F-Zero Anime… Almost

So, I’ve just recently been shown a trailer of this and I am most certainly not the only one who thought of F-Zero when watching it. Perhaps if one were to watch it from a funny angle one could pretend that the characters really are Falcon & co. But alas, this is probably as close as we’ll get to the real thing. But what if? What if Nintendo didn’t have a horrifying track record when it comes to bringing their IPs to the big screen? What if Nolan were to do Zelda movie? Michael Bay?

I have been made painfully aware that an actual F-Zero anime does in fact exist. Crazy world huh? I shall remain this post to live on as a sign of my everlasting shame and as a resource for obsolete Nintendo based cartoons. Oh and my wet dream of Nolan doing a Zelda movie of course…

Now I have made you think of Michael Bay doing a Zelda movie and / or Michael Bay doing anything ever again. I’m sorry about that. Looking past that however, one cannot deny that Nintendo’s past attempts at transferring their franchises into animated or even live action formats has been… flimsy, at best. Heck, most people never even heard of the oldest stuff since it was never released outside of Japan. Or even better, take a look at this video.

Yes folks, way before the Super Mario Super Show, there was an animated Saturday Morning series by the name of Donkey Kong featuring Super Mario. It’s honestly exactly how you’d expect it to be, i.e. not really worth watching unless you’re 9 years old. Next up, as seen in the video above, we’ve got the Japanese only 60 minute Mario feature cartoon falling into the same don’t-bother-with-it category.

And Super Mario isn’t the only franchise they tried this with – we are all aware of the Legend of Zelda cartoon. Most people here ought to remember the 3D Donkey Kong Country cartoon. That one was… well, pretty awesome actually, although that might just be my nostalgia goggles talking.

Regardless of that however it is pretty obvious that none of these really saw that much success and they definitely have not aged well, partially because Nintendo took all of their franchises into a radically different direction since then. Metroid is one franchise they didn’t attempt anything of this sort with unless you count the official manga, but given the gameplay and very scarce story details that were available at the time, Metroid could have hardly translated into a coherent show so it’s no surprise really.

What does come as a surprise, at least for me personally, is the lack of any F-Zero stuff. Here we have a sci-fi universe with dozens of colorful and interesting characters, each of which even has basic backstories, and nothing has ever been produced to accompany the games? Now that’s a crime against humanity if I ever saw one. As already stated, Red Line is probably the closest we’ll ever get to see an official F-Zero anime adaptation, and if you watch the anime the reason for that is very clear – it’s a rather mature show. Nintendo isn’t known for explicit violence or mature themes, although IMPLICITLY they are known for featuring quite a huge variety of very mature, even deranged stuff.

As bolded above, I’ve been made aware of a 51 episode long F-Zero GP Legends anime that was a tie-in with the game. I’m just gonna pretend that there was none, and my overwhelming wish for there to be one bent the fabric of time and space retconning history and producing one for my sake. Yeah, I think I’ll go with that.

Regardless, for all intent and purpose F-Zero as a franchise seems rather dead today. We haven’t heard anything about it in quite a few years and I’m personally not holding my breath at this point. Does that mean that we’ll never see a F-Zero movie / animated series? Most likely yes. Does that mean we can’t dream about one? Heck no! Now, Christopher Nolan, I heard you were nearly done with Batman…

Which Nintendo franchise would you like to see adopted for an animated / live action series or movie? Done by whom – Nolan, Cameron or maybe even David Fincher? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments.