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How we long for an update to Nintendo's F-Zero, so untapped, so overdue. The most recent major update to the futuristic racing series launched 12 years ago. It was an ambitious and, in terms of velocity, still unrivalled collaboration between the company's star designer Shigeru Miyamoto and Sega's Toshihiro Nagoshi, thoroughbred creator of racing benchmarks Virtua Racing and Daytona USA. In F-Zero GX, the rival companies came together for the first time: Nintendo's talent for character and sheen fused with Sega's natural genius at high speed. It remains a classic. Time has passed, expectations have mounted but there remain only rumours. In the series' parlance, F-Zero has been 'retired'.Shin'en, a German developer in Japanese clothing, has refused to accept this verdict. Fast Racing Neo may have a terrible title but, as a slickly quick tribute to the absent racer, it's a welcome and competent substitute. This is not so much a cut-price F-Zero as a hyper-trimmed homage. Almost all extraneous elements have been discarded (presumably for budgetary reasons). Yet, on the track, there has been minimal skimping. There are only ten competitors, compared to F-Zero GX's ludicrous thirty, but in terms of snap-neck speed, vertiginous and varied tracks that demand to be sight-read at prestissimo pace, and fortunes that can turn on a single ill-timed boost, Fast Racing Neo makes for a pleasing cover version.
It's not all copy-and-paste design. Neo's principal novelty borrows from an unlikely source: the shade-switching arcade shoot-'em-up, Ikaruga. As in Treasure's classic, your craft has two colour schemes that can be flipped between with a single button press. Each track is painted with intermittent colour strips, either throbbing blue or pulsing orange, which match the dual colours of your ship. Travel over the strip while decked in the corresponding livery and you earn a screen-smearing boost. Hit the strip while wearing the opposite colour and you'll slow to a flow-puncturing crawl.
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