F-Zero: GP Legend is a 2003 racing game published by Nintendo. It's the fifth installment in the F-Zero series and the second game released for Game Boy Advance. It was developed by Suzak, which created games for Nintendo properties like Wario: Master of Disguise.
Though it released the same year as F-Zero GX, it's a different beast from the console game. It's not a continuation from the previous games, but a Recursive Adaptation of the anime of the same name, which started airing just a month earlier. As such, it elects Rick Wheeler from the animated series as the new hero in the story mode, with other supporting characters like Lisa Brilliant, Samurai Goroh, and Captain Falcon unlocked gradually.
From the gameplay perspective, it is also different from F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, the previous game on the Game Boy Advance. Whereas Maximum Velocity was almost a clone of F-Zero (1990), GP Legend tries to find a middle ground between it and F-Zero X. Although it is still "Mode 7" based racing game and uses Pre-Rendered Graphics, Boost Power and Vehicular Combat are introduced and Grand Prix is operated with 30 fixed racers.
F-Zero: GP Legend contains examples of the following:
- Arrange Mode: New in this game is Zero Test, which has you run a section of tracks from the game, sometimes under handicaps like riding a machine with poor grip. Each level lasts about a minute or less — sometimes under 10 seconds — but they're the hardest challenge in the game to get a 100% Completion.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- Rather than a straight sequel of the previous games, it's based on the anime adaptation, F-Zero: GP Legend, which is not only the first for F-Zero but very uncommon for Nintendo games. This was not for the best in hindsight, as the games sold poorly and the series went into a limbo after Climax, only 1 year later.
- The "You've got boost power!" line from F-Zero X, GX, and AX is replaced with "You've got a new booster!"
- Due to this game using the race mechanics from the 3D games unlike the past 2D installments, this means the Safe Rank mechanic is dropped (the only way to be retired out is to crash), each opponent has a unique identity (rather than four unique racers and then generic filler opponents), there is a fixed grid of 30 racers, there are proper standings, and arcade-style Scoring Points are dropped in favor of destroying five opponents in one race for an extra life in GP mode.
- In past games, changing the difficulty level mostly just alters the competence of the CPU opponents and how many spare machines you get. Here, this still applies to Novice and Standard difficulty, but Expert introduces harder variants of the existing courses.
- Cap: The maximum bounty reward collected from missions is capped at $2,550,000 for each character.
- Escort Mission: Captain Falcon's story has an optional bonus mission where he has to help Jody win a race against Blood Falcon. Falcon must make sure that Jody's machine doesn't get destroyed, and can give Jody an advantage by attacking Blood Falcon to slow him down. The mission will only end in success if Jody defeats Blood Falcon in any way, which could include by crashing Blood Falcon out, allowing Captain Falcon to win the race and still win the mission.
- Musical Nod: The tracks from F-Zero (1990) reprises the soundtrack remixed from the same game. Silence, Red Canyon, and White Land even use their SNES themes rather than the ones from F-Zero X like for the courses that debuted in this game.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: Many cutscenes and general backgrounds are recycled screencaps taken from the courses of F-Zero GX.
- Nostalgia Level: Platinum Cup in Grand Prix mode is entirely comprised of the levels from F-Zero (1990). However due to GP Legend having somewhat different physics and mechanics, their faithfulness to the originals vary (for example, what used to be magnetic strips that pull vehicles towards them are now slide strips with no magnetic-pull effect).
- Random Event: In Gold Cup, the game randomly picks between Red Canyon: Peak Jump or Illusion: Abyss Drop (or their "II" variants on Expert class) for the final course.
- Regional Bonus: The Japanese version has a connectivity to e-Reader, which unlocks racers, courses, and ghosts in Time Attack. The distribution of e-Reader was poor in the US and didn't happen in Europe, so these were built into the US and European versions that can be unlocked by meeting some requirements, removing the need to pay extra cash for e-Reader.
- Remixed Level: Expert difficulty not only makes the CPU opponents more aggressive, but also gives the courses more difficult variants.
- Rotating Arcs: The story mode consists of eight playable characters with 5 main stages each. Only Rick Wheeler is available at start and the others are unlocked by completing missions, letting the player to jump between them.
- Sequence Breaking: The anti-shortcut flying saucers in the previous installments are absent. You can take developer-unintended "super shortcuts" with no consequences.
