FAST is a series of futuristic racing game series developed by German developer Shin'en Multimedia. The series is often regarded as a spiritual successor to Nintendo's own F-Zero franchise, and just like the developer's other titles, known for their high graphical fidelity and technical performance that seemingly push Nintendo's hardware to its limits.
The series' signature mechanic is the ability to "phase shift" or change the color of your vehicle (from white to black in Racing League, orange to blue in NEO, RMX and Fusion), which is used in conjunction with the track itself. When the phase of your vehicle matches the phase of the track below it, bonuses such as boosts and jumps are granted while being in the opposite phase will slow your pace or even send you careening to destruction.
The FAST series consists of the following entries:
- FAST Racing League (2011, WiiWare)
- FAST Racing NEO (2015, Wii U)
- FAST RMX (2017, Nintendo Switch — Updated Re-release of Neo)
- FAST Fusion (2025; Nintendo Switch 2)
FAST provides examples of:
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As a whole
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying by falling off the course or hitting an obstacle only sets you back a few places, rather than making you forfeit the race as in F-Zero. Averted in League's Challenges and HD's Hero Mode, where blowing up fails you the run.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
- League uses Neutron (easiest), Proton, and Ion (hardest).
- NEO, RMX and Fusion use Subsonic (easiest), Supersonic, and Hypersonic (hardest).
- Nitro Boost: In all games, you can get a boost by matching the color of your car to that of highlighted portions of track (or at any time via button press, at the cost of energy).
- No Plot? No Problem!: Here's a bunch of machines that can travel at supersonic speeds made by some futuristic companies. Here's some cool futuristic tracks to race them on. That's about the extent of the plot.
- Numerical Hard: The A.I. hardly changes behavior on the higher Classes/Leagues, which simply change vehicle top speeds.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: Aside from the walls or other cars, hitting any obstacle on the course instantly destroys your car.
- Shared Universe: With one of the developer's other games, Nanostray, with a lot of locations and fictitious brand names taken from that series.
- Tech-Demo Game: Racing League and its relative minimalism helps cram the basics of a full-fledged 3D racing game into the 40 megabytes that WiiWare games are restricted to. Later installments built upon it to bring more graphical fidelity without sacrificing much in the way of disc space or load times, and at launch of their respective consoles.
Racing League
- Challenge Run: There are special courses where unique single-player objectives can be reached for.
- Gratuitous Japanese: The game, made by German company, has most of the opposing racers' names in Japanese, as are many league and course names.
- Sampling: The song "Little Floove" pulls a riff from the menu theme of Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing at around a minute in.
Racing NEO, RMX and Fusion
- Arrange Mode:
- Hero Mode is a lot like the standard race format, except your Boost meter now doubles as a Shield meter and can be refilled by driving over boost strips, collisions take away from your Boost/Shield meter with one at zero meter causing a crash, and unlike in other modes, a crash or going out-of-bounds ends the race in failure. The courses are also mirrored, forcing the player to break up their muscle memory.
- Super Hero Mode in Fusion makes jumping also cost energy.
- Artistic License – Space: The Kuiper Belt course appears to be set dangerously close to the Sun, already an example of this trope in and of itself, meaning that it cannot possibly be near the actual Kuiper belt,
the inner rim of which is at least 2.7 billion miles (or the distance from the Sun to Neptune) away. - Bilingual Bonus: Several course names:
- Sunahara Desert, Sunahara Plains, and Sunahara Valley: "Sunahara" (砂原) is "sandy plains" or "desert" in Japanese.
- Hibashira Speedway: "Hibashira" (火柱) is "fire pillar" in Japanese. The course takes place in Lethal Lava Land with pillars of lava erupting all over the place.
- Mori Park and Mori Icepark: "Mori" (森) is "forest" in Japanese. Both courses are set in a forest.
- CamelCase:
- RedWood Forest in Fusion is written out like this.
- A good chunk of the fused machines Fusion do this, with the second half of the name capitalized, not that it's quite clear in the menus.
- Cast from Hit Points: In Hero Mode, your boost meter starts out full and doubles as a shield meter.
- Coca-Pepsi, Inc.: How fused machines in Fusion are rendered, such as Zvarc Unlimited being a combination of Zvil Corp and Spaarc Unlimited.
- Comeback Mechanic: In a multiplayer race, you gain more boost meter per orb the further behind you are.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
- Courses are designed to be handled differently at different speeds, so what might work on a track on Subsonic might not on Hypersonic and vice versa.
- Hero Mode mirrors the courses, which coupled with the game not respawning you if you crash can quickly lead to a "Please try again!" for those who don't adapt quickly.
- Fusion ties jumping to a button, which means learning when to jump when needed, and not hitting the jump button when you want to boost.
- Fusion Dance: One of the new mechanics added to Fusion lets you combine two machines in the Fusion Shop, to get a machine that is a little bit of both, while taking both machines off of the list of selectable machine.
- Gusty Glade: The Haze has giant fans on straightaways with no rails, potentially sending you off-course if you don't adjust accordingly. They come back in RMX for Tepaneca Haze and in Fusion for Vanilla Haze.
- Hard Mode Perks: Hero Mode turns your Boost meter into a Boost / Shield meter, but not only do you start with a full meter, Hero Mode also allows you to recharge the meter by driving over boost strips and boost ramps (which provide a speed boost but not meter in other modes).
- Large-Ham Announcer: These two games have an especially enthusiastic announcer: the same one featured in F-Zero GX and F-Zero AX, no less!
- Lethal Lava Land: Hibashira Speedway is set over a sea of lava, and Nensho Crater is in a volcanic plain.
- Level in Reverse:
- All tracks in Hero Mode are laterally mirrored.
- Most of the Remix tracks in RMX copy the layout from other tracks but makes you race them backwards. Tepaneca Haze does this with The Haze, Sunahara Valley does it with Pyramid Valley, and Scorpio Mine does it with Willard Mine.
- Misbegotten Multiplayer Mode: The HD games have both local and online multiplayer modes, with RMX also allowing local wireless play. Unfortunately, online play has one glaring problem: There is no option to join a specific friend or to create a private lobby. Furthermore, RMX limits all online play to Subsonic League, not permitting players to play in Supersonic or Hypersonic Leagues.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: In Hero Mode, it's an instant failure if you crash at any point, and your boost is Cast from Hit Points. The AI opponents, on the other hand, won't die just from hitting something at zero energy and if they crash, they'll just respawn.
- New Neo City: The Neo Kyoto course.
- Orange/Blue Contrast: Orange and blue are the two boost phase colors used here.
- Remixed Level: The six DLC courses in RMX are mishmashes of existing RMX courses. As examples, Chuoko Habitat features Chuoko City's massive urban sprawl environment and music and Zenshou Habitat's instant-kill lasers, Tepaneca Haze combines Tepaneca Vale's nighttime setting and boost-jump pillars with The Haze's sky-high environments, music, and giant fans, and Cameron Raceway has Cameron Crest's lush green environments and music and Zvil Raceway's dangling roads.
- Sand Worm: The background of Scorpio Circuit features giant worms to complement the futuristic setting.
- Skill Gate Characters: Rochdale in NEO and RMX has excellent cornering and acceleration, making it good for beginners, but its middling boost and lackluster top speed allows faster machines like Bliss and Mueller to, in the right hands, leave it in the dust.
- Spell My Name with a "The": Of all the courses present, The Haze is the only one with a "The" in its name.
- Shifting Sand Land:
- The "Sunahara" courses, Sunahara Desert and Sunahara Plains, are set in the desert. Pyramid Valley is set around a pyramid in another desert. RMX has Sunahara Valley, which mixes elements of these courses.
- Vhale Valley in Fusion is set in a different desert, going for a desert highway vibe with whales swimming through the sand and leaping over the track.
- Updated Re-release: RMX features all content from NEO, including 6 new tracks and 6 new ships.
