Damn, it feels good to play F-Zero again.
I've said this before elsewhere, but I think the biggest mistake Nintendo makes with F-Zero is the idea that they have to do something new and revolutionary for a new game when, really, people who would play F-Zero just want more F-Zero. Give folks some new courses, new cars, maybe some new obstacles and a goofy-ass story and they're set.
There's really no need to dramatically re-invent the game, and, in fact, recent history suggests that could turn out terribly: Nintendo trying to dramatically change up Starfox with Zero more or less has mothballed that series. But then again, BotW was a huge departure, too, and that was a massive success. shrug I dunno, Zelda seems like a series you can do more daring gameplay changes to and not turn fans off when compared to the likes of Starfox and F-Zero.
Mario Kart 8 has proven that a solid racing engine with a regular DLC schedule can do well, and while there's basically no way in hell F-Zero can even come close to Mario Kart sales numbers, I still think there's a strong and devoted audience there. Make a few Captain Falcon memes to bring the Smash kiddos onboard and they should be set.
I think people misinterpret the statement around F-Zero and innovation—I think it's less "this series needs to evolve into something novel in order to survive" and more "we kept giving you real-ass F-Zero games and y'all stopped buying them"
do I think a new, not-retro F-Zero would sell? potentially, yeah, just because the hype around finally getting a new one would do a lot of heavy lifting, but it's also not hard to understand why it's been sitting dormant for so long: they tried to broaden the audience with an anime, which tanked; they tried bringing in new players with handheld games, which didn't go over very well and were written off by many as irrelevant relics; their last console game was a graphical and design showpiece with a ton of character-based content, developed by one of the titans of arcade racing games and yet it barely moved the needle; and their consoles that followed were the Wii and Wii U which by design ran contrary to what one would want from an authentic F-Zero game
