Needle
09-23-2003, 10:50 PM
Hey folks. Living in San Francisco has its perks - one of the only confirmed locations of an F-Zero AX machine is right here in the city! I've been taking advantage of this fact lately and heading down to use the machine frequently. Using the AX machine I've unlocked everything (except for the Green Plant: Spiral course). Anyways, here's a look at the F-Zero AX License Card. There's very little information about these on the internet, so I wanted to make this post so I could catalog it somewhere. I realize that not many people have had an opportunity to play this arcade unit yet, but if anyone has any additional information, that would be great.
Here's my license card as it stands:
http://slurpee.satanic.com/images/fzero.jpg
Note: Image is not to scale. I've made it bigger so you can see all the fields.
So anyways, you pay a "one-time" fee of $1.00 to generate a license card from the machine. This is misleading, as a license card appears to only be valid the first 40 or 50 times you use it. I'm not sure what happens after you run out of races, because I haven't yet expired this card. :)
ID#: This is a unique number you can use to register for the Internet rankings. I can share it with you freely here because it does nothing by itself; the AX machine gives you a second password that you need to *write down* after you finish a time trial track. You need both the ID# and the password to register a time at the internet rankings.
Name: When you first make your license card, you choose your name. It's written here by the license card reader and used in all the rankings.
Pilot Rank: There are 18 different ranks you can get. You start with a "Shield" rank and then as you accumulate points on your license card, your rank goes up. Increasing your pilot rank is not too difficult - as you can see, I've already gotten what I believe is the top rank of "S".
Yellow Ships: I still haven't figured out what these are, but I'm suspicious that it is based on the number of ships you've destroyed, in total, since you got your license. Since your card keeps track of the total amount of ships you destroy, this would seem appropriate. As you can see, I'm not a very aggressive F-Zero pilot. :)
Track Rankings: You've got a list of all six AX tracks, and next to them are three symbols. The first represents the Grand Prix Mode, the second represents Time Trial Mode, and the third - well, I'm not sure what the third is, but if I could take a guess, it's probably versus mode. If you finish in first place on Grand Prix Mode or beat the predetermined target time in Time Trial Mode, your license card gets marked to show your accomplishment. As you can see, I'm doing fairly well.
Of note: my license card, in the upper right corner, has a red box that says "For Test Only". However, the AX unit I'm using does seem to be a legitimate American machine.
Here's my license card as it stands:
http://slurpee.satanic.com/images/fzero.jpg
Note: Image is not to scale. I've made it bigger so you can see all the fields.
So anyways, you pay a "one-time" fee of $1.00 to generate a license card from the machine. This is misleading, as a license card appears to only be valid the first 40 or 50 times you use it. I'm not sure what happens after you run out of races, because I haven't yet expired this card. :)
ID#: This is a unique number you can use to register for the Internet rankings. I can share it with you freely here because it does nothing by itself; the AX machine gives you a second password that you need to *write down* after you finish a time trial track. You need both the ID# and the password to register a time at the internet rankings.
Name: When you first make your license card, you choose your name. It's written here by the license card reader and used in all the rankings.
Pilot Rank: There are 18 different ranks you can get. You start with a "Shield" rank and then as you accumulate points on your license card, your rank goes up. Increasing your pilot rank is not too difficult - as you can see, I've already gotten what I believe is the top rank of "S".
Yellow Ships: I still haven't figured out what these are, but I'm suspicious that it is based on the number of ships you've destroyed, in total, since you got your license. Since your card keeps track of the total amount of ships you destroy, this would seem appropriate. As you can see, I'm not a very aggressive F-Zero pilot. :)
Track Rankings: You've got a list of all six AX tracks, and next to them are three symbols. The first represents the Grand Prix Mode, the second represents Time Trial Mode, and the third - well, I'm not sure what the third is, but if I could take a guess, it's probably versus mode. If you finish in first place on Grand Prix Mode or beat the predetermined target time in Time Trial Mode, your license card gets marked to show your accomplishment. As you can see, I'm doing fairly well.
Of note: my license card, in the upper right corner, has a red box that says "For Test Only". However, the AX unit I'm using does seem to be a legitimate American machine.