Retro Gaming Australia

F-Zero AX was the arcade equivalent of F-Zero GX, released by Nintendo and Sega for the not-widely-used Triforce arcade system, which was based on GameCube hardware. Players of F-Zero GX could take their GameCube memory cards to an arcade with an F-Zero AX arcade machine and download a save file that would unlock the AX Cup, letting them race on the F-Zero AX tracks on the home version of the game. Those not fortunate enough to have access to an AX arcade machine had to beat story mode on hard to unlock the AX Cup, which is a legendary feat few can accomplish.

It turns out that the entirety of F-Zero AX was actually sitting unaccessible on the F-Zero GX disc. Some industruous hackers armed with copies of the GameCube Action Replay have dug into the depths of the disc and found the arcade game nestled within.

If you have an Action Replay or Gameshark, you can find the code necessary to make GX boot into AX here.

One of the major complaints about the PAL version of the Virtual Console has been that we get PAL versions of games on it. Before the wondrous days of multiformat television, video games used to be converted from NTSC to PAL, often poorly. The end result was usually a game that ran approximately 16.7% slower, and had black bars on the top and bottom of the screen to fill up the extra lines of resolution that PAL has over NTSC.

Now that we’re on HDTV, the PAL and NTSC standards are history, but Nintendo insisted on releasing 50hz versions of games on the WiiU. It appears with the imminent release of F-Zero (due today for only 30 cents!), Nintendo has changed their tune, offering the full screen, full speed version of the classic futuristic racer.

Whether this is a once off remains to be seen.

It’s the final lap!

F-Zero X is the second game in the series and the first to feature full 3D visuals. The game’s graphics may appear simplistic even by Nintendo 64 standards, but there was a good reason – Nintendo wanted to ensure that the game ran at a blistering 60 frames per second. That sheer sense of speed helped F-Zero X to be one of the most intense racers of the fifth generation era.