Switch Online Exclusive F-Zero 99 Adds King League And Three More Tracks

Wonder if we will get new tracks or tracks from the GBA games.

BS tracks when

Uh...Nintendo said the exact opposite of what this article makes a note of. There won't be any more new courses in the future, despite other planned content updates...even though they have the Satellaview course lineup to pull from as far as SNES F-Zero goes, on top of 3 new tilesets being found in the files at launch (with 2 being outright new themes, and another being a name reused from the Satellaview tracks). And that's not even mentioning how the GBA courses would fit in nicely.

Very disappointing news.

I really have to wonder what on earth the delay is with N64 games on the service. There are three more of them announced for the year, only ten weeks left, and at least one Switch Online update is going to be instead taken up with Mario Kart DLC.

This can't be the limit of F-Zero 99.

F-Zero 99 has gotten F-Zero to the popularity compared to the Snes original.

Take advantage of the heat, Nintendo!

I finally returned to NSO (base subscription only) as Nintendo had a 20% off sale and their eshop cards were also 20% off at my local supermarket. I'm really enjoying F-Zero 99 and am looking forward to the extra tracks. Hoping to see GBA ones in future too, and even some new ones! Best finish is 5th so far.

@PikaPhantom
Where does it say that? I can't find anything to confirm or deny your claim.

I wish I cared more about this game, but I don't, sadly. I think F-Zero 99 is a cool concept--the Skyway is a great feature with an equally clever name, for example. But I dunno. Outside of Tetris, these "99" games have never been able to hold my attention for very long. I'm also just not much of an F-Zero guy.

I've instead been getting my competitive online racing fix from Disney Speedstorm, which just went free-to-play a few weeks ago. I've already sank like 50 hours into it, which is kinda nuts. I know it sounds stupid, but even though I'm not paying for microtransactions, the grinding is part of the fun. I enjoy checking back in every day for new challenges, and the constant reward loop is very satisfying. It's not always a huge prize, but I feel like I unlock at least some little something every single race. Even though there aren't many tracks in the rotation, I just can't stop chipping away little by little at unlocking all the characters and upgrading my stats.

Compare that to F-Zero 99, and what worthwhile rewards are there to keep me engaged? I can level up, which is nothing more than bragging rights. I can unlock achievements which, again, are just bragging rights. Or I can unlock different paint jobs for one of only four cars. It's just not enough incentive to keep me playing and is one of the reasons why I fell off after like an hour. There's no rewards that make me think, "Oh that's so cool, I need to unlock that!"

Unless you just absolutely love the core gameplay, I don't think this is a game worth coming back to again and again. It was the same problem with Pac-Man 99 and Mario 35--fun games, sure, but what is the greater goal I'm working toward? Mario Kart 8 has a similar problem. I love that game to pieces, but I get tired of racing online with no other incentive than to watch my VR go up when I win and back down when I lose. The next Mario Kart desperately needs a more engaging system of some kind, where you're getting tangible rewards instead of the only reward being the friends you made along the way.

@TheRealMr_Carpainter https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1714449980151189667?t=IfR9gYLYSbsWK9NmFwr5nQ&s=19

Odd thing is, the Japanese news update translated indicates new tracks are still coming. Could just be a Google Translate quirk, though, so hopefully someone who knows Japanese can verify

@PikaPhantom Thanks much. Hopefully this gets clarified soon, as I'd be bummed if they don't add any new tracks after this wave.

The game is great, and I really hope these are not the final tracks of the entire lifespan of the game, regardless of other new potentially good content. New tracks (technically returning, but new to F-Zero 99 I mean) are the meat and potatoes of a game like F-Zero. The vast majority of players have never played the Satellaview courses from BS F-Zero 2 (sp?) and reworking the GBA F-Zero games' courses into 99 would be a large boost too. Heck even brand new original courses would be very welcome too.

They already missed an opportunity to give F-Zero X players the localized 64DD version of F-Zero X (Expansion Kit), which was never released outside Japan if I recall. That had a custom track editor which you could put in a custom cup, machine editor, two new full Nintendo-designed cups, and some new music tracks, most notably a metal remix of Mario Kart 64's Rainbow Road.

Hopefully the discrepancy between NOA and NOJ is cleared up, but unfortunately I'm not optimistic, knowing the history of similar situations like this with Sakurai/Smash tweets- people reading far too much into tweets and giving themselves hope on a very loose interpretation of the words used.

Very excited to race on the King League tracks. F-Zero 99 is such a joy to play.

@PikaPhantom Took a look at the Japanese text and I'm fairly certain Google translated it incorrectly. Bummer. I would've liked more tracks.

Can't wait! It'll feel so nice to finally have the complete SNES tracklist!

do you think there is a chance that we get a singleplayer mode as in tetris 99 / pacman 99?

@Not_Soos I'm not as good at racers, so for me there's a giant thrill in trying to reach anything lower than 70. I've hit the thirties once already and get better with each day I race.

I think these games aren't meant to hold your attention btw. Just play a kwartier of an hour, het your daily fix of fun and move on. And it's doing an amazing job with that!

@Ade117 Sure is!

@Not_Soos In all fairness, all of the "99" games work the exact same. Tetris 99 has no actual goal to work towards either, it's still all about unlockable cosmetics. And I think that's fine.

What a missed opportunity. I guess what I datamined in terms of courses are nothing more than leftovers (I want to note that I never said they were 100% future content, just to be certain).
If there was a moment to put the Satellaview tracks it would have been for F-Zero 99...

OatmealDome found stuff about an Arcade Mode and Survival Mode, so I'd like to say the updates are probably related to new modes and maybe cosmetics to some extent and not much else.

@Lizuka I'd guess we'd see something like this for NSO:

• Week of October 30th - Mario Party 3, Harvest Moon 64
• Week of November 6th - MK8 Deluxe DLC wave 6
• Week of November 13th - F-Zero Maximum Velocity
• Week of November 20th - Batch of NES/SNES/GB/GBC games for base NSO
• Week of November 27th - 1080 Snowboarding
• Week of December 4th - Golden Sun
• Week of December 11th - Batch of Mega Drive games

@JohnnyMind You have the right page. The line of interest is: "『F-ZERO 99』は、今後もコース追加以外のアップデートを継続的に実施予定です。"

@Not_Soos

i always enjoy reading (and usually lightly disagreeing with 😅) your comments on here!

you said:
"Unless you just absolutely love the core gameplay, I don't think this is a game worth coming back to again and again."

This is fascinating to me, because IMO A) the entire point of playing the "99" games is that you love and/or nostalgically miss the original games and more generally B) what kind of game is worth coming back to again and again if you dont love the gameplay?

im genuinely interested, because i know that other people play alot of games that i wouldnt like, and for possibly different reasons than i play the games i like.

thanks again for your characteristically well considered and thoughtfully written comment ✌️

PS - if this is it, ill just go back to the real fzero games. why wait when we can see the end of the line already? 😐

@Captain_Toad

I cannot agree more! I play this game every day and recommend it to friends often. It would be a shame if they didn’t keep it going!

This would be a great opportunity to release Ace league and maybe even Joker League with the 5 missing BS tracks. At the very least they can recreate the Metal Fort tracks using Youtube videos. Those 2 actually looked really fun. Even GBA tracks could be in play.

I know alot of people lately, including myself who feel nso is just a scam.
Look at gamepass compared to this. It's insulting. You need to pay for online service, then, pay for expansion packs, and yet, still no wii, gamecube titles.
And if nintendo ever do make gamecube games available, guess what, you'll need to pay for another expansion pack.
At least if nintendo allowed you to buy nso games, wouldn't be as bad (like gamepass)
But I will never subscribe, (many have said they are not re subscribing once runs out) specially now as I play all these games emulated on my series x

Of course Nintendo aren't going to add any more tracks. This is the company that routinely adds Japanese games to it's online libraries without even the barest effort to help people decode them and calls it a job well done. Nintendo are the undisputed kings of low-effort when it comes to their free content.

Only doing the bare minimum of the first game's tracks seems like a wasted opportunity. And for all we know, those additional updates will just be balance patches.

We need more context, as it is this game didn't really last very long. Can only go so long with the same 15 tracks, some of which are just too similar to others too, before you get bored.

Not sure if I want Nintendo to take this game as an f-zero interest gauge now.

@-wc-

It's a chemistry brain hack. Lots of games keep you coming back to grind for digital trinkets and stat boosts. It's not money or anything, but your brian interprets it as an achievement, like you earned something. And most of the time, these games are fairly easy, so as long as you just keep playing, you'll get the thing. So that motivates you to keep going and keep grinding.

Still waiting on solo DLC. It's the only reason I can still enjoy Pac-Man 99 after all.

@Beaucine

i dont think you are making enough of a distinction between the games you consider "chemistry brain hacks," and other games.

ultimately, we are playing the games to have fun, and fun is objectively a result of chemical brain activity. virtually all games use meaningless trinkets as reward, all good games make you feel good for winning. I dont think your case against the 99 games in particular is very strong, tbh. ✌️

@-wc-

I'm not making a case against the 99 games. I was actually agreeing with you.

You asked this: "What kind of game is worth coming back to again and again if you dont love the gameplay?" And that's what I responded to, with the example of games that keep you hooked by offering a continuous reward loop for relatively low-effort grinding, taking cues from gambling, mobile games, and social media. I don't know if that makes them "worth" coming back to. It is what it is.

I wasn't suggesting this the case with the 99 games, though their social systems do add a thin layer of the above.

@Beaucine

oh, i see. sorry about that!

i appreciate the answer, and i did agree that thats what games are like, generally. so i see now that we agree completely 👍

i think our slight misunderstanding, then, was that i was presenting the question as hypothetical, implying that NO game is really "worth coming back to again and again if you dont love the gameplay," as the user had said about fzero99, and clearly, "if you dont like the gameplay of 'X,' then 'X99' is not going to do it for you" is a truism that scarcely needs to be shared 😆