Welcome back to The Nintendo Report, where we’re taking a look at Nintendo’s intellectual properties and seeing how they’re doing. This time, we’re talking about the letter F, and while it doesn’t have a lot of big names under its belt, there’s still plenty to talk about. Let’s see how they’re doing in The Nintendo Report. 

F-1 Race

Let’s begin with F-1 Race. This is actually one of Nintendo’s oldest video game series, dating all the way back to 1984 in Japan. Its first entry was actually pretty darn impressive for its day, having been developed by HAL Laboratories and showing off a cool 3D effect that was far ahead of what competing platforms were doing at the time. 

Health rating: Basically dead

This series chugged along through the 90s on a couple of platforms. The Famicom Disk System got a pair of releases under the Famicom Grand Prix moniker, and here in North America, F-1 Race for Game Boy got itself a pretty hefty marketing blitz, coming packed with the Game Boy multiplayer adapter, and featuring some wacky congratulatory screens with various Nintendo characters from Donkey Kong to Pit from Kid Icarus. That was about it, though. Technically Nintendo published Paradigm’s F-1 World Grand Prix in some regions, but that game was entirely unrelated to the F-1 Race series. I think Nintendo might be done with this one. 

F-Zero

F-Zero was created as a showcase of the Super NES’s scaling and rotation Mode 7 capabilities, and boy was it a show stopper. F-Zero was a big hit for Nintendo, with its super cool comic book aesthetic and high octane racing. It’s a game about futuristic hovercraft zipping along improbably awesome tracks where the electrified walls threaten to kill you at any moment. It’s a blast, and has more than earned quite the fanbase. 

Health rating: Who knows?

It’s impossible to tell what Nintendo really thinks of F-Zero. There was a point where they were simultaneously cranking out F-Zero Game Boy Advance sequels while airing a genuine F-Zero anime series in both the US and Japan, but nowadays, the series is relatively quiet. There was just a new F-Zero game released, but it’s only mostly new. F-Zero 99 is a battle royale take on the origins SNES game. It’s super fun, but it’s also a take on the SNES game instead of a proper sequel. Nintendo clearly knows how much people love this brand, so it's certainly not properly dead, but who can really say what will happen next? 

Fire Emblem

LOL. Like there’s any question about Fire Emblem. It’s a strategy game series that got its start on the Famicom and has since ballooned to become one of Nintendo’s most prolific brands.

Health Rating: Perfectly healthy

I’m convinced Nintendo loves this brand more than anything else they own, and that includes Mario and Zelda. They are more than happy to crank out as many Fire Emblem games as they’re physically capable of doing without sacrificing quality. Pokemon, this is not. The latest Smash Bros. game featured an unreasonable number of Fire Emblem characters, too. Fire Emblem is as healthy as a video game property could possibly be. 

EverDrive-GBA X5 Mini (Retroscape - Black)

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This is the Retroscape - Black version of the EverDrive-GBA X5 Mini. This cartridge comes assembled in a black shell with a Retroscape style label.… read more

FlingSmash

FlingSmash comes to us from the Wii era, when Nintendo was trying to sell the world on motion controls. It’s a weird game where you use the then new Wii Motion Plus to smack this ball shaped dude named Zip around in an auto scrolling cross between Breakout and… well I don’t know. 

Health rating: Basically dead

Fling Smash came bundled with a new controller, and that wasn’t even enough to get it to catch on. Its arcade-style gameplay is an acquired taste for sure, and the voicework can be a bit grating, but it’s also really fun! It was developed by Artoon, who released The Last Story one year later and then got absorbed into its parent company AQ Interactive, which itself got absorbed into Marvelous Entertainment back in 2011. I’m fairly certain Nintendo still owns the brand, but I think it’s safe to say this one’s gone for good. 

Fluidity

Fluidity is a puzzle platformer about water. It got its start on WiiWare, and it garnered a decent amount of attention, at least by WiiWare standards. By moving the world around you, your water can navigate various mazes. You eventually gain the ability to turn into ice and vapor too. It’s kind of like Locoroco on PSP, except not nearly as weird. 

Health rating: Basically dead

Fluidity managed to get itself a sequel on 3DS called Fluidity: Spin Cycle, which tried to inject a little more personality into the experience, but ultimately didn’t lead to very strong sales. The game’s developer, Curve Studios, has taken on a few new forms over the years, and has done a wide array of stuff from PlaySattion’s game show series Buzz!, to the indie hit Thomas Was Alone. Still, it’s hard to imagine they’ll be traveling back to this well anytime soon. 

The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls

Kaeru no tame ni Kane wa Naru, translated to The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls, is a fascinating little Game Boy game that’s sadly never been officially localized into English. It shares a lot of DNA with The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, and some of its characters can even be found in that game. It tells the story of rival princes, one of which gets turned into a frog and has to try and rescue a princess. It’s a remarkably charming game that comes from the minds at Intelligent Systems. 

Health rating: Basically dead

Yes, this was just released on Nintendo Switch Online, the references to this game were retained fully in the Link’s Awakening remake a few years back, and there’s a pretty great assist trophy based on its characters in Smash Bros., but outside of that, this is a single Game Boy game that hasn’t seen any sort of actual followup since its release in 1992. Obviously with Nintendo you can never count anything out for sure, but unless it’s going to get some sort of fun new remake in the not too distant future, I can't imagine this series will ever make a proper comeback. 

Fossil Fighters

Fossil Fighters originally came out of Nintendo DS back in 2009, and was just one of many, and I do mean MANY, games that were looking to cash in on the Pokemon craze. The gimmick was that you’d find fossils and take them to a lab where you’d use the touch screen to awaken the Vivosaurs within, and train them for battle. So, Pokemon with a dinosaur twist! 

Health rating: Basically dead

Fossil Fighters never took off the way Pokemon did, but it managed to find enough of an audience to warrant not one but two sequels. Fossil Fighters: Frontier released on 3DS in 2014, and was the last entry the series ever saw. That was a decade ago, which makes me think it’s basically a fossil itself at this point, but as always, you never can tell! 

And that wraps up the letter F, and wow that was brutal. 5 out of 7 games are basically dead, with only Fire Emblem and F-Zero showing any signs of life. Well, Fire Emblem is showing WAY more than just signs, but I digress. Will we ever see the rest again? Who can say? But if we do, I’ll be there to give them a try!

Join us next time for the letter G, where we’ll get all ghostly, find some diamonds, and salute the sun.