI rubberbanding. This is especially evident in Super Mario Kart, if you hit a CPU off course at the intersection in Mario Circuit 2 and make them lose a lap, they get secret boost at twice the max speed until they catch up to you.

This game is amazing and a godsend for Nintendo creators.

I suddenly want to see a blind attempt at the N64 entry...

The original FZero is my favorite SNES games and it's so cool to see it finally getting some love after all this time. Everyone is so into FZero GX that you *never* hear anyone talk about the OG. It's also so cool to see all of these super difficult tracks and imagine how chaotic they'll be in FZero 99.

Ryu didn’t even notice the epic gimmick on Red Canyon II lol

Been enjoying your content playing F-Zero 1 and 99. Can’t wait to see you play 2-98!

I’ve literally been playing F-Zero since I was a kid - I first played it at a Red Roof Inn on a Lodgenet TV. I’ve owned the physical cartridge for the majority of my life. Still super nostalgic for me.

I love your F-Zero content! You got yourself a F-Zero fans sub

King League on master is no joke that's when you know you have literally mastered the game. Fire field is a nightmare but not impossible. I've done it on the SNES and the SNES classic.

Love this, a Fzero X then a Fzero GX playthrough would be peak content imho

Fun fact, in the original f zero, you can wait to start until your like 50th place and still easily catch up to the front of the pact. The computers are never that far ahead of you.

Been loving this recently - Probably my favourite game in quite some time

So glad to see Ryu take on the original F-Zero after having loved F-Zero 99. Definitely a beneficial experience for anyone wanting to do even better at the new game. Respect👍

Skilful run. It's fun to watch people who know what they are doing. Great stuff. Looking forward to the GX playthrough now as that's the _really_ challenging one.

Not sure if you guys noticed either, but fzero 99, has way more sprite directions for a racer, its almost 3d, where as fzero only has like 12 or so sprite directions.

There were only 4 racers in the first game so there were different colors of the anon trash cars in F-Zero. The purple ones were the legit racers that sometimes did better than the main cast if they got lucky. Also.. When I played this as a kid, the only way I could win Fire Field was learning how to brute force that double hairpin by purposefully ramming into the wall to maintain speed. lmao

If I'm remembering correctly, the biggest difference in difficulties is each tier up increases damage taken from hits and the pit strip is slower recovering your power. If you hold down on the D-pad right before you hit a ramp and continueholding it, you'll launch higher and further. Also you need to hold down on the D-pad when landing or you'll take damage. This gameplay is a hit of nostalgia. I'll have to bust out my snes and carts.

In White Land 1: Your first hairpin turn after you start a lap is covered in ice. There's a trick to this, but you can hit that wall almost head-on before the turn and use it to ricochet around the hairpin. You let go of the gas when it smacks you back and then you regrab the gas when you're pointed in the right direction for the series of ramps. Goose's characteristics may not allow this, but I do it in the Stingray. Also, when you wipe out after hitting something, tapping the gas helps you regain control sooner. If you lean on the gas the whole time, it takes longer for you to regain control.

Man, you're great playing this game. I think we all would love to see you playing the other main ones (X and GX).

The computer cheats very heavily in OG F-Zero -- the game only keeps track of 3 or 4 machines at once, and spawns in the rest as you pass other racers. If you're in first, and you hit something or slow down, the game will spawn an enemy racer right behind you. IIRC, this also means that you have to drive very well to catch up to first if you're behind since it's based on how much you've passed other cars. CPU racers are also are invulnerable to getting knocked out of the course. also, Fire Field is a bloody nightmare lmao

YO I was in a match with you, we both embarrassingly crashed out extremely early. Also, I'd love to see you try out X or GX

I didn't expect Ryu to be this good at racing games. After becoming the platformer king he is setting goals for a new throne. Make sure you check out the Star Ocean 2 Remake demo as well.

You know what I find interesting, the frames per second. I don't know if it's because it's Mode 7, or simply that the developers of the game back then just optimized it that well; or also that maybe other Mode 7 games don't "need" to be that fast. But for a SNES game the general speed and smoothness is pretty good. I absolutely adore Super Mario Kart, also another Mode 7 game but the speeds aren't really the same (I know in Mario Kart it also depends on which CC speeds we play with, of course). Anyways, fun game. I also did get F-Zero 99 yesterday, not as easy as I thought it would be, it's chaotic and I love it. I'm happy to finally play this game (although not the original) considering I never played the original back then on my SNES. Then again outside of Mario Kart I really wasn't into 'racing games' much. I'm glad I can discover what this game was all about now.

You see how health plays almost no role in the original and everyone gets just 1 boost per round. That means basically Fire Stingray is the best machine because it has the best speed lol. F-Zero 99 balanced the game so good with adding F-Zero X mechanics like loosing health for boost and the spin. This makes other machines way more useful and allows for more unique playstyles.

From F-ZERO X onwards is when the boosts-use-your-energy gameplay gets implemented. I played a lot of F-ZERO GX, personally. I'm pretty sure AI in most racing games are a function of being a time trial and also rubberbanding- which is how the AI in F-ZERO SNES keep up with you. The moment they're too far behind you, they stop being rendered entirely and are brought along the track until you make a mistake. As someone else said, the time trial aspect of them relates to your best times, so the game starts getting harder as you end up competing with your times to a degree. While the AI can hit hazards, it only marginally slows them down since they can't die. In F-ZERO GX, the average AI you race against is on the course at all times, but the performance of their machine only vaguely influences their performance as a computer. They rubberband to keep up with you to an extent, depending on the difficulty, but they're not so bad so long as you don't make too many mistakes. Race ranking in GX is very similar to F-ZERO 99.

F-Zero launched with the Snes in 1991. It was one of the first games I got for my Snes. What's pretty neat was getting my Snes the same day (Christmas Eve 1991) as I got Sonic The Hedgehog for the Genesis. My friends and I spent the entire school break having a giant super 16-bit throw down.

Ryu you should do BS F Zero Grand Prix 2, its an official Japan-only expansion of F Zero snes released for the BS-X Satellaview that is essentially just a fourth cup, the Ace Cup. According to a datamine Nintendo may possibly add the Ace Cup tracks to F Zero 99. There's also 4 new cars in BS F Zero but they're statistically identical to the original 4.

Awesome Ryu! Please look in to Rocknroll racing for snes ☺️

I played this game a lot when i was growing up as a kid. Thanks for sharing this video....👍

You can corner sharper by using the L & R buttons. What "Limit 5" means: Right beside your rank is an icon that says "Safe" with a number. The number decreases with each lap, eventually stopping on "3". The number indicates what rank you must finish in order to proceed to the next race. So if the "Safe Limit" is "5" and you are in 6th, you won't progress to the next race.

Awesome man. Your skills are great. I played this for the first time and so far can't go faster than a 26 per lap.

I love the F-Zero videos! Please, keep them coming, Ryu!!!

I don't know if you figured this out yet (part way in) but you accelerate at the beginning fully. Normally you lurch ahead and then stall while everyone passes you, but if you move in front of a rival he will push you out of the stall and in front of everyone. BITD I destroyed all me and me brother's times but I didn't tell him how to do it for a week.

I think one aspect of master difficulty might be that you take more damage from everything, which isn't noticeable if you don't take much damage in the first place. I could be misremembering though. It's been a lot of years since I played it after all.

The shortcut on Red Canyon II is going to take out a lot of racers in 99, it's going to be chaos. ^^; 36:03

Thank you, I loved this so much! Need to fire up a SNES emulator...

Fire Field gave me nightmares as a kid. I don't recall if it was Expert or Master, but it was the one thing that I could never get past in this game.

I played the heck out of this back in the day as a kid. Word of advice for any difficulty, hold on to 3x boosts for the final lap and don't ride in first, stay behind 1st or 2nd until the last section where you can use all of your boosts. The ai are programmed to be right on your tail no matter how fast you go so you might as well stay a behind them until near the end

In Fire Field (this technique may not translate to 99), the best way to handle those miniature hairpins is to bounce off of walls and regrab the gas. Best off practicing that on time trials. I see you doing this (by accident? On purpose?) a couple of times on other impacts. Apologies for the seemingly spammy nature of the comments; I wanted them to be focused, rather than dumping a big block of text on you.

Yes, the rubberbanding is insane, even on easy mode (beginner), one mistake will end up with opponents instantly passing you Also, gotta love how mute city 3 actually takes place in bosnia

Yeah, the first game gave you one boost per lap, in the later games it just used up your power, though there you also could activate boost only from the second lap onwards

Ooh I hope you'll play X and GX too at some point! GX is one of the hardest games of all time in my opinion. You'd really have a blast with that one if it's challenge you're looking for. :p

The advertisement I got for this video was for a car injury firm.... ironic. On another note, I'm happy to say that I was in the same grand prix as you in 99! Sadly you didn't get first overall by only two points, but I was cheering you on from the grave!

11:08 Eu amo esse tipo de vídeo, pois me faz saber que não passei por isso sozinho hahahahaha

You should maybe play the BS F-Zero ROMs next. In case you don't know they were remixes of F-Zero 1 with some extra tracks and vehicles. They were released via a satellite add-on known as the Broadcast Satellaview (BS-X) for the SNES (Super FamiCom) in Japan. Each game would get saved saved to a rewriteable BS-X cartridge. Some people were separately able to find a few of those cartridges that happened to still have a few of the BS F-Zero ROMs on them, but were still missing a few. Though, they uploaded the ones they were able go find. They apparently originally had voice acting, but that doesn't get saved to the cartridge, it only played from the satellite feed. I hope that Nintendo will someday release the full series of BS F-Zero ROMs on NSO or something and include the voice acted recordings, even though it's Japanese. I also hope they release the N64-DD F-Zero X Expansion Kit, which also added more tracks, a track editor and better sound. And translate and release the Japan exclusive GBA F-Zero Climax. Though, I doubt they would release any of them, maybe just Climax, but probably Japanese only again.

Will be fun to watch half the room crash out on lap 1 on white land 2 when it comes to 99 since that jump near the end of the track you NEED to hold down to make it or you crash, unless they nerf it for 99 and make it easier IG *shrug*, also getting bumped there will be a death sentence if you're not playing goose.

Funnily enough, in the first F-Zero game, every car have different power values, the Wild Goose (the car you picked for the Queen’s league) has the largest pool of health. Explains why you had almost no problems with it. And yes, Fire Field is an excellent track. The longest and most complex one of that game. And I love it. Congrats on beating both cups on Master while I struggled with Port Town 1 and 2 in beginner lol

Master league allows the cpu to use their full speed. Each difficulty has a speed limit on the cpu's but maintains their acceleration. Can't wait til these come out on 99! I've been playing this game for like 30 years and yes I still have the og snes and the cartridge. Stingray in the original is pretty much untouchable, especially if there are jumps early on. Top speed and best handling. But it's doable on master league with each car. My fav track is red canyon 2. Gonna be interesting when death wind 2 and fire field finally get released!

Even though this one was the OG, F-Zero on the Game Cube was magnificent. Crazy tracks, great visuals and straight up amazing music to accompany the visual tripping. You should start streaming that one, Ryu.