Uploaded July 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago

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00:34. Crater Land - Loop Circuit
02:49. Tenth Zone East - Plummet Circuit
06:01. Empyrean Colony - Twist Circuit
08:28. Fire Field - Land Mine Circuit
11:20. Fire Field - Warrior Circuit
13:54. Summary

F-Zero Maximum Velocity was one of the launch titles for the GBA when it was released in the Summer of 2001. It was notable for taking place 25 years after the events of the original F-Zero and having new pilots and vehicles as a result. It was also the first game by the current Mario Party devs, NDCube. Maximum Velocity, while featuring a different cast of characters, plays very similarly to the original F-Zero on SNES. The boost works the same instead of using a bar like F-Zero X, but the handling is more refined here. The graphics here are pretty similar as well, though the vehicles appear to be pre-rendered 3D.

The actual driving takes quite a bit of time to get used to. The key to taking turns is to tap the accelerator to keep your grip. Of course, it helps to use L and R to help slide the car left or right during sharper turns. With certain cars, you can utilize those shoulder buttons to drift instead of turning with the D-Pad as some cars are very slide-prone, but I do not use that technique much if any. I didn't need it to be honest.

The vehicles themselves have different attributes, but the attributes themselves are a bit different than in previous games and may be a bit confusing in some regards. While the boost is very similar to the original game, it is measured in two ways instead of just a letter. It has a top speed but also, each vehicle has a unique boost duration. Some cars get more boost time than others, but some have higher top speeds than others. Turning is measured in two different ways: performance and balance. It's confusing but from my experience, performance is how easy the car turns while balance has more to do with grip. Body strength is measured from 0 to 100 instead of a letter. Top speed is measured by km/h, and there is also a graph showing acceleration and top speed.

There is also some hidden attributes, and one is speed retention. Some machines decelerate slower than others after finishing a boost or from taking a hit. Fighting Comet in particular has amazing speed retention, despite a terrible top speed outside of boosting, making it one of the best in the game, thanks to that and its excellent boost that is powerful and reasonably long. One more hidden attribute is hang-time on jumps, which means some cars hang in the air during jumps longer than others.

As I mentioned before, my vehicle for this run was The Stingray, piloted by Alexander O'Neill, an ex American football player. There are a few big advantages for it. One, it has the second highest non-boost top speed at 460 km/h. Two, its boost lasts a whopping 12 seconds. On a lot of courses, that's more than half a lap, and you get a boost for each lap after the first one so that's a lot of time boosting. It hardly matters that its boost top speed is the worst in the game when you're spending more than half a lap in your boost, and your top speed outside of that is great. The last big advantage is hang-time. It can glide in the air for longer than most cars and can jump far, especially with a boost. I actually failed to leverage this on my run in the second course because there is a shortcut I missed by not doing so, but it didn't matter much in the end. It also helps that the car has a strong body at 86/100, but that's a minor positive.

The only real disadvantages besides the low boost speeds are acceleration and grip. It takes a little while for The Stingray to get up to speed at the beginning of a race. Also, it's a bit tougher to handle than other cars at times because it does not have the best turning or grip.

The Queen Cup is the last cup in the game. It's not as hard as the final cup in some other F-Zero games, as the first two stages are surprisingly easy. The difficulty does ramp up after that, with the last three courses. Twist Circuit is notorious for its twist pads, which can turn your car around if you pass over one, but it's a really fun high speed course once you learn how to avoid them. Land Mine Circuit is to me the hardest, as some of the turns early on along with the mines are annoying and gave The Stingray some trouble. The Warrior Circuit at the end has one annoying are, particularly where the motion strip is, as exiting that strip the wrong way can cost you time and position.

Master difficulty is the highest one as usual, but it isn't as hard as it is in X and GX. The AI does follow you very closely, waiting for a mistake to capitalize, but are not perfect by any means. That being said, they're still no pushover.

Still one of my favorite games on the GBA. I got this with my GBA back in 2001 and still have it.

Played using the VBA-M core in RetroArch with the DDT shader.

#fzero #gameboyadvance #racinggames #nintendo