I've given F-Zero a try a few times, but never really gotten into it hugely.
Reading more about it, the depth of the game world is amazing! There's a storyline and characters and canon and everything. Games with this much depth behind the scenes tend to be great, so I'm excited to get to know this series better. I've just read the Wikipedia pages, I should try find a copy of the original manual.
I spent last night playing the SNES version, mostly driving round and round Mute City in practice mode, getting to know the track and the vehicles. It's quite hard to beat the computer player, you need to drive an almost perfect race, 2'15" or under. I managed a 2'15"03 and the CPU was
right on my tail as I crossed the finish line for a win. Passing is the hardest part, you seem to suffer a much greater penalty from bumps than the computer player does.
I didn't see much advantage from using the shoulder buttons to get around corners, you just scrape, slow down, and lose control compared to either lifting off the accelerator or using brakes. The shoulders do seem to be useful for passing when racing in the grand prix mode with other competitors.
One thing I do know very well about F-Zero is the soundtrack. I am a big fan of listening to good game soundtracks as regular music, and F-Zero is in my regular rotation. It's got a great funky 90s sound which really embodies the whole dystopian cyberpunkish feel of the game. You can download the original SPC files on
the snesmusic.org page (I play these with
deadbeef on Android), or you can download MP3s
on KH Insider. There's also an arranged version called
F-Zero: The Transmitter by Magical Trick Society, a Japanese group who have done arranges for a lot of Nintendo games.