F-Zero is still a great racing game today with its challenging difficulty and memorable music.
The two modes in the original F-Zero are Grand Prix and Practice. You can also check records after finishing races in the cups. There are three cups or leagues to choose from, which are Knight, Queen, and King. There are also difficulty settings ranging from beginner to expert. You can only choose from four hovercars other than a big roster that is seen in F-Zero GX, which is not too much in today's standards. The Blue Falcon, Golden Fox, Wild Goose, and Fire Stingray are the cars that can be selected in this game. The pilots of the cars are not revealed in the original F-Zero so there is pretty much no story in this game other than racing really fast through fifteen stages. Eventually, the pilots were revealed in F-Zero X to have some meaning of story. The gameplay controls similarly to the SNES release as long you are using the Classic Controller as the controller of choice. It also supports the Gamecube controller as well if you do not have a classic controller for the Wii.
What makes F-Zero different than racing games in the early 1990s is you do not have to win the race to move on to the next course. You have to finish in the top 3 to progress to the next course as the tracks get harder and have extra obstacles to avoid. The major difference about F-Zero and most racing games is the appearance of a health bar. Your car's health will drain if you hit walls, driving on the borders, and going through obstacles that can cause damage. The car can explode if the health bar runs out and you lose a life causing to retry the course again. Keeping your hovercar in good health gets progressively harder as you drive through tougher courses. Unlike in the recent F-Zero games, you can boost with the A button once it is gained after every lap without losing health doing it. Many of F-Zero famous names of courses were introduced in this one like Mute City, Big Blue, Fire Field, Port Town, and more. The graphics are perfectly emulated on the Wii's Virtual Console, so expect to see the same things that are seen in the Super Nintendo release.
F-Zero is another great classic that began the futuristic racing genre. It influenced many games of this genre that are great today. It had memorable music with familiar theme songs of the courses and it is almost the best soundtrack for a racing game at its time. Other than that, it is a perfect emulation of the popular game and is still great to play today if you are a F-Zero fan of either the 2D or 3D games.