Nintendo has mentioned before that they had no plans to revive F-Zero for the Wii U because they couldn't think of anything to do with it. Well, even though the Big 'N' may not have had any ideas for the game, apparently Burnout developers Criterion Games did.
Nintendo Life did some digging around and found out that Nintendo apparently had plans to unveil a brand new F-Zero game for the Wii U. In fact, the article notes that the plan was to tease the new game during the Wii U's initial reveal in 2011to have something prepared later on down the road, but it never materialized.
So why didn't F-Zero materialize from the Burnout and Need for Speed developers? Well, because Nintendo was crunched for time and they needed something to show for E3 and apparently Criterion, under contract by EA, was not going to be able to produce the demo for them.
Criterion, at the time, was working on Need for Speed: Most Wanted, one of the many games in the long running Need for Speed franchise that has mostly been forgotten with time.
The last game made by Criterion was Need for Speed: Rivals, a game that went down in history as being a bit janky on PC due to some frame-rate locks and mostly standard fare on the home consoles.
It's a real shame because many fans really wanted to see what Criterion would have come up with for F-Zero. The last major game we had from the series was on the GameCube and it's still one of the best futuristic racers ever made. I can easily see why Miyamoto would feel as if there's nothing new to do with the series since F-Zero GX on the GameCube is one of the most feature-complete racing titles I've ever played. Seriously, the replay factors put many racing games in today's market to shame due to the customization features and the mammoth track selection.
Gamers are quite disappointed that it looks as if there won't be an F-Zero game for the Wii U, but they're holding out hope for something possibly on the Nintendo NX, which is set to get an official announcement during next year's E3.
However, not all is lost.
There is a sliver of hope in the form of Shin'en Multimedia's tech-savvy racer for the Wii U called Fast Racing Neo. The company making the game are very heavy into design engineering and put a strong focus on pushing the Wii U to its limits with Fast Racing Neo. The game runs 720p at 60fps on Nintendo's system and it's absolutely everything F-Zero fans could possibly want out of a futuristic, multiplayer racer. The graphics are drop dead gorgeous and it has 16 tracks spread across four different racing divisions.
Fast Racing Neo is due to drop this year, exclusively for the Wii U. The game could easily be a sleeper hit, especially in the absence of any new F-Zero games. Maybe for the Nintendo NX we'll see Nintendo attempt to pitch to Criterion Games once more to bring their vision of F-Zero to life.
