The fastest racing game ever made; at light speed.
After playing other racing games like "Mario Kart", and "NeedForSpeed", this has GOT to be one of my favorite racing games ever. Period.
Graphics: 5/5
For a game cube game like this, I'd have to give it a good, decent, score. Whenever you customize your machine with emblems, they are high detailed and look unique compared to the rest of the view of your screen whenever you race. The machines have a nice, glossy glass-effect on each of them. The courses look detailed and there's never any muddyness. I think that there could've been a bit more effort put into the lower back rounds, but other than that, it's an amazingly detailed game. Sometimes though, if you look REAL closely inside the cock-pit, you can see your character. They're so low-detailed it can make your eyes bleed. Luckily, they're rarely seen at all.
Gameplay: 5/5
Why else would I give the game such a high overall score if I didn't like the main game play experience? It's fast for one thing. Even when from the point the announcer says; "GO!", the racing gets ruff, tough, and furiously fast above all else. You can go at speeds up to 1030 kilometers an hour; or faster. There are zippers (boosters) all over each stage, and you can even manually boost yourself by pressing a button, but the manual boost results in a decrease in energy. You run out of energy? You blow up, you die. Simple. You can attack other racers by knocking them off the stage, causing them to instantly die. There are even obstacles that move, such as giant gears, slippery terrain that your hovering machine slips over, etc. The road go's upside down, sideways, or in loops, but no matter how slow you go, you still stick to the road like glue. The story mode is fun, but not interesting. Still worth the play, as always though.
Music: 4/5
High-beat music and remixes from previous installments bring of bit of the old into the new. With courses in outer space and on different planets and high-tech cities to race in, the game's music highly fits the theme of the game. Even the menu music (the only track I don't enjoy that much) fits correctly as everything else does. Truly good music.
Replay Value: 5/5
After you're done collecting all of the bonus videos and content, unlocking all the racers, and all of the customizable machine parts (you may customize your own machine in this game by size, shape, color, patterns, etc.), the game gets fairly boring, but is still appealing to challenge the staff ghosts in time attack mode. You can also bring your memory card with your F-Zero memory on it and get bonus content from local arcade machines. It's still fun for me to save replays of my best racing moments and also save personal ghost data in time attack. Overall? It's best when you first play it and get good at it, then it gets challenging and extremely fun.
Overall: 9/10
Nice work Nintendo... I'm still waiting for another sequel, but I can surely say that it may never come. Until then, I'm very content with this one. Graphics are good, music is fair (mostly good), but replay value still kinda lacks. multi player mode makes it all worth it though. Buy? Rent... Maybe rent it (if you could actually even find one), get good at it if you can, and if you think you like it buy the thing. You might not find at a store, even for used, so look on eBay for it or Amazon. It's a good racing game taken to the extreme.