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Retro Unreleased Virtual Boy F-Zero spin-off was 100% complete, according to former NOA staffer

mazi

mazi

picross pundit
www.nintendolife.com

Mythical Virtual Boy F-Zero Spin-Off Was 100% Complete, According To Former NOA Staffer

"Zero Racers was done"
www.nintendolife.com www.nintendolife.com
The Virtual Boy might have gone down as one of Nintendo's most costly failures, but a dedicated and passionate fanbase has grown up around the system, and this group spends a lot of time looking into unreleased projects which could have potentially boosted the console's fortunes – one of which is F-Zero spin-off Zero Racers (also known as G-Racers).

Described as 'F-Zero in a tunnel', Zero Racers was previewed twice in Nintendo Power magazine but never actually saw the light of day. There were reports that it was shown off at E3 1996, but these appear to be false – a fact which has led many to speculate that the game was little more than a series of mocked-up screenshots and that the plug was pulled by Nintendo long before any serious development work was undertaken.
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However, Did You Know Gaming has managed to speak with former Nintendo of America localiser and associate producer Jim Wornell, who was with the company for two decades. Wornell says that his role involved pretty much every aspect of getting a game ready for release in North America, and he claims that Zero Racers was 100% finished and ready to go:

"Zero Racers was done. We had a complete manual, package and label done for the game. It went through LOT check, it had an ESRB rating. It was complete."

Wornell also reveals that the game was never supposed to have F-Zero in the title, despite some people suggesting the full name was 'F-Zero: Zero Racers'. It was definitely set in the same universe, however, because he says that the four craft in the game were to be piloted by Captain Falcon, James McCloud, Jody Summer and an alien which Wornell believes was Pico, but can't remember for certain.

That means that Zero Racers would have marked the F-Zero debut of both McCloud (a humanised version of Fox McCloud's father from the Star Fox series) and Summer, who appeared in the N64 title F-Zero X.
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Catalyst said:
what if:

Virtual Boy: Nintendo Switch Online
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Yes! I think I also suggested this a month ago in another thread and it’s great to see I’m not the only interested in the possibility.

A subscription service is perfect for getting the VB titles out of the vault. Maybe not a priority (seriously GB should at least come first to provide some context) but it would be of interest to people and I expect that selling the games individually was not commercially viable for the old VC programs.
 
Such a missed opportunity that Virtual Boy games weren't released on 3DS. Could've brought this one back like they did with Star Fox 2
 
Bad luck that this hasn't seen the light of day with all the other old ROMs and development materials that have leaked the last few years.
 
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I never got to try the Virtual Boy, because when it released I went back to Venezuela to do a few years to live with my dad for a bit again and it did not even hit shops down there.

But would love to play some of the games. Jeremy Parish, who has similar tastes to myself, always says that despite the drawback of how you have to play them, many of the Virtual Boy games are actually quite good. Dying to play some of the ones he recommends.
 
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TheDok said:
They really missed an opportunity by not doing Virtual Boy VC on the freaking 3DS.
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I would have bought a 3DS literally just for this. As it turned out, I didn't get one until last year.

I just want to play some Teleroboxer legally but without having to bust out my VB. :(
 
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Phantoon said:
Wasn't powerful enough to do it, they'd have had to port it. The Virtual Boy was a surprisingly powerful bit of kit.
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Seems like at least one VB emulator for 3DS exists, though most of the videos I see of it seem slow or glitchy. But then, Nintendo didn't even consider regular 3DS good enough for SNES when there were poor-running ones for GBA and good-running ones for regular DS.
 
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The Virtual Boy controller is so weird with the double-pads rather than double-analog sticks, and actually is also quite underrated because those pads felt good. I'd love to get a replica.

Ah, for now I guess I have to settle for Jeremy Parrish's Virtual Boy Works book, but who knows? Nintendo acknowledged the Virtual Boy in LM3. Hope springs eternal that they'll go ahead and give us that VB goodness someday.
 
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Is the data from the 'gigaleak' still being slowly doled out? It'd be nice to see this make it onto the internet. It'll never happen legitimately, after all.
 
maebe said:
Is the data from the 'gigaleak' still being slowly doled out? It'd be nice to see this make it onto the internet. It'll never happen legitimately, after all.
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It could happen legitimately as we have seen with Star Fox 2. Though it would depend on if it actually exists or not & what state if it was real.
 
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maebe said:
Is the data from the 'gigaleak' still being slowly doled out? It'd be nice to see this make it onto the internet. It'll never happen legitimately, after all.
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Has seemingly stopped completely (for now). It is known there's still a hell of a lot of data shared privately, so honestly, it's a waiting game if anyone else will bother uploading this stuff or not.
 
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We all like to make fun of Virtual Boy, but is a severe blind (heh...) spot on Nintendo's catalog for many; Sure, there aren't many games on the system, but they should make them avaiable regardless of public perception on them, you know.. for preservation sake!

A NSO app would be great for sure, including the ability to change the colors from red to white or green, as some unofficial emulators usually offer; Not sure on LABO VR support tho, but certainly would be cool.
 
CyberWolfJV said:
A NSO app would be great for sure, including the ability to change the colors from red to white or green, as some unofficial emulators usually offer; Not sure on LABO VR support tho, but certainly would be cool.
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The games look great in greyscale as Jeremy Parish’s video series showed. Also helps cement the system as a successor to the Game Boy (which the sound chip definitely does).
 
If I'm remembering right, Intelligent Systems' game Dragon Hopper was also 100% finished. Would love if both these games surfaced eventually, one way or the other. Would love to play them!

Nintendo seems fine to show the Virtual Boy off for cameos in things like Warioware and Labo, but very reluctant to do anything with its game library. I'd love any kind of Virtual Boy NSO app, but who knows if or when Nintendo will ever rerelease any of the games from it.
 
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shoptroll said:
The games look great in greyscale as Jeremy Parish’s video series showed. Also helps cement the system as a successor to the Game Boy (which the sound chip definitely does).
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A lot (all?) of the games have black backgrounds too, so they’d look especially good in grey scale on the OLED Switch
CyberWolfJV said:
Not sure on LABO VR support tho, but certainly would be cool.
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Labo VR had VR Videos, one of which was a Virtual Boy “demonstration” of sorts, so there would be precedent! I could see them selling through their online store a plastic shell that recreated the Virtual Boy but with the Switch inside haha
 
There's multiple Virtual Boy games known to have been completed before the plug was pulled on the system, but before now there was never any confirmation that Zero Racers was finished too. Now we know for certain that it is sitting next to Bound High! and Dragon Hopper in the library of finished yet unreleased first-party Nintendo games.

At least none of those had merch released for them before cancellation like Virtual Bomberman did; now that's embarassing.

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If Nintendo ever made a NSO app for Virtual Boy games, even with their precedence of drip-feeding, I'd say they COULD just drop the entire system catalog, unreleased games included, at once;

Maybe Waterworld would be left behind since it's a movie licensed game, but I don't think even the few 3rd Party games are out of reach for a re-release like that.

A good way to just shadowdrop alongside another system, which they could keep the usual unregular release schedule.
 
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