F-Zero X/Busch

Game: F-Zero X, Nintendo, 1998, N64
Beer: Busch, 24 fl.oz., 4.6% abv
# of beers consumed during play: 1
Level Reached: 3rd Circuit
Level of Intoxication: Woozy

Game
F-Zero X is a fairly well known followup to the great original F-Zero for the Super NES. The F-Zero series is noted for being fast paced and having slick controls, meaning you weren't about to let your little brother play Pilotwings until you had cleared that Goddamn Fire Field level. Once the game got reiterated on the Nintendo 64, F-Zero fans were stunned by the evolution of the game. Flat tracks and weird elevator-music-inspired tunes gave way to looping, twisting 3D tracks and a wailing metal guitar soundtrack. For those of us who had grown up on the SNES, this was the game we all knew F-Zero was meant to be. And yes, Samurai Goroh is and always will be a bastard.

Gameplay
It's universal knowledge that any game in a given genre usually sticks to convention and plays off of a gimmick or two to differentiate itself from the crowd. F-Zero X is no different. As in other racing games, you race within a field of other vehicles along a circuitous track, and must come in first place (or at least rank highly enough to collect the greatest number of points) to win. That may have passed for high entertainment back when Pole Position was new, but nowadays, it takes more than point standings to blow my skirt up. Fortunately, Nintendo knows this and outfitted F-Zero X with more candy than a pedophile staking out a year-round school.

First off, there's 30 vehicles to choose from. That's a lot, and though you have to unlock 24 of them before they become available, when all is said and done, there's still an astonishing 30 vehicles to choose from. Those 30 vehicles all race on the track at the same time too, that's a race field of 30, which aside from some high end simulations, is pretty unheard of. Imagine the chaos of racing on a tiny little road suspended thousands of feet above the air, and there are no rails on the side of the track to keep you from doing a swan dive into the city below where you will meet with an untimely doom. Add in crazy wailing metal guitar riffs and 30 other cars trying to occupy the same space at once while traveling at ungodly speeds and this is starting to sound like a recipe for magnificent with a big helping of hot, steaming crazy on the side. If this game had had weapons, I would have just stopped the review right here and told anyone with thumbs and eyeballs to go get the damn game and learn of its superiority on their own time. Unfortunately, this game lacks weapons with which to annihilate one's opponents, and so here we find ourselves.

The lack of offensive options notwithstanding, there are still quite a few ways you can thin the herd, each ship comes with a life bar which depletes as the craft is banged around, and which, after the first lap, also serves as the player's boost reserve. Yes, in a devious and cunning twist, Nintendo have made your health and your go-juice one and the same, making the choice of whether to boost into first place or not blow up a surprisingly difficult one. In addition to hunting down anyone unfortunate enough to have boosted themselves to death, you can also wait for a jump or a section of track with no barriers and do a crazy spin maneuver which sends anyone you hit out of control, bumping them into oblivion. All this takes place at approximately a bazillion miles per hour, which brings us back to the core of the game: racing to win.

The racing is blisteringly fast and the tracks are all designed for two things: speed which tears your eyebrows off and loops, whirls and corkscrews which should come complete with their own little bottles of Dramamine. For some reason this game has the feeling of motion down to an exact science and exploits it to tremendous effect. As you race, you'll see the track begin to twist and contort, and before you realize what's going on, you'll find yourself riding a 2000 MPH Mobius strip.
This is a simple, awe-inspiring gameplay mechanic that F-Zero's main competitor, Wipeout, scarcely even addressed, which is a shame, because Wipeout had weapons. When you view F-Zero X as a whole, the parts, which are amazingly cool in their own rights, mesh together and form a kind of videogame Voltron. Each portion of the gameplay integrates so flawlessly with every other portion, that when something doesn't happen just quite right or you find yourself staring at the game over screen with adrenaline still squirting out of your fingernails, you are so eager to get back into the game that the flaws seem minor if you even notice them at all. In that regard then, this game effectively emulates sex, even when it's bad, it's still good. Better yet, you never have to worry about some psychopath ex oozing out of the woodwork ten years later claiming back child support. F-Zero X: better than a paternity suit.

Graphics/Sound
By now, everyone knows the Nintendo 64 "look," that soft-textured, brightly colored presentation that was light-years ahead of its time when the system debuted, but quickly got surpassed much in the same spirit as art deco and Jackson Pollack. Oft have I run across the sentiment that the only people who could make an N64 game that didn't look like crap was, in fact Nintendo themselves. Rare did a fine job on certain occasions, but as a whole, I have no cause to contradict that statement. Thankfully, F-Zero X is a game made by Nintendo, and it seems that despite a few glaringly overused textures and under used polygons, they hit upon a competent balance.
The game runs at a very, very buttery sixty frames per second, which makes the sensation of speed even greater. The vehicles on the track are all very different aesthetically, and while the tracks and backgrounds are pretty bland (we're talking cardboard salad with novocaine dressing and a side of air), the action onscreen will pretty much prevent you from catching anything but the most fleeting of glances at the horizon.

All the static screens (menus, title screens, etc) are strange comic book inspired drawings, which are colorful to the point I thought someone had dropped an artist's palette on a sheet of comic book inks, scanned it into the game and called it a day. They get the job done, but really don't mesh well with the rest of the game.

The sounds are nice, the few voice samples are clear enough for having been stored on a 16 MB cart, the sound effects are all well chosen and blend well with the rest of the game, and the music is fast paced, full of energy and doesn't stop. The only gripe I have is that in order to accommodate the above mentioned graphics, the sound even had to take a hit. All the sounds in the game are in mono, which really sucks because I start to think about the kind of stereo effects that could have been used to great effect in this title and I get a bit disheartened. Discrete channel audio as you were passed by other racers, the sounds of walls close by your craft whizzing by, guitar squeals thrashing madly back and forth between right and left channels...so much potential was lost. I'm sure if Nintendo had really tried, they could have found a way to keep the fast visuals and get some bad-ass stereo sound in there, but ah well...perchance to dream.

Story
This game's story is as interminable and obscure as any I've come across. Most of the admittedly sparse exposition is laid out in the first few paragraphs of the game manual. The only hint at a plot within the game is the fact that every vehicle comes with it's very own driver. Even the mighty internet is having problems coughing up any extended story on the game, and since I don't have the manual handy (it's in storage...so sue me), I'll just improvise.

In the year 1987, antigravity technology is perfected thanks to the movie Back To The Future II. Multinational corporations, sensing an opportunity to make some heavy dough, forgo using the valuable technology in practical applications which would elevate the human race as a whole, and instead sponsor deadly races high above crowded cities. Many races from across the universe think this is a tremendously nifty idea, and participate in turn, giving birth to interplanetary hate and xenophobia the likes of which NASCAR could never have achieved. Some enter the race for fame, some to fight crime, some to engage in crime, and some because they're just jerks. Alien jerks. Alien jerks who like to bump perfectly good humans with families off the road to their deaths.

See? I can write stuff. Game companies...I'm available on a contract or freelance basis.

Beer
I almost got a different beer on my trip to the store, I was low on funds and I was reaching for a can with several tantalizing X's on it when all of a sudden that unique name caught my eye. When I told a friend about my purchase later, he asked matter-of-factly: "Busch? Do they still make that?"

Well, they do, and I'm still not sure if that's a good thing. The beer smells exactly like everything else Anheuser-Busch has ever brewed which, while that's not bad, it's that same clean, grainy scent that everyone associates with generic beer. If you haven't had a beer in a long time, that smell will make you smile and crave an ice cold one, all while remembering the last good brewski you had. If you drink beer a lot, and have particular brands of high-quality beer you prefer, that odor is likely going to make you wrinkle up your nose and run for the nearest microbrew. If you had an abusive, alcoholic relative, the smell just may send you back into therapy. The taste echoes the smell. Classic Anheuser-Busch graininess and watery fermentation. Got fillings? Good, go get a strip of aluminum foil, stick it in your mouth...now chew on it. Add some overcooked rice and a slice of whole wheat bread...Chew some more. Wash it all down with water from your neighbor's swimming pool. Congratulations, you now know what Busch Beer tastes like out of a can. Now really, that may come off as a bit harsh, but remember some of the other beers I've described, and remember that I've likened them to zoo runoff and decomposing flesh, and you'll begin to see that tasting like the Jones' swimming pool isn't that bad at all on the grand scale of things. The carbonation is a bit much, but on a hot day, it turns out to be kind of refreshing.

The intoxication is fairly mundane, you get a bit loopy and just a tad more boisterous than normal. My family watched in amusement as I played the game and consumed the Busch, and we all laughed as I played. Games 'N Beer...Bringing families together.™

One thing I noticed as I rounded out my evening with the beer was that I was feeling very tired. Not tired like I had been active all day and I was getting ready for a healthy night's sleep...no, this was an obvious biological chemical response to the beer and whatever was in it. I was tired because my body was sending me the physiological equivalent of "Houston: we have a problem." Not that I'm implying this beer is poisonous, at least no more poisonous than would reasonably be expected, but that this beer, for whatever reason, makes me tired. So in that respect, this beer apparently contains distilled episodes of iCarly and Jonas Brothers musics. Were I a James Bond villain, I would feed Double-Oh one of these and fire the moon laser while Bond was sleeping it off. Instant world conquest for me with nary a hint of suave, womanizing resistance.

The Matchup
Even though the beer isn't all that great, it still elicited a few extra "tee-hee lookit dat" moments from me during the course of the game, and so I have to give it the thumbs up at least for this singular case. F-Zero X is without a doubt, one of the better classic gems for the N64, and warrants a playthrough no matter what your genre of choice is. If you happen to have some buddies over, the four-player split screen along with a case of something cheap to split will provide epic races well into the night. In the world of games, you can definitely do worse than this. In the world of beer, yeah, believe it or not, you can do worse than this.

Cheers/Game on.