Criterion Was Never Going to Produce an F-Zero Game, Founder Reveals

When it comes to forgotten franchises, F-Zero is one of the highest on the list of Nintendo products fans wish they had back. There once was hope during the Wii U generation, when rumors were that Criterion Games was working on a new F-Zero game. As it turns out, that was entirely false.

This revelation comes from Alex Ward, the developer's founder, in an interview with Game Informer last week. In it, host Ben Hanson asked for more details about the lost opportunity.

"Once and for all, Nintendo didn't come to Criterion and ask us to make F-Zero. Nothing of the sort at all. Complete false. "
. . .
Somebody quite junior in Nintendo in Europe, who isn't there anymore, sent me an email and said, Hey, some of us were talking. Some of us what does that mean? That could be the water cooler... just like, 'some of us, like Game Informer, were talking about games that we'd like to see come back. And we thought it'd be awesome, if we thought only you lot would be great to do F-Zero, wouldn't that be awesome?'

And this guy just sent me an email out of the blue, so then I take that email and I replied and said, Well, he must have maybe thought we were an independent company and we weren't. We were wholly owned by EA. One, we're owned by EA. Two, if you want to talk to EA and those companies have all those discussions all the time you have to contact this guy in EA and I gave him the email address. And that's it.

To say that this was a chance for the studio to make an F-Zero game is the same as when a group of friends says they're going to start a band. It was a tossed out idea that never went anywhere. If it was indeed a junior level staff member at Nintendo pushing out the idea, they might have been ignored by EA themselves. They may not have had the authority to formally initialize IP dealings, either.

While Criterion Games has proven themselves a skilled team for such a task (they made Need for Speed and Wipeout), Ward has expressed no interest in the idea, believing they would be the wrong team for the job. Unfortunate really, Nintendo is supposedly reviving an old, dead franchise, and we're hoping it would be F-Zero.