By: Frank Hu
Recently, a fan of Nintendo said he spent $40,000 to buy Nintendo stocks in order to join the annual shareholder meeting. That gives him the opportunity to ask the president of the Japanese video game creator about his favorite game, “F-zero”, directly.
This man sold his stocks of other companies to make this purchase. Nintendo requires a holding of at least 100 stocks to join the shareholder meeting. So, the man bought 100 stocks at a price of 400 dollars each. The investor wanted to remain anonymous and is known simply through his Twitter account handle: Momiji. He describes himself as an “unconditional fan”.
On the meeting on Wednesday, the man wanted to ask about “F-zero”, his favorite game.
In 1990, the first “F-zero” was released on the Nintendo SFC Gaming platform. It is the first game to use The Model 7, a technique for creating 3D visual effects in 2D graphics. “F-zero” was rated by IGN as the fastest and smoothest racing game of that year, and thus influenced many later works.
But sadly, since 2004, Nintendo has stopped developing the “F-zero” series, and players are to play on the older machines.
Will it ever come back? In the past few years when many old games have been revived frequently, can this once popular work find a chance to turn around? That’s the question that all “F-zero” fans want to ask Nintendo.
When thee anonymous investor asked Nintendo President Shotaro Furukawa about the sequel to the “F-zero” series, he received a long response from the president who was kind and sincere. However, the answer was essentially: Thanks for your question, but we have no plan.
As early as a shareholder meeting in 2019, Nintendo was asked if there were plans to remake the “Famicom Detective Club” series, and since the game sequel happened to be in Nintendo’s plan, and the questioner got a satisfactory answer.
Momiji was apparently not so lucky as to get an official affirmative answer. But he received thanks from “F-zero” fans from all over the world, and soon after, the shareholder added a message to his dense account description: This is the person who asked for the launch of the new “F-Zero” game at the 82nd Nintendo shareholder meeting.