F-Zero (エフゼロ, Efu Zero?, F-ZERO) is a futuristic racing video game developed and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). The game was released in Japan on November 21, 1990, in North America on August 13, 1991, and in Europe on June 4, 1992. The title was downloadable over the Nintendo Power peripheral in Japan and was also released as a demo onto the Nintendo Super System in 1991. F-Zero is the first game of the F-Zero series and was one of the two launch titles for the SNES in Japan, but was accompanied by additional initial titles in North America and Europe. In late 2006, F-Zero became available for the Virtual Console service on the Wii.

Players control fast hovercrafts and use their speed-boosting abilities to navigate through the courses as quickly as possible. The game takes place in the year 2560, where multi-billionaires with their lethargic lifestyles created a new form of entertainment based on the Formula-1 races called "F-Zero".

F-Zero is acknowledged by critics to be the game that set a high standard for the racing genre and the creation of the futuristic sub-genre. Critics lauded F-Zero for its fast and challenging gameplay, variety of tracks, and extensive use of the graphical mode called "Mode 7". This graphics-rendering technique was considered by critics to be a innovative technological achievement at the time that made racing games more realistic - first of which was F-Zero. As a result, the title reinvigorated the racing genre and inspired the future creation of numerous racing games. However, critics agreed that the game should have used a multiplayer mode.

Source: Wikipedia