Editing F-Zero (video game) (section)

==Development and releases==
''F-Zero'' was released alongside the SNES in Japan on November 21, 1990,<ref name="Nintendo Zapped Merica"/> in North America in August 1991,{{Efn|name=SNES official launch date|According to Stephen Kent's ''The Ultimate History of Video Games'', the official SNES launch date was September 9.{{Sfn|Kent|2001|p=432|ps=: "Nintendo set aside $25 million for marketing and prepared to release Super NES in the United States at a retail price of $199 on September 1, 1991. [...] That date was eventually changed to September 9, which would later become the launch date of Sony's PlayStation and Sega's Dreamcast as well."}} Newspaper and magazine articles from late 1991 report that the first shipments were in stores in some regions on August 23,<ref name="OC outlets"/><ref name="EGM 28"/> while it arrived in other regions at a later date.<ref name="Chicago date"/> Many modern online sources (circa 2005 and later) report mid-August.<ref name="Purple Reign"/><ref name="IGN date"/>}} and in Europe in 1992.<ref name="euro Allgame"/> Only it and ''[[Super Mario World]]'' were initially available for the Japanese launch.<ref name="Nintendo Zapped Merica"/> In North America, ''Super Mario World'' shipped with the console, and other initial games included ''F-Zero'', ''[[Pilotwings (video game)|Pilotwings]]'', ''[[SimCity (1989 video game)|SimCity]]'', and ''[[Gradius III]]''.<ref name="SNES lineup"/> The game was [[Game producer|produced]] by [[Shigeru Miyamoto]] and directed by Kazunobu Shimizu who also worked on art.<ref name="SNES Classic Interview" /> [[Takaya Imamura]], one of the art designers for the game, was surprised to be able to so freely design ''F-Zero''{{'}}s characters and courses as he wanted since it was his first game.<ref name="GCAC interview" /> Yasunari Nishida served as the main programmer. A total of nine people including three programmers worked [[wiktionary:in house|in house]] on ''F-Zero''. It was common practice for personnel to take on multiple roles for SNES game development.<ref name="SNES Classic Interview" />

[[Mode 7]] is a form of texture mapping available on the SNES which allows a [[raster graphics|raster graphical]] [[Plane (geometry)|plane]] to be rotated and scaled freely, simulating the appearance of [[3D computer graphics|3D]] environments<ref name="EGM 219"/> without processing any polygons.<ref name="ign review"/> The Mode 7 rendering applied in ''F-Zero'' consists of a single-layer which is scaled and rotated around the vehicle.<ref name="ign history"/> This [[2.5D|pseudo-3D]] capability of the SNES was designed to be represented by the game.<ref name="IGN Maximum Velocity preview"/> [[1UP.com]]'s Jeremy Parish stated that ''F-Zero'' and ''Pilotwings'' "existed almost entirely for the sake of showing [the system's pseudo-3D capabilities] off" as they outclassed the competition.<ref name="SNES lineup"/>

The game was downloadable over the [[Nintendo Power (cartridge)|Nintendo Power]] peripheral in Japan<ref name="Nintendo Power peripheral" /> and was also released as a demo onto the [[Nintendo Super System]] in 1991.<ref name="F-Zero Allgame" /><ref name="arcadeflyers" /><!--check Nintendo Power and Super System sources --> An ''F-Zero'' jazz album was released on March 25, 1992, in Japan by [[Tokuma Shoten|Tokuma Japan Communications]].<ref name=album/><ref name="GT"/> It features twelve songs from the game on a single disc composed by Yumiko Kanki and Naoto Ishida, and arranged by Robert Hill and Michiko Hill. The album also features Marc Russo (saxophones) of the [[Yellowjackets (band)|Yellowjackets]] and [[Robben Ford]] (electric guitar).<ref name="album"/> The game was re-released for the [[Virtual Console]] service on the [[Wii]] in late 2006,<ref name="Wii date"/> then on the [[Wii U]] in February 2013,{{Efn|name=Wii U official launch date|The game was available through the Wii U Virtual Console trial campaign in February 2013 before the Virtual Console's formal launch in April.<ref name="campaign"/>}} followed by its [[New Nintendo 3DS]] release in March 2016.<ref name="VC N3DS"/> Nintendo re-released ''F-Zero'' in September 2017 as part of the company's [[Super NES Classic Edition]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nintendo.com/super-nes-classic|title=Super NES Classic Edition|publisher=[[Nintendo of America, Inc.]]|date=September 29, 2017|access-date=September 11, 2017|archive-date=September 28, 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170928025849/https://www.nintendo.com/super-nes-classic|url-status=live}}</ref> It was also later included as one of the initial 20 SNES games for the [[Nintendo Classics]] service in September 2019.