---------------- F-ZERO BEGINNINGS ---------------- by Alejandro -----------------------INDEX----------------------- 1. How to 2. What is FZB? 3. Story 4. Why Turbo Snails? 5. Car Physics 6. Known Issues 7. The Future of This Project 8. Credits 1. HOW TO----------------------------------------- Get Lunar IPS or FLIPS. Apply the "F-Zero Beginnings 0.1" patch to a US headerless F-Zero ROM (if you happen to have the wrong version, try a dump with CRC32:AA0E31DE). Back up your F-Zero ROM, just in case. 2. What is FZB?----------------------------------- F-Zero Beginnings is your good old F-Zero game, except this is supposed to be... A prequel! This ROM hack is more difficult than the original game, so prepare to endure a lot of crashing out. 3. Story------------------------------------------ Before the iconic main 4 (Captain Falcon, Dr. Stewart, Pico and Samurai Goroh) joined the Grand Prix (aka "The Story of Captain Falcon") There was a very few selection of cars. These cars were nothing more than Turbo Snails. Every racer had no choice but to pick one. The competition was tougher, as these cars were a lot harder to pilot unlike the cars of our protagonists of The Story of Captain Falcon. And thus, these events defined what F-Zero came to be, and now it's time for you to know what it feels like to drive one of these cars. F-Zero Beginnings takes place before the events of "The Story of Captain Falcon", which, as stated in the manual's "What is F-ZERO?" section, F-Zero happened not only once, but a lot of times before the main cast joined the Grand Prix. 4. Why Turbo Snails?------------------------------ Turbo Snails are those previously unnamed cars that appear as CPUs during Grand Prix. The F-Zero community gave them the name of "Turbo Snail" after a poll was made in which fans had to choose from a selection of names, and Turbo Snail won (See "Turbo snails sea species" for reference). 5. Car Physics------------------------------------ Turbo Snails are inferior to the main cars in most ways, such as worse acceleration, turning, power, and even S-Jet power! It will last half the original time. Yes, Turbo Snails are THAT bad. However, CPU speeds were adjusted to match Turbo Snails' custom stats to make it less difficult. Here is a summary of Turbo Snails' physics: Purple Turbo Snail: The way-to-go car for beginners. It is the most stable car out of the cast. With its overall good acceleration and turn speed, pilots will be able to overtake their rivals easily. Its resistance toward CPU crashes makes up for its low top speed. You wouldn't want to drive on electric damage areas for a long time though, as this car is very weak to that type of damage source. Green Turbo Snail: This car is suited for more experienced players. It has terrible acceleration and resistance toward CPU crashes, as well as not so good turning speed. It's also quite slippery. Despite this, it has the best top speed and acceleration speed past 400 km/h out of all cars, as well as quite slow deceleration rate when not on gas. Pilots should know that in order to control this car as intended, a lot of dodging and braking is not to be ignored. Practice mode is highly recommended to pilot this car the first time you get around to it. Brown Turbo Snail: This is the most popular one, probably. With its slow acceleration tied with its low top speed, this is certainly not the best to choose from. This is one of the weakest cars out of the cast, and honestly, there is not much to say about it, just give it a try or two. Explosive Turbo Snail: Identical to Brown Turbo Snail, except it has slightly less top speed and it explodes upon contact with any damage source. What could you expect? If you fancy a challenge, try beating all courses in Practice mode in a row without exploding. 6. Known Issues----------------------------------- a. Purple and Brown Turbo Snails have some "random pixels" at the sides when sharp turning. Brown also has some random pixels on the strafing animation. This is due to the vanilla game having these same random pixels which aren't as noticeable as here, since Blue Falcon and Golden Fox are slightly bigger. b. Explosive Snail not flashing. Since the flash animation is a special case, it would be needed more than I know to make it flash like the CPU cars. Unfortunately, Explosive Snail will just appear pink for this version. c. "POWER DOWN" alert repeatedly displaying when taking damage at low power levels, and disappearing entirely throrough the whole game after exploding as Explosive Snail until the game is resetted. d. Fire Field is impossible to beat in Master with Green Turbo Snail, as its acceleration is so poor, and the AI is way too fast in corners. e. White Land II's jump is insanely hard to pull off with Brown and Explosive Turbo Snails. This is the downside of these cars, as they are so bad they can't even make the jump in vanilla. However while difficult, it is entirely possible to build enough speed (about 325km/h) if you take the turns correctly. This issue is only present in the first lap of White Land II, as you will have access to S-Jets for the next laps. f. Brown and Explosive Turbo Snails cannot beat Expert/Master classes. I think this is pretty much self explanatory. They are so bad, cars overlap them all the time in the original game, just stick with Beginner/Standard for these. g. Title screen and Master ending demos not playing properly. Since car stats were modified, the pre-made inputs no longer match the new stats so Turbo Snails will just end up crashing. This however will not lead to worrysome glitches such as data loss or game corruption. h. Turbo Snail names not showing and wrong acceleration curves at the car selection screen. The car selection screen has a format in which there is little to no freedom of editing car names, so I just left them blank for this version. Acceleration curves are a similar deal. i. Thrusters don't match Turbo Snails' pipes. Setting them properly is a lot of work so I decided to release this version with Fire Stingray's pipe thruster offsets. All of these issues are taken into consideration for the next release(s), except issue f of course. 7. The Future of This Project--------------------- Since this is supposed to be a prequel, courses should be easier. As implied in the manual: In the past courses were easier, as time had passed, new hazards were constructed. Every course will be modified in a way to make an easier variant of that course. And since it will be possible to have 15+ courses in a single ROM, F-Zero Beginnings would eventually be compounded of 30 courses (the easy variants and the original courses). Furthermore, there will be a "Past" and a "Present" version of the Knight, Queen and King leagues. Additionally this means that the White Land II jump will be shorter in the past (easy) variant, so Brown and Explosive Turbo Snails will then be able to make the jump easier. 8. Credits---------------------------------------- Thanks to Porthor & MKDSmaster91 for being beta testers and Catador for helping me on which bytes to change, including the Explosive Snail's feature and all practice unlocked. Thanks for making this possible. Are you still reading? Well, I will tell you something... The credits screen has been edited too ;) (beat any league in Expert class).