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Zero, a new F-Zero-inspired game, has just landed on the Nintendo Game Boy Color, giving players a pocket-sized alternative to the classic SNES racer.
Initially teased on social media back in August, Zero is the latest project from Shane McCafferty, the talented developer behind the Wolfenstein-esque first-person shooter Wolf for the portable console, and a Game Boy Color port of OutRun, among other projects.
At the time, McCafferty referred to early experiments as a "demo" and hinted that if he could make it move "fast enough" and find the "fun," then it could eventually become his next project. Luckily, since then, that seems to have been the case, with the developer putting together a "pretty straightforward" but technically impressive racer for the portable platform, which is available to buy for £1.99 (less than most people spend on a cup of coffee). It is composed of three cups — Bronze (easy), Silver (medium), and Gold (hard) — with each of these consisting of 3 tracks.
In order to progress, players will need to beat the previous cup's races to unlock the next level up, while carefully managing the game's main resource: power units.
At the start of each race, players are gifted 11 power units to start, which they'll need to manage while navigating the twists and turns of each course. They can spend three units to activate a speed boost, but should they be too zealous and run out, the vehicle will simply "crash and burn." Fortunately, there is a way for players to replenish their reserve: overtaking other vehicles (though this will only give them 1 unit at a time).
Speaking about how he pulled the "Mode 7" style presentation, he described it to Time Extension as "an old demo scene trick: "The road is made from 6 rows of pre-rendered tiles squished vertically (a little) using scan line interrupts." As he states, this is also used for the parallax horizon, with the developer joking, "Scan line interrupts are your best friend on Game Boy."
According to McCafferty, that wasn't the biggest challenge, however, in making an F-Zero-like game for the portable platform. Instead, the biggest challenge was making the game feel "fast, frantic, and tough", while remaining "fair".
"You can wave all the technical wands you like," he told us. "But it’s a game! So I spent just as long doing all I could to make it ‘feel’ as zippy as possible." Some of the techniques he lists include making the car bob up and down randomly, adding sparks to the car's undercarriage (similar to Ridge Racer), and implementing "long straights to give the player too long to think/realize he/she is only moving at 15 fps." The speed number on the HUD is also ridiculously large, giving those playing the sensation of going a lot faster than a normal vehicle. I was curious, given the nature of the game and the platform, whether there were any ideas scrapped, but according to McCafferty, things turned out pretty much as planned.
"Not especially," he told us. "I’d like more frames, but that’s life on the Game Boy! There was an idea to throw in a little Mario Kart-themed track when you won the game (it’s a hard game!), but I thought better of that."
Besides McCafferty, there are three other people credited on the project. This includes the musician sloopyghost, who (surprise, surprise) handled the music and SFX, Thalamus Digital's Andy Roberts (who served as a producer and publisher), and Jim Squires, who is listed among the special thanks.
Fancy giving it a go yourself? You can grab the game here for a couple of quid. Just bear in mind, it is designed first and foremost to be used with real hardware using a flash cart, or with the emulator mGBA.