F-Zero was inspired by movies like Back to the Future 2 & Batman

F-Zero was an extremely unique racer when it appeared on the scene back in November 1990 on the Super Nintendo. One of the many things going for the game was its unique theme and art style which according to Takaya Imamura was inspired by a number of movies at the time which both he and director Kazunobu Shimizu bonded over, such as Back to the Future Part Two and Batman. Both of these were huge movies at the time and the Batmobile was especially cool.

Since before release, the new device (Super Famicom / SNES) rose to the level of a social phenomenon, didn’t it?

Imamura: At that time, magazines like Famimaga had articles that said things like “This is the future!” and “The screen’s rotating function is amazing!”. Because the internet was still not popular and the state of information was truly not there, I was deeply surprised when I saw a screen working during development.

And then, this lead to F-Zero, the first game you worked on?

Imamura: That is correct. The tastes of the director Kazunobu Shimizu and myself matched, the movies “Back to the Future Part Two” and “Batman” (Tim Burton) were being screened at the time, and there was a lot of talk about it by both the public and between the two of us.

The former had a flying DeLorean time machine, but the latter had the amazing Batmobile which was gaining popularity.

Imamura: The Batmobile was particularly cool. We were also strongly influenced by that point and I think the director wanted to do that in a game. I feel the director created the base world and I added the characters and designs.

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Thanks to Greatsong1 for sending in the news tip!

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