Fast RMX Review

F-Zero, and Wipeout are two beloved series that rarely seem to make an appearance anymore. Nintendo’s flagship futuristic racing series has a deep (for a racing game) storyline, a huge roster of characters, and of course, high-speed races. It used to be a guaranteed appearance on Nintendo hardware. The Super NES, Nintendo 64, and a slew of handheld releases kept futuristic racing in the limelight. Psygnosis, and Sony answered with their own futuristic racing series; Wipeout. Both of these may seem similar, because they are in premise. But each has their own nuances making them both stand out on their own. But, while not as dormant as F-Zero, Wipeout still doesn’t get the attention it used to.

But in recent years some independent studios have answered the call of those who long for proper futuristic racers. I previously looked at RedOut which will see a port to the Nintendo Switch at the end of the year. In Nintendo’s absence, German developers Shin’en created a small game on the Wii U called Fast Racing Neo. Which did well enough that it spawned some DLC. With no F-Zero on the horizon, they’ve made essentially a re-mastered director’s cut for the Switch. It includes all of the content the old game had. Plus new content. It also has a considerable upgrade in visuals. Released last year, this new version is an excellent title you might just want to pick up.

PROS: High sense of speed. Tight controls. Performance. Track layouts.

CONS: Online multiplayer has a low population.

EXPLOSIONS: Expect to see many when you’re first learning tracks.

Fast RMX is pretty great stuff. Immediately you’ll be taken back by how great this game looks considering its smaller budget. Then you’ll be taken back by just how great it performs. Where some other futuristic racers take influence from a few different franchises, this one mostly takes inspiration from F-Zero. The thing is, it does so well with the formula that it nearly rivals F-Zero many times. How close does it stick to the F-Zero formula? Pretty closely, but it does just enough to keep it from being a 1:1 knockoff of sorts.

The vehicles are very much of the F-Zero vein. The designs will instantly remind you of the hovercraft driven by the likes of Captain Falcon, Pico, Dr. Stewart, Samurai Goroh, or even Mr. EAD. Oddly enough, this is where there is a big departure from F-Zero. There are no characters. There isn’t a storyline. One of the hooks with the later F-Zero games, especially F-Zero GX, was the comic book soap opera on display. Every racer had interview clips. There was a set of difficult racing challenges that told more lore about Captain Falcon with each one you were able to win. Every driver had a theme song. There is a lot of back story in the F-Zero series.

Fast RMX dispels with any attempt to tell a story. There are no bounty hunters chasing super villains or criminals. It’s just pure, adrenaline rushing racing. Which is the most important part of any racing game. It’s the part that this game absolutely nails. Fast RMX may have a generic title, but it is succinct. There is a huge emphasis on speed on display as you’ll be boosting around hairpin turns on a rocket. The settings, and tracks continue the homages to F-Zero. Throughout the 36 tracks are space stations, futuristic cities, mining operations, and desert planets with sand worms right out of Dune. There’s even one race that takes place on a track as a giant robot is walking around, ready to step on you. It’s a pretty wild ride. A couple of tracks even retain F-Zero’s ride along the outside of a tube track designs.

So there is a lot of love thrown to Nintendo’s racer. Fast RMX looks great doing it too. The highly detailed textures on everything look great. Many of the courses take advantage of wind physics, and filters to add to the sense of speed on display. There are even some really great weather effects in this game like rain, and snow. One of the courses even has puddles that splash when you pass over them. The game even uses some Ambient Occlusion for lighting, and shading effects. Fast RMX is an impressive looking game for the Switch. The sound quality is quite good too. The humming of the engines, the bombastic explosions of wrecked ships are great. There’s even an eccentric announcer who has some quips to cheer you on when you’re doing well, or to essentially boo you when you come in dead last. The low-key Electronica fits the racing well, though personally I would have preferred some element of Rock. But that’s a minor nitpick on my part.

However, as I mentioned earlier, this isn’t a 1:1 carbon copy of F-Zero. Fast RMX has a few entirely different mechanics. First off, the energy system deviates greatly from F-Zero’s. There are no pseudo-pit stops to refill the boost meter. Instead, you have to be proficient enough to collect orbs at high speeds. These orbs will refill your boost meter instead. Secondly, your boost meter is not tied to your vehicle’s damage meter. If you run out of boost, you’re not going to explode. Third, there are explosions, but you aren’t out of the game after three crashes. You can keep going until the end of the race. However each time you destroy yourself by flying off the course, or hitting a wall you put yourself further, and further behind. Fourth, there are boost strips on the courses. But this leads to Fast RMX’s unique mechanic. Every vehicle has two phases. An orange phase, and a blue phase. Pressing the X button changes between the two, and the exhaust from your vehicle changes color to reflect that. If you’re coming up on a blue boost strip, and you’re using the blue phase, you’ll boost. If however you’re using the orange phase, you’ll be slowed to a crawl until you either shift phases or drive off of the boost strip.

This leads to all kinds of boost strip patterns, which gives the tracks a puzzle game element. Not only do you need to memorize each of the turns, branching paths, and booby trap placements (Yep, tracks have landmines, omega beams, asteroids, and turbine fans to avoid.) but you’ll need to know boost order. Orange, orange, blue, orange, blue, blue, orange on one track. The next it might be blue, orange, blue, orange, blue, orange. Suffice it to say, you’ll be playing many of these courses many times over. There are several modes in Fast RMX. The primary one being its Championship mode.  This mode starts you out with three cups, each with three races in it. You don’t have to win every single race to win the cup because every placement gives you a certain number of points. So it works a bit like Mario Kart in this regard. However, by the end you’ll need more points than everyone else to claim the top spot. So every track you do badly on, means you have to do better on the subsequent races. If you can place at least third by the end of the cup, you’re treated to a short victory animation. Then you’ll unlock a harder cup, and often a new vehicle to use.

Each of the 15 vehicles in the game handles differently, and are rated on the top speed it can reach, acceleration to that top speed, and the size of the boost power it has. Unfortunately, one bad thing about this, is it doesn’t give you any information about handling. So you have to try each one as you unlock them to see which style you like best. On the plus side, it does force you to at least take a little bit of time with each of them. One thing the ratings do tell you is that if a vehicle has a high top speed, it will take longer to get to that top speed. So these are usually going to be better if you’ve memorized every nook, and cranny of every track. Making a mistake will slow you down considerably. So when you’re just starting out you may want to pick something else. Going for a high acceleration means you’ll get to top speed faster, but you’ll want to master hitting those boost strips to compensate. Going for high boost means you’re at everybody’s mercy if you miss running over those aforementioned orbs.

Once you get through all 12 cups, you’ll be graced with the end credits. But that’s far from the end of the line here. The game has 3 difficulty runs of the championship. So you’ll have to do it again, and again. Each of the tiers gets a bit more cutthroat. Think of it like the cc ratings in Mario Kart. The courses themselves aren’t that much harder, it’s the enemy pilots who become that much more brazen. Be that as it may, even on the initial tier, the last three cups have a huge spike in challenge. Not just because of the enemies, but because of the precision some of the courses require. It will take you back to getting to the Diamond Cup in F-Zero GX. These courses are a big hurdle to overcome. But once you do, you’ll feel very accomplished upon seeing the end credits for the first time.

The game also has a mode called Hero mode. This one has you go through each individual track, one by one, and challenging you to come in first. That in of itself is pretty tough to do. Doing it on every track takes dedication. This mode is really for the player who wants to squeeze every last ounce of content out of their game. Much like the mainline championship mode, beating it unlocks another two tiers of difficulty. So if you’re looking for something that you can devote a lot of time to, Hero mode will keep you busy for a while. If that STILL isn’t enough for you, the game has Time Attack. Which is basically what it sounds like. You, practicing the tracks to get the shortest time possible. It isn’t the most exciting thing for the average player, but it is when racing games include them. If you’re having trouble with a certain track, it is nice to be able to practice it. Just as it’s nice to be able to ensure you’ve mastered it if you’re really good at the game, and want to compete in speed runs.

Rounding things out are the multiplayer modes. The game includes two main online modes. One where you can race against random players online, and another where you race against your friends. Fast RMX is quite fun to play online. The netcode is fairly stable, and I rarely ran into any lag. That isn’t to say it doesn’t exist though. If you’ve connected to players who are on the other side of the world you’ll see their vehicles warping around a bit, or if someone has a bad connection you’ll see a stalled vehicle when they finally crash out to a menu. But by, and large it isn’t a bad experience. However, being released last year, you may find you have a long wait when trying to play online against random players. It took me a nearly ten minute wait to find an opponent. Once I was able to, a few other players eventually showed up, and I had a great time racing around 20 races before heading off to sleep.

That’s really about the only complaint I could levy here, is that there is a low online player population. Unfortunately it seems to be the case with many racing games, the online competition window is a short one. Still, the fact there are online bouts, and that you can play private matches is great. Fast RMX also retains the split-screen racing fun that made F-Zero, and Wipeout awesome party games. Up to four players can play in split-screen, and the frame rate doesn’t seem to be affected too much astonishingly enough. With all of the animation, and special effects going on it still retains a fairly good performance. Though some of the visuals do take a couple of cutbacks to compensate. Fast RMX also has a LAN mode, where you can connect your Switch consoles locally. So if you want to organize a local Fast RMX tournament, or party night you can.

With its great visuals, excellent track design, and high frame rate it’s almost a no-brainer to download Fast RMX off of the Nintendo eshop. It’s an excellent game in spite of its generic title. I look forward to seeing what Shin’en brings to the table with any potential sequel. The only things to be aware of as of now, are the lack of players online this late in the game, and a big difficulty spike near the end. But in the grand scheme of things these aren’t major problems. In fact, I can’t say I ran into any major bugs while playing it. Shin’en really seems to have gone over everything with a fine tooth, and comb here. If you’re a Switch owner who hasn’t already done so, get this. Fast RMX is a winner.

Final Score: 9 out of 10