Review by Jaz
Views: 21912
Date: 2002-12-15
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Now I’m not one to collect weird and wonderful items from the video gaming world (that’s Redah’s job), but when I first played on a 64DD, I just had to own one. One of the main reasons why, was this genius piece of software.

For those of you who aren’t aware, the F-Zero X-Pansion Kit was an add-on disc for the original N64 version of F-Zero X. This disc allowed you to edit the `cars`, create new tracks, and generally mess about with the game itself. All will be revealed. Read on.

GRAPHICS 3/6

At the end of the day, the point of F-Zero X was never to have pretty graphics. And the X-Pansion Kit does nothing in the way of enhancing the plain textures of the stand-alone 64 version. But they do the job, and the game runs at such a blistering pace anyway, you’ve very little time to admire what has been achieved graphically. In terms of the X-Pansion Kit graphics, each of the course textures, along with a few more are available for use in the track designer, which is pretty damn cool. ;)



SOUND 4/6

The X-Pansion Kit adds a host of new tunes to the jukebox, as well as keeping each of the original songs. Again, as with the textures, each of the music tracks on the cart and disc can be used on your home-made tracks. As with the music, the X-Pansion Kit does nothing to enhance the in-game sound effects, but you can’t really criticise it for that, I mean, it’s hardly the point of the thing is it?! There really isn’t that much more to say about the sound other than it does it’s job nicely. As with the graphics, you’ve not got enough time to concentrate on the sounds whilst trying to control your ship at speeds of over 800kph!



GAMEPLAY 6/6

Now this is what F-Zero is all about. Even without the X-Pansion Kit, F-Zero must be up there as one of the most playable games ever created. The addition of the 64DD disc simply takes F-Zero X to a new level. The major feature in the X-Pansion Kit is, obviously the track designer. The track designer here is unlike any you would have used before. In fact, so I’m told, the designer in question is not far off the one that the F-Zero X programmers used to create the original tracks! And so yes, it’s pretty complicated to use at first, especially considering that it’s all in Japanese! But after a night or so of trial-and-error attempts, you’ll pick it up pretty quickly! Soon enough it becomes a five-minute job to create tracks that would have the F1 organisers proud. Loops, jumps, half-pipe’s and boosts, they’re all included, along with hundreds more bits and bobs to include on your new track. Basically, if you can think of it, you can probably build it! Once you have a handful of tracks saved to disc, you can think about creating a custom championship. Give it a name, select the tracks and save. You can now race this championship on your own, or with up to 4-players. Secondly, you’ve got the `car` editor. Compared to the wonderful track designer, the `car` editor is a bit of a let down. Whilst you can mess about with the colours, decals and stats of each ship, you can’t design your own from scratch. It’s a shame, and a feature that is more of an afterthought than a fully-blown part of the game.



ADDICTION 4-5/6

This is where it’s up to you. The F-Zero X-Pansion Kit will only become boring when you run out of ideas. In theory, if you can keep coming up with new exciting ideas for tracks, this game could last you a lifetime. After a while, you may not play on it as much, but it’s always a pleasure to invite three friends over, each create a track, and then compete in a custom multiplayer championship. A feature I’d of like to of seen implemented in F-Zero X-Pansion Kit would be the ability to design textures and the like using the Mario Artist DD series, and import them into the X-Pansion Kit. But still, designing new tracks never seems to lose it’s appeal.



TOTAL RATING 85%

Possibly the most tragic aspect about F-Zero X-Pansion Kit is that barely a few thousand people will get to play it. Overall, it’s a wonderful piece of software that every F-Zero fan should go out of their way to play it someday. Here’s hoping that the GameCube version of F-Zero has the DD features included as standard.