Fansite Spotlight: F-Zero Central

Years Online: 16

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“The site has evolved a couple of times in terms of its design, but it’s primarily always been a site where people can submit their best Time Attack records, which naturally has fostered a very competitively focused community.”

In the spirit of the franchise it pays tribute to, fansite F-Zero Central focuses on friendly, but fierce, competition among the globe’s most dedicated racers.

“F-Zero Central was founded in 2001 by Dave Crawford. Initially, the site just focused on the just-released F-Zero Maximum Velocity for the Game Boy Advance, to create a place where players could compare their best times. There was a lot of interest and the site quickly grew with the addition of all the other F-Zero games,” began site staffer “WMJ.”

F-Zero Central owes a debt to fellow Nintendo title Mario Kart, as it followed in the footsteps of the franchise’s established community and extensive ranking sites. “Since then, we’ve always had a fairly close relationship with the Mario Kart community,” he continued. “Many of our community members are also members of other Nintendo communities, which I think brings together a good mix of people that all share a genuine love for these awesome games.”

“I stumbled upon F-Zero through my older brother who had bought F-Zero Maximum Velocity for his newly acquired Game Boy Advance,” reminisced fellow staff member “Yazzo.” “Once I started playing the game I was pretty much immediately hooked. The sense of speed, and the challenge of fully mastering your ship especially, made me keep playing the game—something which I think is pretty unique to the F-Zero series.”

“I was already familiar with submitting my best Time Attack times for a game since I was a member of the Super Mario Kart community, and this led me to search if there were any similar site for F-Zero where I could also submit my best. This is how I discovered F-Zero Central, and subsequently also all other F-Zero games in the series.”

“The site has evolved a couple of times in terms of its design,” explained Yazzo. “But it’s primarily always been a site where people can submit their best Time Attack records, which naturally has fostered a very competitively focused community.” According to WMJ, F-Zero Central also welcomes “a community of general F-Zero fans that share all sorts of things about the games such as modding, music, videos, and more.”

“This has happened a lot thanks to software like Discord which allow us to bring all these F-Zero fans together in a much more convenient and efficient way than ever before,” said Yazzo, picking up the thread. “In my experience the larger Nintendo community generally consists of lots of positive and friendly people who are very passionate about what they like, and are also socially very easy and fun to interact with. That’s probably the main reason as to why I’m still involved in the F-Zero Central community to this day.”

The F-Zero team hosts formal in-person meet-ups with fellow fans when possible, but sometimes opportunities arise at unexpected times. “Two fellow Dutch gamers, ‘KVD’ and Michael Jongerius, contacted me out of the blue because they wanted to learn about F-Zero X and they saw I was a highly ranked Dutch player,” said WMJ. “The Netherlands is a very small country, so they came over one weekend and we had a great time,” he continued, speaking to a meeting nearly ten years ago. “At the time KVD was one of the best players of Super Mario Kart, and Michael Jongerius of Mario Kart 64. We had a fantastic time hanging out and both are still good friends.” KVD and WMJ went on to be house mates for some time, united by their love of Nintendo and need for speed.

Yazzo has represented F-Zero to the wider gaming community, attending and performing in the 2015 Awesome Games Done Quick charity marathon. “I got to meet a few F-Zero pilots in real life, which was a very cool experience. A member of the community called ‘Naegleria’ hosted an open competition in F-Zero GX, where the goal was to beat Story Mode Chapter 5 on the ‘Very Hard’ difficulty level. I was fortunate enough to be able to achieve that goal while at the event, which I will always truly cherish as one of the great moments of my life.”

One of Yazzo’s defining moments with the original title also includes the prodigy Super NES racer, performing at Awesome Games Done Quick in 2014. “I distinctly remember when he first entered the scene and was able to defeat a 19-year-old World Record on Death Wind II set by the Japanese player Karasawa Shigenori. His live reaction to beating that time was priceless and one I’ll never forget.”

Yazzo played against EdwardFourZERO6 himself next year at the same event. “Although I lost the race, I was still happy to be able to set a time within just 10 seconds of my personal best, and keep it a fairly close race as well. I also managed to somehow set a new personal best on Fire Field”—his personal favorite track—“to close out the run.”

F-Zero continues to impact fans to this day, both those who play and replay the classic, and those who enjoy racing games as a whole. “The specific genre of futuristic high speed racing games all have their foundations in F-Zero on the Super NES,” said WMJ. “Fast paced, highly challenging racing is really a unique feature it brought forth that the Super NES hardware was first capable of producing.”