Ah, the lovely F-Zero series began on the SNES in 1990. Nintendo then advanced the formula on over the next decade, before kind of abandoning the franchise.

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity was actually developed by NDcube, a Japanese subsidiary of Nintendo. This one launched in March 2001 and met with good reviews for the series’ first handheld iteration. Well, huzzah!

Become a Handheld Gaming Speed Demon in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity

The Game Boy Advance was a delightful little handheld monster. It was a basically a Super Nintendo you could hold in your hands and, yes, that’s fantabulous.

It had some epic games on it, too, as well as focussing on some speed demon action. That’s where Maximum Velocity came in. This thing is speedy!

As with other entries in the F-Zero series it’s all about high-speed racing across futuristic tracks. All in some fancy looking hovering machinery.

In this one you get five laps to race around. You get a power meter and speed boost system you must monitor, with the chance to power this meter up at the end of each lap. That’s by driving of an energy strip of land.

Into each race you go with the goal of winning. Simples? Not quite. Here’s all the racing goodness in action.

The trick to any F-Zero game is to manage your desire to go as fast as possible alongside the potential to go up in a ball of flames.

If your power meter runs out and you hit something… you’ll explode (that means your race is then over, believe it or not).

This means you’re left balancing the desire to push the limits for a high finishing position with the desire to actually finish the race. Push for the win and something like this can happen.

Things can go wrong very quickly in F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (and any game in the series), which is part of the huge appeal of these great games.

You’re never quite as in control of things as it seems.

Unlike in Nintendo’s other fantastic racing series Super Mario Kart, you don’t have access to weapons to get yourself back into the action.

F-Zero is more about skill and your overall bravery.

When this one launched on the GBA in 2001 it met with strong reviews and more recent retrospective accounts agree with those. Nintendo Life re-reviewed Maximum Velocity in 2011 and noted:

“Even without any of the link cable modes, F-Zero: Maximum Velocity holds up remarkably well as a single-player screamer 10 years on and barely shows any sign of age.”

12 years on from that review and we can still make the same claim.

Whilst it’s lacking the full range of multiplayer options to advance its lifespan, it’s nonetheless a fine entry into the series.

It sold well, too, shifting 334,145 units in Japan and 273,229 in the US. Over a million units have shifted worldwide. Decent figures, but not the 55+ million blockbusters Nintendo is used to with the likes of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (2017).

The series has long been dormant due to its lack of more advanced commercial success. But with the launch of F-Zero 99 in September 2023 there’s a glimmer of hope Nintendo may have plans for the series in the future. We hope so.

If they don’t, you still play Maximum Velocity on the Nintendo Switch where it’s part of the GBA’s online library of titles.