Fast RMX (Nintendo Switch)
Fast RMX is the third instalment in the futuristic racing series with the previous instalments being on the Wii and Wii U. The games are digital download only which especially for the releases on previous systems is why not that many people have heard of them.
The game play is somewhere between Wipeout and F-Zero. It’s lightning fast with excellent graphics at 1080p docked, 720p hand held and a solid 60fps which is impressive now, let alone for a launch game on the Switch.
The controls cover everything you’d expect from this sub genre of racer with floaty ship controls, air breaks and turbos. Fast Remix adds its own impression to the genre with the addition of ship energy colour and power up zones. Tapping X whilst racing switches your craft between blue and yellow energy mode. The tracks are then laced with both blue and yellow boosts and jump pads. Hit them in the correct ship colour mode to get a boost, however hitting them with the wrong colour selected and you will be slowed down. This adds a really fun extra layer of strategy thats especially satisfying you hit string of rapidly changing pads perfectly!
The game has all the tracks from the previous Wii U game plug 6 new original tracks, and another 6 track which where added as free DLC after launch, bring the total number of track to 36 which can be raced in 3 different classes, each increasing in speed and difficult.
Aside from the games main championship mode, there is also your standard time attack and “hero mode” where your boost meter doubles as a life bar bringing the gameplay even closer in line with F-Zero. The game also offers up to 4 player local split screen multiplayer and up to 8 players online.
Everything about this game oozes quality and polish from the gameplay to the graphics to the frame rate so it shocks me more people don’t talk about to be honest. But then again I’d pretty much forgotten the game existed myself until digging way deep into my game library, as I mentioned earlier this was actually a launch game for the Switch, which may explain why it’s not on many peoples radar.
I understand the charm of the characters in F-Zero has a lot of appeal but if like me you are just craving the core F-Zero experience and your not aware of Fast RMX, you need to check this out asap! The game still sells for the launch price of £16.99 and I haven’t seen it show up in any sales which again might explain the lack of visibility of the game now, but I can’t stress how much it is worth the asking price if you like this genre.
And when Nintendo do decide to finally revive the F-Zero franchise they could do a lot worse than getting Fast RMX developer Shin'en Multimedia to produce the game for them, thats honestly how highly I regard this game!!