F-Zero No Longer Relevant Because of Mario Kart, Says Former Dev

A former F-Zero developer believes Nintendo’s long-dormant racing franchise has remained that way due to the success of Mario Kart.

Speaking to VGC, F-Zero artist and the designer behind Captain Falcon, Takaya Imamura, implied the game wouldn’t be worth the risk when Mario Kart is already incredibly successful (having sold nearly 50 million copies for Nintendo Switch as of November 2022).

Imamura was asked why Nintendo games such as Star Fox get more attention than F-Zero. “I think it’s because Mario Kart is Nintendo’s most popular racing game, and a new F-Zero would cost a fortune,” he said. “My impression is that [Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto] is very affectionate about Star Fox.”

The original F-Zero launched way back in 1990 and was followed up with a handful of games, the final one being F-Zero Climax in 2004. That marks almost two decades since fans last saw a new entry, despite Nintendo showing love to other older franchises with remakes like Super Mario RPG or sequels such as Luigi’s Mansion 3.

Nintendo hasn’t completely forgotten about F-Zero, of course, ironically making Mario Kart 8 DLC based on the classic racer, and last year released N64 game F-Zero X on the Nintendo Switch Online library.

In our 9/10 review of that one from 1998, IGN said: “F-Zero X is another proof that nobody does sequels like Nintendo. The developers kicked out everything that stood in the way of perfectly-tuned gameplay.”

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.