F-Zero: GP Legend is an interesting addition to the F-Zero series of games, taking the universe of the amine – which is also called F-Zero: GP Legend – and creating a story mode which, while short – most of the 8 Story Mode stories have only five missions, although two of them have a bonus sixth mission which can be unlocked – manages to give the player the general feel of the amine. It can also be considered a bit of a midquel of the amine, taking place sometime during the first – and only – season.

Before and after each mission in a story, you are treated to a (skippable) cutscreen which develops the plot – although it is not
recommended to skip the pre-mission cutscreen the first time, as at the end of it, you are told what you have to do for that mission: ranging from either winning a race or beating a certain opponent on either one of the game’s circuits (two of which are only playable in Story Mode) or on a sprint track (which are only playable in the missions) to taking out someone prior to the end of the race or making sure to stay in first place. And you’ll need to play through them all in order to unlock all of the characters, some of which require you to have to get $2,550,000,000 cash from the missions. (This is impossible to achieve in a single run, requiring missions to be repeated in order to reach the goal)

The music of GP Legend is a series of great remixes of the original F-Zero themes, such as Mute City, Port Town, White Land, Silence and Big Blue, while including new songs for locations like Mist Flow. And the announcer – who, in the amine, is known as Mr. Zero – is not as much of a big ham, like they are in the other games, which makes a welcome change.

The Graphics of GP Legend are great, barring a few minor things, such as the flickering map. I can’t confirm if this is just an emulator problem or if this happens when played on a real GBA, but it can be distracting at times.

As for the game play, if you had played the original F-Zero, you’ll feel somewhat at home, as the game play is closely related to that, but with some additions from the latter games, such as the boost system of F-Zero X, where you can expend some of the machine’s energy to gain a burst of speed, and GX’s side attacks, which gives you the ability to attack without taking damage from said attack. And, some of the tracks from F-Zero make an appearance in the bonus Platinum Cup, which helps with the nostalgia factor.

The difficulty in the game starts out low to begin with, but there are some missions which are ridiculously hard, like the final mission of Black Shadow’s Story Mode, as well as harder variations of the tracks in GP mode when you take on the Expert Class – of which one is used for both Black Shadow’s final mission and one of the bonus missions.

All in all, F-Zero: GP Legend is a welcome addition to the series, combining the best of the three console games into a fast-paced racing game which leaves you wanting more. It’s a shame the sequel only came out in Japan… but then again, the amine was canned in the US before the season was completed, yet Japan got the whole season, which included the epic moment which has forever gone down in history as Falcon’s greatest move…

Is this your first review? This is not a bad review. I personally never played any F-Zero games except for when I play Super Smash Bros. There are some parts in your review where you should expand more. For example, you did talk about the flickering problem in graphics, but other than that, you said that graphics is great. You should try to explain what makes the graphics "great." Anyone can say that it's great, but you want to explain why it's great. How it makes your gaming experience great? Keep up the good work and I hope you keep writing reviews!

play4fun : It's my second review, although the first one was much shorter. And, yeah, I may had not fully clarified some things in the review, but I couldn't think of anything else to add at the time. But thanks for the feedback.

ah2190 : It's good that you reviewed something that doesn't have a review though. Keep at it!