F-Zero 99 will get more tracks soon, new modes may follow

Nintendo has said F-Zero 99 will be getting more tracks in the near future, while dataminers have uncovered new modes in the game’s code.

The massively multiplayer racing game was a surprise release on Switch last week, and is available for all Nintendo Switch Online members to play.

At launch the game only has seven tracks from the original F-Zero, but Nintendo’s Japanese website points out that more tracks will be added soon.

Specifically, the first batch of new tracks will arrive in late September and will mainly consist of tracks from the original game’s Queen League, while the second batch will arrive in mid-October and will mainly consist of King League tracks.

However, as reported by Nintendo Life, dataminer OatmealDome has also discovered new modes that aren’t yet in the game.

The first of these is Arcade Mode, which they say adds a timer and places ‘time gates’ on each track. Speculating, OatmealDome says this mode may involve continually passing through gates to refill the timer, with the last player alive winning.

They also note the presence of a mode called Survival, but point out that there isn’t much data to accompany it other than a model of a flat square with a circle in it.

Another dataminer, LuigiBlood, has found a list of unused track names including one called Forest, which may be named after a track from BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2, an F-Zero sequel only released in Japan for the Satellaview network device.

However, LuigiBlood stresses that this is no guarantee extra tracks beyond those in the original F-Zero will be coming to the game, and that these names may have been placeholders for planned content that was abandoned during development.

Last week Takaya Imamura, the former Nintendo artist who created the characters and vehicles in F-Zero, thanked Nintendo for bringing the series back.

Imamura took to Twitter to express his happiness at seeing the series’ return, posting a photo of a happy Captain Falcon with the message “thank you Nintendo”.