Normally I'm not one to start up threads on game news posts you can find elsewhere, but this bit about F-Zero GX is too close to my heart to not make known here. Anyway, like the title states, it turns out that the guy who runs The Cutting Room Floor, a site dedicated to unearthing deleted or otherwise normally inaccessible content in games, has discovered that you can actually play the entirety of F-Zero AX, the Sega-developed arcade counterpart to GX, by inputting some AR codes into a copy of GX either via Dolphin or actual hardware, with the instructions on how to do so detailed on this page. Below is some video footage taken showing AX in action.

I don't know how many F-Zero fans are out there on this forum or really how many people care in general, but as someone who had the pleasure of playing one of the few North American arcade units for AX ever manufactured on several occasions, it personally excites me to know that the game has actually lived on right under our noses for all these years. Playing it on the GameCube might mean you don't get to experience the kickass chair with built-in hydraulics that moved you around as you played the game, but I'd say it's better than nothing for the chance to easily play one of my personal favorite arcade experiences again. While it's possible to now play Triforce hardware games in Dolphin, it's probably significantly more convenient all around that this works.

i have no affinity for F-zero, but I love stuff like this. cool.

Read about that earlier. That's great. Always wanted to try the Triforce arcade games, but I never got to.

As someone who spent countless hours in high school playing through F-Zero GX, that is some interesting stuff to have been unearthed all these years later.

I imagine it's a development history thing? Like GX was based in part on AX at some point in the development?

@video_game_king said:

Sega developed both GX and AX in tandem, yeah, and if you managed to find an AX cabinet and stuck your GameCube memory card in it, you could unlock courses and racers in GX without having to do it the hard way. So yeah, it's not like it was completely out of the question that something like that would sit around and it's not even the first time an entire Nintendo game has sat hidden inside another one (hell, a ROM with debug functions for Ocarina of Time was found in the Master Quest disk, of all places). It's just a pleasant surprise to see that it's not just traces of AX lying inside as everyone already knew.

I have GX around here, somewhere. I could probably get this to work.

This is actually really cool. So obviously they play the same, but what's the difference between GX and AX. Is it mostly just tracks?

And here is my bi-annual reminder that F-Zero GX is a super amazing game and I should probably rebuy it since my first copy was stolen. I really want to play it again.

This is insanity. I remember reading about F-Zero AX but I didn't know it was in every copy of F-Zero GX. That's so cool.

fuuuuuuck.

that's pretty cool.

@arbitrarywater said:

I believe AX has a different set of tracks and at least some exclusive F-Zero units. Like I was saying to VGK, you could unlock all of the exclusive tracks and units manually in GX even without tracking down an arcade unit if you were masochistic enough, but yeah, it's just neat that the whole bloody game is just sitting there in the ISO because Sega was like, "Screw it!"