Quite a good breakdown by Laura Kate Dale of Nintendo’s handling of recent games featuring playable women characters from franchises usually headed up by men i.e. recent Peach game and upcoming Legend of Zelda game featuring the titular Zelda.
Featuring such Aonuma bangers as:
If we have Princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do?
The triforce is made up of Princess Zelda, Ganon and Link. Princess Zelda is obviously female; if we made Link a female, we thought that would mess with the balance of the triforce - that’s why we decided not to do it.
We feel like what takes priority is this idea of gameplay. If it turns out that particular gameplay we’re trying to bring to fruition would be best served by having Zelda take that role, then it’s possible that that could be a direction we could take.
i.e. Zelda has featured exclusively MANLY gameplay up to this point btw
I really kinda get their point about F-Zero though? What new thing would you do with it?
The prophecy and themes of zelda might rehash every game but the gameplay itself always has a unique gimmick.
Ocarina - first 3d game
Majora - timey wimey loop gimmick
Wind Waker - The best sailing/pirate combat game to have ever been made and you can’t deny it.
Twilight Princess - Transformation
Skyward Sword - Motion controls (the worst gimmick here and the weakest of all the titles imo)
Breath of the Wild - Physics based and open world combat
Tears of the Kingdom - Completely gamebreaking contraptions
There is a distinct gimmick here that actually warrants “this is a new and definitely different game to play” each time, even if the story beats and prophecy and good vs evil is rehashed each time.
Fully flight sections, perhaps, like soaring between fully divided tracks or even going into space or doing atmospheric re-entries during a race. How about on-track power allocation like a 90s X-Wing game? Maybe even some combat elements, like Rock and Roll Racing, like laser blasts and mines and countermeasures to both? That’s just off the top of my head.
Mario Kart’s been redone many times with less “innovation” than that between some titles.
I think they had enough people and enough budget to come up with that and more and they just don’t want to because Zeldarinos go brrrr
and I still stand by that.
I mean yeah the reason they can always find something for Zelda is definitely the money printer. But F-Zero is more rigidly controlled in terms of “what gameplay can we add?” because it’s a racing game and always needs to adhere to being a racing game.
Ironically I think the best direction to go with F-Zero is actually to NOT make a racing game but instead make a Captain Falcon game that is open world bounty hunter stuff and simply has racing as an element of it. A story arc where he enters the races because it gets him closer to his target who is in charge of the races and only the winners get to meet them.
People would love a 3d action game with Falcon.
I’d be fine with your idea but I think what I already suggested, in a racing game, would work and would potentially open the series wide open to new fresh interest.
Rock and Roll Racing was a surprise hit for its time; F-Zero doing something like that with its own flair and style and more spaceyness would be amazing.
Didn’t Rock and Roll Racing have super light management mechanics in the GP mode where you could spend money to improve your car between races?
It sure did!
The cars also handled differently; at the high end they weren’t direct upgrades either. I kept the Battle Trak instead of swapping to the Havoc hovercraft because I preferred Rogue Missiles to the Sundog Beam. It hit a lot harder even if it had to be aimed.
That sort of thing would be great for F-Zero, but for now Hyrule world resets and tiresome 90s prophecy rehashes go brrr.
I feel like there’s plenty of space for some kind of racing management thing where you send drivers on bounty hunter missions to raise cash for car development. I need to get around to watching the goofy F Zero: Legend of the Falcon anime lol
The galaxy-exploding Falcon Punch moment was kino.
ファアアアルウウウコウウウン・パアアアアアアアンチ！！
The recent F-Zero 99 game was pretty cool
There are lots of people young enough to have never seen a new F-Zero game be put out on a console they have access to, so imo that’s all they’d have to do to make big bucks, even if it’s just pretty much the same game with shinier graphics