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|                   Author: A I e x                                          |
|                   Began: January 27th, 2005                                |
|                   Completed: February 13th, 2005                           |
|                   Email: Segal & Copyright Section                         |

|                              Table of Contents                             |

that you're looking for.

        i - Mute City: Twist Road......................................(00011)
        ii - Casino Palace: Split Oval.................................(00012)
        iii - Sand Ocean: Surface Slide................................(00013)
        iv - Lightning: Loop Cross.....................................(00014)
        i - Big Blue: Drift Highway....................................(00021)
        ii - Port Town: Aero Dive......................................(00022)
        iii - Green Plant: Mobius Ring.................................(00023)
        iv - Port Town: Long Pipe......................................(00024)
        v - Mute City: Serial Gaps.....................................(00025)
        i - Fire Field: Cylinder Knot..................................(00031)
        ii - Green Plant: Intersection.................................(00032)
        iii - Casino Palace: Double Branches...........................(00033)
        iv - Lightning: Half Pipe......................................(00034)
        v - Big Blue: Ordeal...........................................(00035)
        i - Cosmo Terminal: Trident....................................(00041)
        ii - Sand Ocean: Lateral Shift.................................(00042)
        iii - Fire Field: Undulation...................................(00043)
        iv - Aeropolis: Dragon Slope...................................(00044)
        v - Phantom Road: Slim-line Slits..............................(00045)
        i - Aeropolis: Screw Drive.....................................(00051)
        ii - Outer Space: Meteor Stream................................(00052)
        iii - Port Town: Cylinder Wave.................................(00053)
        iv - Lightning: Thunder Road...................................(00054)
        v - Green Plant: Spiral........................................(00055)
        vi - Mute City: Sonic Oval.....................................(00056)
        ii - Goroh: The Vengeful Samurai...............................(00002)
        iii - High Stakes in Mute City.................................(00003)
        iv - Challenge of the Bloody Chain.............................(00004)
        vii - The F-ZERO Grand Prix....................................(00007)
        viii - Secrets of the Champion Belt............................(00008)
        ix - Finale: Enter the Creators................................(00009)

|                                  Techniques                        (00090) |
|  -----o------\                        Basic Techniques                     |

ACCELERATING ~ Accelerating is simple, just hold down that big A button on 
your controller to move forward, the longer you hold it then more you 
accelerate and eventually approach your vehicle's max speed.

TURNING ~ Turning is accomplished in two ways, the second isn't exactly 
"turning" per se.  Just push the analog stick either left or right to turn 
your vehicle left or right.  You can also strafe left and right with the two L 
and R trigger buttons, and use them in combination as well.

BRAKING ~ The purpose of braking is obviously to slow your vehicle down, 
braking is accomplished by press the little red B button.

BOOSTING ~ Boosting is available after the first lap of each race, you can 
press the Y button to get a burst of speed whenever you want at the expense of 
some of your energy, energy can be recharged on those purple panels.

SIDE CHECK ~ The side check is an attack used for the purpose of damaging and 
destroying your opponents.  To do the side check hold down the X button and 
then press left and right on the analog to attack in that direction.

SPIN ~ The spin is another type of attack that is executed by pressing the Z 
button, while you are spinning steer into opponents to damage them.

CAMERA ~ The camera can be manually changed and positioned to wherever you 
like by pressing either up or down on the D-pad during a race.
|  -----o------\                      Advanced Techniques                    |

DRIFTING ~ Drifting is a special way of turning that allows you to put your 
car in a slide so that you can position your nose in the direction you wish to 
move and then accelerate in that direction easier.  To drift you need to start 
going around a corner and then hold the L and R triggers together.

QUICK TURN ~ The quick turn is similar to using drifting to turn except works, 
well, quicker.  When coming up to an extremely sharp turn, or any turn really, 
tap the trigger button of the opposite direction you want to go, and then hold 
the correct trigger button.  Say for example you wanted to turn left, as you 
come up to the corner tap the R trigger and then jam down the L trigger and 
hold left on the analog stick.

SPEED SAVE ~ THe physics in this game allow you to let go of the accelerator 
in order to lower the amount of speed you lose when you have recently boosted 
or done something to increase you speed by a large amount.  This doesn't work 
well in practice letting go of the accelerator after every time you boost, but 
you'll notice a very effective use for it in a course like Port Town: Aero 
Dive when you've come out of the large drop going down the platform.

EXTRA BOOST ~ In this game you should always aim for the very edge of the 
booster panels and not the middle, try it for yourself on a course where it's 
easy to aim it at the start like Outer Space: Meteor Stream, hit the booster 
panel on the edge rather than the middle and you'll get kind of a double 
boost, you'll even hear a different sound when you do this.

SHIFT BOOST ~ A shift boost is obtained when you have temporarily left the 
track for a split second, when you come back on and your vehicle gets a little 
jolt you will hear a swooshing noise and get a buurst of speed as if you 
boosted yourself.  Chech the Trident and Lateral Shift section for more info.

MTS (Momentum Turbo Slide) ~ One of the most advanced and useful special 
techniques you can find.  This technique allows you to build up incredible 
amounts of speed on corners, you will drift around but your speed will 
increase from 1100 on a normal car to more than 2300 or more.  To perform this 
incredible trick what you need to do is similar to a quick turn except 
opposite.  Say you are approaching a right turn, as you come up to it tap the 
R trigger, then let go and hold right on the analog stick, hold the L trigger 
(yes opposite the direction you're moving) and let go of the accelerator 
completely.  When done correctly (and it's very easy once you get the hang of 
it) you'll get a huge speed boost on corners.  If you wish to try this, the 
Quick Cannon G4 is the best ship in the game for it.

SUICIDE FINISH ~ There's no special technique you need to use besides killing 
yourself here.  If you slam into a wall at high speeds when you have no health 
left, you will bounce off at an exponentially higher speed than when you hit.  
If you can set it up so that you bounce off in the direction of the finish 
line, it still counts and crossing even if you're way up in the sky.

SNAKING ~ The most exploited technique in the entire game, and I've never 
successfully done it in my life, I tried once but it made my hands hurt.  
Basically what you do is get an extremely heavy ship with an A rating for 
grip, and set it to full acceleration.  No other settings will do.  Now as you 
start moving and get faster, start quickly tapping left and L, then right and 
R over and over again so you're kind of "snaking" back and forth on the track.  
People who can perform this well can double, triple, quadruple whatever they 
want, to their max speed.  With this technique, times in the range of 30 
seconds on the first track can be seen, that should give you an idea of how 
powerful it can be.  None of this guide utilizes the technique, every last bit 
of this game can be beaten without it, even without MTS.

|                                Introduction                        (000A0) |

Here is how everything is set up.  For each course there will be a basic 
racing strategy, usually applicable to the Grand Prix if you're just trying to 
win.  Then there will be a special strategy for trying to beat the various 
staff ghosts in the game.  Staff ghosts are unlocked by coming within ten 
seconds of their time in the time trial mode, then bought from the shop and 
loaded by pressing Y in the courses selection screen, from there you can press 
X to turn them on.  Finally there is a special time trial strategy for those 
who want to try and get the best possible time possible using any means 
necessary, with the exception of snaking and spaceflying.

|                                  Ruby Cup                          (00010) |
|  -----o------\                    Mute City: Twist Road                    |

BASIC ~ Ah yes, the most basic of the Grand Prix courses in the game.  Anyone 
who has put any time at all into this game should be quite familiar with this 
course.  I recommend the Acro Lynx G4 for this course, basically the most 
balanced car in the game.  Refer to the custom racer section for how to build 
it, you should have it in your garage at all times.  Set the car to max speed 
and get ready to race.  As you start out slide to the right side of the track 
and hug the wall coming out of the turn.  Slowly glide toward the middle where 
you will see a boost panel in front of you.  Start drifting to the right JUST 
before you make contact with the panel and then jab the R trigger to put most 
of your momentum into the turn.  As you approach the wall start tapping the R 
trigger to keep from actually hitting the wall then straighten yourself out 
around the centre of the track to hit the next boost panel.  As you go over 
the little drop you can jam up on the analog and then quickly back down to 
reduce the amount of time you are in the air.  Navigate around the long left 
turn just using the analog stick to keep yourself steady and glide over to the 
other side for the right turn.  As you come out of this do your best to stay 
in the middle but just slightly on the side so that you can hit the very edge 
of the boost panels, if you don't know why you want to do this check out the 
advanced technique section elsewhere in this guide.  Assuming you are using 
the Acro Lynx G4 you can probably net around 1:00:00 or so on a good run.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 00:59:964) Unfortunately the game starts you out 
against one of the hardest staff ghosts, the difficulty of this ghost is not 
representitave of all the ghosts, but he certainly isn't the hardest either.  
Definitely in the top five though.  As you may have read on the previous 
section a time of around 1:00:00 is expected with a good run of the Acro Lynx 
G4, so this is still my recommended vehicle for the staff ghost.  It will be 
difficult to try and give tactics for this without just saying to take the 
basic guide and follow it word for word.  Basically you must hug every single 
corner, and I know how dangerous this is at some of those speeds.  With the 
exception of the first boost panel on the large right turn you must cut the 
corner of each panel trying to get that double boost.  The weak spot of the 
staff ghost is the S turn during the recharge panel, I find that using the 
Acro Lynx I can always catch up a fair bit at this point, possibly because of 
hitting a double boost on the panel, or maybe because of the nose dive off the 
edge (if you do a nose dive be sure to pull up before hitting the ground to 
avoid slowing down.)  Hitting the edge of the two boost panels approaching the 
finish is one of the most important things you can do, and never stop slamming 
the boost button once you can.  On the second lap the staff ghost doesn't even 
hit the first boost panel since it's so out of the way, you may want to do the 
same, just boost yourself and stay on the inside lane.  By the third lap 
you'll probably be running low on boost and you'll have no choice but to hit 
it.  I'm sure you can easily conquer this ghost using the techniques in the 
time trial section, but for those who want to do it the old fashioned way all 
I can offer is my word that I have done it, without using any advance tactics 
besides the edge of the boost panels, with the Acro Lynx G4.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 00:55:041) Welcome to the first of many time 
trial I'll cover during each course, for more information on exactly what this 
section is about see the intro header to this whole section just above.  Now 
lets get into it, for this course I would use no other car besides the Quick 
Cannon G4.  Since the thing is almost useless in terms of analog steering you 
had better be good at handling turning with the L and R triggers because 
that's mostly what you're going to be doing.  Go all the way to max speed and 
start the race.  At the beginning use the R trigger to hug the left wall but 
you'll need to be a lot more careful than with other cars if you're using the 
Quick Cannon, since as the name implies it is quick to respond and has those 
huge wings which always threaten to knock against the wall.  Coming out of the 
turn aim yourself at the boost panel dead on, then just before you're about to 
hit it start MTSing to the right and nail it as you slide.  Coming out of the 
turn you should be in the middle of the path ready to hit the next boost 
panel.  When you come off the drop just drive straight for a couple seconds 
then start to MTS to the left, now is a good opportunity to utilize the MTRS 
technique if you're good at it, I myself am not and often find it only slows 
me down but many people are able to MTS around this corner and begin grinding 
the left rail for a big boost in speed.  Come out of the turn and aim yourself 
toward the right wall, starting your MTS almost immediately to send you around 
the corner.  From here just go straight to the finish line.  On lap two you'll 
want to boost right off the bat and MTS around the first corner.  Do the same 
for the second corner, the boost paenl here is really iffy.  I find it helps 
if I am able to aim a turbo slide and actually hit it, but considering how 
early you should start this turn it's far too random and I prefer to stay as 
close to the inside lane opting not to hit this panel.  Drop off and boost 
around the S turn while using the momentum turbo slide.  If you have trouble 
with anything on this course it will probably be here, it took me forever to 
master MTSing around this S shaped turn.  Another thing to note is that you 
may actually want to try and avoid refilling your energy all the way, the 
reason for this will become clear in a second.  Coming around the final turn 
hit the first of the two boost panels and then wait approximately one second, 
now this is up to you but here it is possible to get a good suicide finish in 
and shave about one second off your total time.  If you've got a good run I 
would not recommend doing this, it's mostly for people who have mastered the 
course and are looking for any possible way to improve their time.  Instead 
what I recommend is hitting both boosts and waiting until the finish line 
comes into view.  Aim yourself a little to the left and then slam into an MTS 
so that you slide over the finish line.  Do this wrong and you'll nail the 
right wall coming to a dead stop, so it takes practice to judge when the exact 
time you should start the slide comes up.
|  -----o------\                  Casino Palace: Split Oval                  |

BASIC ~ This is one of the few courses where I don't recommend the Acro Lynx 
G4 even just for basic play.  If you need a car for the Grand Prix it will 
still work perfectly fine, but even beginners can get more out of this course 
with the Combat Planet-Z.  There is one danger but I'll make sure to cover it 
so that there's very little risk involved.  This course is made up entirely of 
boost panels and involves very little actual strategy, the strategy itself 
comes in the form of choosing which panels to hit and which of the two 
branches to take.  Starting off go straight ahead and hit the middle panel and 
then the one just ahead of it.  In front of you are two boost panels on on the 
right and one further away on the left.  Ignore the one on the right and glide 
over to the left wall so you hit the boost panel coming out of the slight 
turn.  Once you hit the panel don't keep turning just let yourself go in the 
straight toward the other side of the track where you should hit the right 
panel and then quickly jab the L trigger to hit the panel in the middle.  
There's two more boosts leading up to the fork.  Using this method you will 
miss two of the panels but it is certainly the one that maximizes safeness and 
speed, trying to hit them all is very dangerous.  When you come to the fork 
take the right path.  Stay on the right side of this thin path to hit the 
first boost, then the next one comes on the left side.  You have adequate time 
to hit this one but after you do you must quickly jab the R trigger to hit the 
next two on the right side in time.  Don't hold it down, try tapping ebcause 
you seriously risk hitting the wall at this speed.  Beyond these two boosts 
are two more, one on the right and one further down on the left.  Hit the one 
on the right but avoid the one on the left that comes just as you reach the 
peak of the hill, even if it is easy to hit you must avoid it on purpose.  The 
reason for this is using this particular car and similar heavy ones they get 
so much power from the boost panels and hitting that last boost at the tip of 
the hill risks lifting you off the track completely and sending you into the 
oblivion.  On the next lap hit the same set of panels but take the left branch 
at the fork to recharge your boost.  Keep boosting over the recharge panel but 
them this time avoid BOTH of the boosts on the way to the top of the hill.  
You can manually boost all you want but hitting either of them while boosting 
yourself will more than likely flip you over the edge.  During the last lap 
you might want to go back ot the right branch since you won't really need to 
charge up for the next lap since you're on the final one.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 00:56:691) Use the same set of boost panels as 
outlined in the basic strategy, it still works here.  Remain using the Combat 
Planet-Z, the speed of this machine works well in your favour to beating this 
guy.  The main problem comes when beating the staff ghost is this, you want to 
go faster so you'll want to try and cut the edge of the boost panels, however 
doing this increases your risk of flying off the hill at the end by about ten 
million percent.  So what you want to do is this, hit the edge of the boost 
panels all the way up to the ones two in a row at the end of the right fork.  
Now skip over the boost panel on the way up the hill on your right and hit the 
one on the left right about the centre to minimize your lift, this should give 
you the most amount of speed with the least amount of risk.  On laps two and 
three take the left fork both times and boost sparingly as you go toward the 
hill, maybe even laying off a bit so you can hit one or both of the panels but 
not so much that the staff ghost is able to catch up with you.  This is 
another one of those courses where the staff ghost is quite hard and you may 
want to experiment with some other vehicles if you find this one to be too 
dangerous.  There is however a way to use this danger to your advantage and if 
you aren't against a using a nice little trick I suggest checking out the time 
trial section for a surefire way to take this ghost down.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 00:49:791) You can pretty much forget everything 
I've been saying about taking care not to be too dangerous here, you now have 
free reign to be as dangerous as you want because we're going to take that 
frustrating off course launching hill and turn it into a huge advantage.  Now 
this takes some serious practice and you can't expect to master it on the 
first try, or even the tenth try.  Here's the idea, to get the best time on 
this course you don't have to change much, accept the fact that you probably 
aren't going to be able to hit all of the boost panels unless you are REALLY 
proficient with the L and R triggers, and even then you risk losing a lot of 
speed sliding from side to side.  When you approach the fork take the right 
a=path and build up as much speed as possible.  Going up the hill stay to the 
right and hit the boost, keep staying to the right and you should see your 
machine starting to shake, this indicates it's probably about to fly off the 
track.  Here's what takes a lot of practice, you need to gauge exactly when 
the machine is going to left off and then slam the L trigger down and hold it 
the instant BEFORE the machine actually lifts.  Done right you will always go 
airborne and start gliding along in the air, there are pretty much two 
contingencies for this (besides completely screwing up of course.)  Either you 
will fly sharp or fly wide and this depends on whether you timing was good 
with the L trigger or not.  A wide shot will always send you gliding off the 
course completely but done right you will always glide on a nice angle toward 
the track again just in front of the finish line.  This is not a technique to 
cut half the course off, in fact it doesn't cut off the course at all, the 
simple fact is that this gets you moving so fast that when you land you will 
actually be one to two seconds further ahead than someone who just took the 
corner on ground.  Try to get this on every lap and you may find that you can 
get some amazing times and completely obliterate the staff ghost (my time used 
the Combat Planet-Z with this technique, seven seconds faster than the ghost!)
|  -----o------\                  Sand Ocean: Surface Slide                  |

BASIC ~ The Acro Lynx G4 is just prime for this course.  Go for max speed and 
take it to the field.  When you start off cut the corner of the boost panel 
and hold right up to the left wall as much as you can, the Acro Lynx has great 
control so you can probably get really close without having to worry about 
hitting the wall.  Nail the boost panel in the centre before going flying off 
the edge, do a nose dive and pull up before you hit.  This part is a little 
difficult so you may want to just avoid the nose dive for now, it doesn't help 
too much.  Stick to the right when you get into the enclosed area and just 
ride along the recharge panel.  When you come to the big right turn use the R 
trigger to hlep keep yourself against the wall, I'd advise against drifting it 
will probably only slow you down.  Now coming to the next turn get ready 
because it's difficult.  Use the quick turn, if you haven't checked the 
advanced techniques section it is performed by quickly tapping the L or R 
trigger opposite the way you want to turn, then holding the direction you do 
want to turn.  For example in the case as you come up to the turn which goes 
hard to the right, lap L and then jam down the R trigger to do a quick turn, 
while doing this tap R and hold L to make it around the bottom S curve.  Now 
stick to the right wall and glide around the corner.  You'll come to a section 
where the road is slanted, it's somewhat dangerous but get yourself to the 
highest part of the slant against the left wall and stay there all the way 
around, the curve angle won't change too much.  When it ends go down to the 
middle and then up on top of the sloped are again.  Ride this raised section 
around the bend and then head straight for the finish line.  Begin boosting 
right off on this lap, boost as much as you can because the reharge panel 
comes so close to the starting line.  After recharging you'll need to use 
boost sparingly because you crtainly won't have enough to go the whole race.  
I recommend saving it for the sloped sections while you're just turning 
lightly and going nuts as you approach the finish line.  Make sure you use it 
all a bit earlier in the third lap so that none is remaining and wasted when 
you finish the race.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 01:56:743) Compared to the previous two courses 
this staff ghost is a walk in the park.  You should easily be able to beat it 
by upwards of three seconds just using the Acro Lynx G4 and no special 
tehcniques.  Use the same strategy as above and be sure to save whatever boost 
you have in the second lap for the raised areas which is the weak point of the 
staff ghost.  It seems like the top speed of the Acro Lynx G4 is much better 
than the car the ghost is using, you'll find that on straight aways you start 
catching up at an alarming rate.  The most important thing really is to drift 
the S turn well, the staff ghost does it with incredible precision so if 
there's a point on the course where it's going to pass you that's the most 
likely area, so practice that turn especially at high speeds, drifting and 
boosting at the same time is difficult technique master, but important.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:45:485) Break out the Quick Cannon G4 again, 
your MTSing best friend.  Max speed of course.  I find that this course takes 
a lot of practice to play well with the Quick Cannon, but using MTS 
effectively you should be able to shave a good five to ten seconds off your 
best time.  Start out normally trying to stay as close to the left wall as 
possible.  When you get into the enclosed area use the huge right turn for 
your first major turbo slide.  While sliding and holding the L button you may 
have to regulate your angle with R.  What I mean by this is you'll probably 
end up turbo sliding toward the left wall, to avoid this start tapping R while 
still holding L during the turbo slide, you'll slow down a bit but avoid 
hitting the wall which is much more important.  Coming out of this you'll need 
to be ready, this is the first of the two reasons why getting a good time on 
this course is so hard.  You can use the L and R triggers to get a really fast 
turn here with the Quick Cannon, but you can get an even faster turn with MTS.  
The problem is that using MTS will only be a bit faster, and it's about a 
million times harder because you have to go from a right turbo slide to a left 
turbo slide almost instantaneously.  Takes some practice.  Further down you'll 
come to that sloping area with the huge left turn where the track is on an 
angle.  Get around the centre of this track and start MTSing to the left while 
controlling yourself by tapping the opposite trigger button, this will be the 
primary area where you really speed past other cars or the staff ghost if 
you're racing it.  Now the second reason why this course is so hard comes 
here.  This raised section makes it virtually impossible to MTS around this 
huge corner even though it looks so appealing.  You wil almost inevitably 
launch yourself into a wall if you falter control for even a second using the 
slope as a ramp... a ramp to your death.  Unless you can find an effective 
method, like maybe staying on the outer track (but that might be just as slow) 
then avoid MTS on the final corner and repeat the whole process fore the next 
two laps while boosting like crazy, try saving lots of boost for that final 
corner so you can at least get something out of it.
|  -----o------\                    Lightning: Loop Cross                    |

BASIC ~ Take the Acro Lynx G4 and go with max speed here.  The course is full 
of loops and twists but you should be able to handle it just fine.  Stay along 
the yellow line in the middle to nail all the boost panels along the way at 
the beginning.  Soon enough you'll see a patch of dirt on your left, this is 
your cue to get ready to drift.  When the path begins to curve tap the L and R 
trigger buttons and press right while tapping them, assuming all goes well you 
should have gone into a drift and now you can safely let go of the L and R 
buttons and keep drifting but just tapping the analog stick to the right to 
control yourself around the huge turn while drifting.  When you reach the top 
there's a fork there, take the left path to hit a boost and then the right 
path immediately after for another boost.  The path remains pretty uneventful 
for the next little while until you come to another turn, not the one in the 
enclosed area but the big almost 180 degree turn, use the quick turn technique 
to skim around the corner effectively.  Start boosting right away here but I 
don't think I need to tell you to lay off a bit as you approach the huge turn.  
Drift up it ignoring your boosting capabilities until you hit the top and then 
go nuts, take the right and then left paths to recharge your energy.  Boost on 
this straight away for a bit but save some for the last straightaway leading 
up to the finish line as well, same applies to the final lap.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 01:59:907) The Acro Lynx can conquer this ghost 
no problem, so don't worry about changing cars.  On straight paths your max 
speed will remain similar to the one on the previous course, and that's quite 
a bit faster than the staff ghost.  Someitmes in fact I find myself wondering 
exactly what he's doing back there, it really seems like you have to go out of 
your way to let him pass you.  In fact you can slam wall after wall and still 
win the race by over three seconds.  Basically it seems like he doesn't boost, 
or uses it all at once so if you save a fair bit of boost for the area 
approaching the finish line on the final lap you can probably catch up by 
almost two seconds.  The important thing is to take the huge turn at the start 
really well, like I previously mentioned drift into it and control your craft 
with the analog stick.  Not much else to say here.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 1:48:376) Lets whip out that Quick Cannon G4 and 
see what we can do shall we.  This craft is a beast at taking that first huge 
turn, but controlling it is an ordeal in of itself.  As you are MTSing around 
that huge turn you get going really fast but you have to correct your 
direction with the R trigger so much that you'll almost be holding as much as 
L.  Perhaps there may be a way to utilize the MTSR technique and really get 
some blazing speed but I've tried and it's certainly beyond my ability.  Going 
between the forks with the Quick Cannon G4 can be tricky considering the 
ship's wingspan so carefully position yourself with the L and R buttons and 
avoid using the analog stick here.  After hitting the two boosts there's a 
trick section coming up, you should MTS through this enclosed corner but the 
angle of it makes recovering out of the slide difficult, even more so because 
the ground on the other side isn't level, I recommend avoiding MTS here until 
you are really good at it.  Speaking of being really good at it you'll need to 
be to use it effectively at the sharp right turn coming up, the fact that the 
course isn't just turning but also bending upward makes seeing the track twice 
as hard and makes controlling twice as hard since you're moving up along with 
moving left.  Get into the slide early and stay as close to the inner wall as 
you can to avoid hitting a severe bend and launching into a wall.  FInally you 
can get a good bit of MTS in on the turn before the finish line but 
considering how much control precision it requires it's not really too worth 
it until you've practiced.  In fact the main sources of major speed boost and 
the huge long turn at the start, and the short hard curve near the end.  When 
you have the ability to boost it only makes your turns faster and harder to 
control so this course really represents one where a good time will only be 
obtainable once you've truly mastered the MTS technique.
|  -----o------\                     Aeropolis: Multiplex                    |

BASIC ~ And so we arrive at my favourite course in the game, the Aeropolis 
Multiplex.  Doubly so since I love the music as much as I love the course 
layout.  This is another course where I recommend dropping the Acro Lynx in 
favour of the Combat Planet-Z.  Get maximum speed and begin the race.  
Directly in front of you when you start is a boost panel, since you'll be 
going so slow at the time there's no excuse not to get the extra boost by 
scraping the edge.  There's also a jump here, and while this thing is great 
later on the first lap it only slows you down so instead of hitting the jump 
take the path to the left and use the boost panel to get ahead.  Stick to the 
left wall and you'll come around a light corner.  Now is when we see if you've 
really mastered the quick turn.  There are 90 degree turns here, two of them 
in fact.  As you approach tap the R trigger then jam the L trigger and hold it 
to quickly turn left then as soon as you do, do the opposite to quick turn 
right and you should be able to avoid the walls while still maintaining good 
speed.  Next comes a 180 degree turn which is simple as pie to get around, the 
quick turn works wonders here, quick turn left and you'll find more often than 
not you end up turning to much than not enough.  There's a boost panel and a 
hill in front of you, when you go airborne over the hill point your nose down 
and pull up just before hitting the centre of the path so you can nail the 
middle boost panel before going off the edge again.  On the first lap just 
worry about landing in the middle so you can hit the boost panels.  Past this 
regeneration area there's a rectangular looking 90 degree turn area, a lot of 
people have trouble with this bit it's quite simple and involves one use of 
the quick turn, not two.  Aim yourself on an angle so that you are moving 
slightly left, once you get into the little jut out area, do the quick turn to 
the right and you'll jerk yourself in that direction, directly in front of a 
boost panel in fact.  From here avoid the dirt paths on the ground and quick 
turn around the corner at the end.  Avoid the mines and quick turn right to 
find yourself at the beginning again.  Boost once past the finish line and 
nail the jump head on, before you even hit the jump hold up on the analog 
stick so you're diving while flying through the air.  Correct your position 
before landing and jam the L trigger so that your take the corner well.  From 
here do the same thing you have been doing except at the recharge panels, it's 
extremely hard to aim but try to land on the and remain charging as much 
energy even as they wave back and forth, difficult but not impossible.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:15:297) The staff ghost strategy is a mix 
between the basic strategy and the time trial strategy since the basic 
strategy covers a lot of important elements, and the time trial strategy 
doesn't utilize any advanced techniques since they are rather inneffective on 
this course.  The main idea is that your victory is pretty dependent on how 
well you are able to control your descent to the recharge panels and gather as 
much energy as possible during this time.  It is much more effective to dodge 
the dirt paths rather than boost over top of them even if it seems like you 
aren't losing speed you really are.  The most important things to consider 
when trying to beat the ghost (which is actually quite easy on this particular 
course) will be outlined in the time trial strategy just below this one.

TIME TRIAL (Personal Best: 02:00:906) As much as I wish that I could have, 
even being 15 seconds faster than the staff ghost I always wanted to go sub-
two minutes but I was never able to.  Oh well perhaps with this guidance 
you'll be able to accomplish what I wasn't.  Now there's two schools of 
thought on the subject, I'm 100% confident I can get below two minutes with 
the Combat Planet-Z but everyone and their dog seems to prefer the Fat Shark 
on this course.  The choice is up to you and the strategy remains virtually 
identical, of course if you don't have Fat Shark (unlocked by beating story 
chapter 4  on very hard) then the choice is pretty obvious.  Anyway here are 
the most important things to consider, the first lap is pretty uneventful and 
the basic strategy covers it nicely.  What the basic strategy didn't emphesive 
however is the importance of the landmines near the end of the course, there 
are two sets of three on the left side and the right side of the final stretch 
and if you want to get a decent time at all, what you need to do is aim 
yourself at the first landmine on your left.  This however is not enough, you 
need to aim yourself at it so that when you hit it the landmine will give you 
a burst of speed INTO the next landmine so basically you should be hitting two 
at once almost instantaneously after the other.  This will send you at a 
fantastic speed toward the wall so be ready to quick turn to the right 
immediately to correct yourself.  Now nail the jump at the beginning and 
follow the course to the 180 degree turn.  When you come around it here comes 
probably the most important speed and time determining factor on the entire 
course.  Similar to what I said in the basic strategy, which was when you go 
over the hill to dip your nose down and hit the boost panel that will send you 
over the edge of the drop.  Now however this is too much of a time waster for 
you, what you need to do is hit the edge of the boost panel leading up the 
hill maybe even with the help of some of your own boost and launch (I mean 
LAUNCH) off the ramp so much that you are still going to hold your nose down 
but you will completely clear the edge of the track and land directly on the 
recharge panel.  This means basically that you hit the jump and don't hit the 
ground again until you are right of the recharge panel.  Doing this sends you 
at an incredible speed and makes aiming your landing extremely difficult and 
controlling your craft along the recharge path even more difficult.  You MUST 
recharge to full or close to it since there is still so much track to cover so 
once you hit this jump and clear the edge of the track perfectly it's still 
only the start of the extremely difficult manoeuvre.  When you do this 
correctly though it looks absolutely amazing, flying off the ramp and landing 
perfectly only to zig zag along with the pattern of the recharge panel.  
Master this technique (which I can do, but not at any constant rate) and 
you'll see times in the 1:50's.

|                                Sapphire Cup                        (00020) |
|  -----o------\                   Big Blue: Drift Highway                   |

BASIC ~ The machine that I would recommend for this course is a slightly 
modified Acro Lynx G4, the Combat Horse Z.  The Combat Horse Z uses the same 
frame as the Acro Lynx, but changes the engire to the Triple -Z and the 
cockpit to the Combat Cannon.  The engine change really isn't that necessary, 
in fact you may want to stick to the G4 for the Combat Cannon cockpit is quite 
important and you'll see why soon.  Set it to max speed and start it up.  This 
is actually quite a straightforward course with one brutal exception, but 
we'll get to that.  Start the race by staying as close as possible to the 
right wall and then straighten out your vehicle toward the centre.  Coming up 
is a boost panel, you'll want to make sure you hit it while in mid turn rather 
than head on to get the most momentum in the direction you will be moving.  On 
the next turn utilize the quick turn trick, the Combat Cannon cockpit should 
allow you to drift around this corner and cut it quite closely.  There's a 
boost panel ahead of you, try to cut it on the side and then dip your nose a 
little to gain speed at the drop.  Now here's what makes this simple course 
such a pain in the ass, coming up is one of the most difficult turns in the 
game, it's an S shaped turn that requires immediate and precise control to 
manoeuvre.  What you want to do is stay as close to the right wall as 
possible, as you come up to the left turn left left on the analog stick and 
the L trigger to begin taking the turn, the instant you know you're going to 
clear the wall in front of you then you need to jam right on the analog and 
press the R trigger to drift and cut the corner immediately, smashing into the 
far left wall is almost more common that hitting the actual turn itself.  Once 
you're clear of this you cut the three boost panels in a row in front of you 
and do a nose dive toward the finish, make sure to lift your nose up before 
hitting the ground though.  On the second lap start boosting right off, don't 
worry about saving any for later because you won't be boosting like mad coming 
up to the S turn.  When your damage alarm starts going off but you still have 
some boost left don't use it, for two reasons.  One because you'll need at 
least some health in case you hit the wall on the S turn, and second because 
coming out of that turn is a good time to boost.  Around the corner ignore the 
boost pads because recharging energy for the third lap is most important.  
What you want to do though, since you'll recharge to full before you reach the 
end is right when your energy maxes out hit the L or R trigger to nail the 
third boost panel before going over the edge, this will really help and give 
you some extra speed.  On the final lap only charge enough for a single boost 
to use before crossing the finish line and hit as many of those final three 
boost panels as you possibly can.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 01:07:331) - The Combat Horse Z can easily 
conquer this ghost, well maybe not easily but considering how much he leaves 
you in the dust at the start you'll be surprised at how easy it is to catch 
up, he probably put everything into acceleration.  A strategy for this ghost 
would be easy to outline in the simple phrase "Practice the S turn" and in 
essence that will make or break your victory, but it's not all of course.  The 
real weakness of this ghost comes on the straight-away after the large right 
turn leading up to the S turn, since the ghost is to heavily weighted toward 
acceleration you'll catch up quite quickly here especially if you're boosting.  
Stay as close to the walls on corners, without hitting them of course, to cut 
valuable second fractions off your time.  One thing you might want to try in 
the second lap is hitting the first and third boost panels near the end.  
Coming out of the S turn and approaching the corner hit the first boost panel 
straight on and use it to launch yourself into the recharge area before 
hitting the third as well before you exit to get some extra kick.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:02:753) Lets drop that Combat Horse Z and 
return to our Quick Cannon G4.  If you want to do even decent on this map it's 
going to take an insane amount of practice, MTSing these corners is just 
suicide 90% of the time.  On the first and second corners don't even bother, 
for the first angle you analog stick slightly go that your vehicle turns but 
not so much that it drifts, on the second corner aim yourself with the L and R 
triggers.  Now on the third turn is where MTS comes into play but may require 
some serious balancing with the other trigger just to be sure you don't hit 
the wall on such an extreme angle.  As for the S turn it's your one real 
benefit, the Quick Cannon G4 takes this turn absolutely beautifully just with 
the L and R triggers alone since it turn so sharp.  MTS around the final 
corner and straighten out as you hit the first of the three panels.  You can 
expend most of your boost at the beginning like normal, but now since your 
speed is up MTSing around the first two turns will probably be beneficial, try 
to hit the boost panel on the second turn as you turbo slide around it.  To be 
honest if I had to choose any course where I believe my time could be 
seriously improved this would be it, playing it yourself you'll see what I 
mean by how difficult it is to use the Quick Cannon here, but that's how I 
managed to get my best time so I stick with it.
|  -----o------\                    Port Town: Aero Dive                     |

BASIC ~ Not only do I love this course, I also love how my favourite machine 
is extremely useful on it.  Take the Combat Planet Z for this one, you're 
going to want a fast heavy ship (Fat Shark works great as well.)  Start off 
and cut the edge of the boost panel in front of you for some extra speed.  Now 
here's a nice little tactic I like to use, coming up in front of you is a 
serious of stair-like drops.  While there's not a lot you can do here, what I 
find is that after going over the edge, if you press down ever so slightly on 
the analog stick you will actually notice that you hit the next one a little 
bit smoother, and with that you lessen your speed loss.  Every bit helps of 
course.  Drop off final one a little ways further and hit the boost panel into 
a long right curve.  Stay close to the wall here but allow yourself to glide a 
tiny bit toward the center after a couple of seconds to guarantee you hit the 
boost panel that comes around quickly.  Coming out of this there is a sharp 
left follow by a couple more very quickly, use the quick turn or drift to 
avoid ending up all the way over at the far wall.  This will lead you ward an 
upward slope, your vision may be a bit impaired so do your best to centre 
yourself, all the boost panels are in the middle of the road, there's three of 
them.  Now you'll suddenly launch off the end in a huge drop.  Here's what I 
find works best for this part, allow yourself to glide straight forward for a 
couple of seconds and then jam up on the analog stick.  If you time it right 
you should hit the road just before the stair-like drops again.  Upon landing 
pull your nose up to soften it and then remove your thumb from the gas 
completely, believe it or not this will actually lessen your speed loss over 
the first few steps and your momentum will be maintained.  After about five or 
six of them hit the gas again and get ready to make a hard right.  Around the 
corner do a quick turn to the left into the boost panel, this quick turn will 
ensure you don't accidentally fly off the edge which is a common problem for 
people in this map since the next drop occurs on a curve.  Stay on the right 
hand side of the road to ensure you hit all the boost panels on the way to the 
finish line.  Start off boosting here and as you go over the edge let go of 
the gas for the first couple of stairs, you'll notice that if you boost just 
beforehand and aren't holding the gas when you hit the next step there's a 
little extra bit of boost appearing around your car, it's not much but again 
every bit helps.  If you can't seem to master this technique don't worry about 
it, just focus on keeping up your speed and boosting as much as possible.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:25:689) The Combat Planet Z can beat this guy 
no problem as long as you avoid any major mistakes.  The trick I outlined in 
the first strategy about the large drop will really come in handy, if you're 
behind him or even if you aren't near him, you can see how much it sets you 
ahead by keeping an eye on the little timer above your minimap.  Despite these 
tips, this is one of the more difficult staff ghosts to beat, and takes a fair 
bit of course memorization before you can come out on top.  Hitting all the 
boost panels is essential for a victory, but the ones that appear on the 
upward hills are sometimes difficult to hit even when you know where they are, 
make sure to position yourself well in advance.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:16:022) If you're looking for the best 
possible time on this course you'll need to drop the Combat Planet Z in favour 
of Fat Shark.  Fat Shark is a better MTSer (although that tactic is not nearly 
effective here as it is in other courses) and gets better speed bosts from the 
drops.  Letting off the gas on the drops actually becomes quite an important 
part of the time trial strategy since it is concerned with finding almost any 
method of cutting off extra time.  The only two places I was able to 
effectively utilize MTS were after the long right curve and the turn at the 
bottom of the huge drop off.  Other than that you can find extra means of 
gaining speed by doing your best to aim yourself at the corners of all the 
boost panels, even the ones that come over the hills, this requires extreme 
precision and is another example of why an incredible time on this course is 
extremely difficult to get without a hell of a lot of practice.
|  -----o------\                   Green Plant: Mobius Ring                  |

BASIC ~ Take the Combat Planet Z for this course as well, this is a 
surprisingly simple course and doesn't really require that much tactical 
advice.  It's pretty much the hilly terrain on the road that makes it 
difficult, so that's what you'll need to focus on.  Start off and hit the 
boost panel than stay close to the wall on the corner, glide toward the centre 
and hit the second boost panel coming out of the turn.  Now as the road 
straightens out it will bring you toward a left turn, you want to stay in the 
left lane but not right up to the wall!  The wall here waves in an odd S 
pattern and you'll end up crashing if you try to follow it.  Coming around the 
corner stick with the left lane and stay on the side until the recharge panel 
comes up, slowly make your way toward the centre.  Basically you're trying to 
navigate the sloped parts without having it bump your ship around too much so 
whatever you do, you should do it gradually.  After the tunnel stick to the 
left wall again and stay on the raised part as you go around the corner.  
Coming around the final turn stick to the centre to avoid any nasty bumps and 
then level yourself in the middle and go straight toward the finish line.  
Pretty simple.  The second lap consists of the same strategy except it becomes 
more difficult to avoid all the bumpiness because you're boosting.  Try to 
save boost for straight-aways, doing it around corners will usually end you up 
in some kind of sloped valley bouncing from left to right and suffering some 
big speed loss.  Make sure you hit the recharge panel though.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 01:35:169) Beating the staff ghost on this course 
really doesn't present that much of a challenge, as long as you are consistent 
then you should be able to stay ahead of it by at least a second the whole 
time.  First of all drop the Z engine on the Combat Planet Z and replace it 
with the G4 engine, now just start racing.  Follow the basic strategy, but 
there are a couple of important things to consider.  First of all by far the 
most important thing are the mines after the first recharge panel, you need to 
hit a minimum of two of them on your first lap to make it worthwhile, this is 
really your only decent source of extra speed so you're advised to take 
advantage of it as much as you possible can.  While on the later laps and 
boosting furiously it's still a good idea to take out any remaining mines 
because the damage to your health is still not as severe as when you boost, 
and the extra speed is quite a lot.  Watch out when boosting around corners 
and coming up on recharge panels, the second most important thing to do in 
this race is to fill up your boost entirely and that is extremely difficult 
given the position of the strips and how thin they are.  You might want to 
avoid boosting when coming up to one so you can get straight onto it.

TIME TRIAL (Personal best: 01:30:713) I really don't have a lot to say about 
this track in this section because I have yet to find any extremely good 
strategies to do spectacular on this course.  The Quick Cannon G4 is almost 
out of the question given the slope of the road, the Combat Planet G4 or Fat 
Shark are still your top choices.  The only thing I can recommend trying is 
the following.  After the straight-away that follows the mines, approach the 
final turn while hugging the right while.  There is a bump in the ground here 
and if you hit it on the right angle it becomes possible to get a decent shift 
boost off of it, you can read more about shift boosts in the advanced 
techniques section.  Besides this, be sure to hit the mines head on.
|  -----o------\                     Port Town: Long Pipe                    |

BASIC ~ Virtually the entire course takes place in a tube structure, so you 
won't have to worry about hitting the walls or going out of bounds most of the 
time, though neither of those hold true the whole way.  Select the Combat 
Planet Z as your craft for this one.  Now you'll see how the course forms a 
cylinder and turns almost immediately, what you want to do is slowly inch up 
the wall on your right so that you can take the bend as smoothly as possible.  
One inclination you might have is to go up the left wall, since the inside of 
the corner will be shorter, and while this is true you aren't going to stay 
stuck to the track so taking the inside of cylindrical corners will cause you 
to make a little jump when you go around, and this will reduce your speed far 
more than the little extra distance you have to go take take the corner 
smoothly.  Do the same thing to the next corner, glide left and take it on the 
outside.  Now this will be hard to explain since you can loop as many times as 
you want and there's really no frame of reference.  If you went around the 
seond corner smoothly you should be around the middle of one of the gray 
section (as opposed to brown.)  The first panel is coming up slightly to your 
left, once you hit it remain on this gray section but slide to the right edge 
to hit the next boost panel, for the next one you need to get yourself on the 
roof, it's in the centre of the gray path up there, loop around until you're 
on top to catch it.  The next on is on the left edge of this same path, then 
again quickly and another one almost immediately slightly to your right.  
Finally the last one requires to to shift over to the brown area on your 
right.  Now you'll be approaching a drop off.  There are two rotating pipes 
that have no purpose but to get in your way, try looking ahead to where those 
pipes are going to be and avoid them, these are the first and you almost have 
to go out of your way to hit them.  Next you'll come up to one with three 
pipes, you need to do two things here.  First watch the pipes, but also look 
out for a yellow boost panel.  Move yourself around to loop so that you're 
aligned with it and can boost when you hit the ground.  Same principle again, 
look at the boost panel but watch for the six rotating arms which can be 
extremely dangerous.  Once you hitt he panel shift left a bit to nail the next 
one.  Stick to the gray panel until you come to a really bump area.  The 
straighter your vehcile the easier this will be to weather, if you're on even 
the slightest angle it's going to slow you down substantially.  Now stick to 
the gray panel once again going around this section, all the boost panels are 
on it.  You'll come to a very odd type of loop in the track that will probably 
disorient you.  All I can say for this part is to aim yourself dead on 
straight for the centre of the loop and don't press any directions whatsoever 
while in mid air, when you hit the ground you should be able to correct 
yourself without too much speed loss.  Depending on how you land this will be 
different, basically what you want to do obviously is dodge those caution 
poles that are scattered here.  When you get to the curve be absolutely sure 
to get on the outer path, but do not stay right in the centre!  One more pole 
comes almost out of nowhere.  Just beyond it are five boost panels side by 
side that you can't miss, now this is important.  What you want to do is hit 
the straight on and keep going straight until you pass underneath a horizontal 
bar.  Immediately after you do slide to the right with the R trigger so that 
you're in the middle of what was the right wall.  This will allow you to pass 
under another horizontal bar and completely eliminate the need to try and 
sneak between those four side by side poles.  It has to be to the right, not 
the left.  If you went to the left the tunnel will open up and you'll find 
yourself on the top which completely disappears sending you into the sky and 
off the track.  Race to the finish line and get your boost power.  Now the 
next two laps are similarbut you'll be boosting, you don't have enough boost 
to use it the entire time, so use about half of it up at the beginning and 
then almost all the rest after the rotating arms.  Never leave yourself 
completely drained otherwise even the slightest touch against those pillars at 
the end will spell death for you.  Keep boosting and it's home free.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:26:802) The Combat Cannon Z works wonders 
against this ghost, the Triple Z engine you have outputs an enormous amount 
more boost out of the boost panels than his car does, this will become very 
evident if you happen to be trailing behind during that first section of boost 
panels, every time you hit one you'll be creeping up on his faster and faster 
even though you're taking the same route.  Now what you need to focus on doing 
is keeping that lead.  Make sure to aim for all the boost panels during the 
moving arm section, but don't just land and then slide over to them, you'll 
lose way too much speed you need to see them in advance and move in 
anticipation, memorizing their positions is still the best tactic.  Once 
you're past this section on the later laps utilize a lot of boost here so that 
you are going at top speed for the bumpy area, and pull up before hitting each 
bump to reduce speed loss.  It might just be me but it seems like the ghost 
really messes up that odd loop about three quarters of the way through the 
third lap, so even if you're trailing behind a bit remember to keep at it!

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:19:802) Still using the Combat Planet Z for 
this one the key to getting a much better time for me were the use of the 
shift boosts here, now compared to other courses these ones are extremely 
difficult, and that's on top of the almost-random quality shift boosts already 
have.  There are three main ways to get these, and they're pretty much 
impossible unless you're on the second or third laps.  The fist is through the 
turns, if you take them on the side, not on the short inner corner where 
you'll jump, and not on the longer outer side but about midway between them so 
that you get just a tiny bit of air, this can serve as a shift boost if you're 
still retaining some speed fro ma recent boost.  Secondly the easiest to get 
are the ones on the bumpy area, you want to boost as much as possible before 
this are and pull up slightly before hitting each one, if all goes well you 
should notice a drastic speed increase on the the first and maybe second ones.  
The third is on that odd disorienting corner at the end, this is almost 
impossible to get with any degree of consistency but if you've got a very 
slight left angle, sometimes your car will boost when it hits the ground 
again, I hesitate to even bring this up but I have done it on more than one 
occasion.  You can still get a great time with the previous tactics though.
|  -----o------\                    Mute City: Serial Gaps                   |

BASIC ~ The car I recommend for this course is the Acro Cannon G4, when used 
correctly it can easily handle soome of the more dangerous turns.  This course 
requires more practice than almost any other in the game, the chance of flying 
off the edge somewhere is always a constant danger.  Start the race off and 
hit the boost panel right in front of you, the road goes in kind of an S shape 
here.  When you come out of it position yourself near the left wall to make 
sure you hit the boost panel before going over the edge.  Angle your vehicle 
downward and dive into the tunnel, you want to try and avoid slamming into the 
ceiling here, try to level yourself out with the sloped ground before landing.  
Coming up after the recharge panel are some mines, you might want to try 
hitting a couple of them for two reasons, the first being that they'll be 
dangerous in later laps and you want to get them out of the way, the second 
being for the obvious speed boost.  Be careful though if you hit more than 
one, you'll likely launch out of the tunnel and plummet to your death.  When 
you land from the drop immediately use the quick turn to drift right so you're 
facing 90 degrees right from where you were before, there's another drop and 
instant death if you aren't facing the right direction.  Make another hard 
turn to the left this time to straighten yourself out with the next drop.  Now 
coming up is a jump on your right, you may want to hit this and angle your 
nose down to dive, but make sure you're turning right while in the air because 
the road curves just after the jump.  Around the corner there is a pretty 
dangerous ice patch, stay in the middle and make a hard left at the end to 
nail the boost panel.  This will send you over a huge drop, there's also two 
possible paths here, one is a higher road and then other is a lower road.  The 
lower road has dirt patches and is also longer, your goal is to try and land 
on that higher section and if you're using the Acro Cannon G4 it's quite good 
at gliding so once it looks like you're going to make it aim your nose down 
and dive for the road.  Careful though because there are no walls on it.  Stay 
in the centre as the road curves right toward the top and sends you off a 
boost panel.  Aim yourself below the overpass (certainly not into it) and 
you'll be back on the main road again.  The finish line is just ahead.  Now on 
the second lap start boosting right away and do the same thing you did before 
until you  reach the tunnel, now you will probably want to try and avoid the 
mines at this speed, when you fly out it's going to take some light speed 
maneuvering to avoid flying off the sides.  Be careful when boosting up to the 
jump as well, it has a high risk of sending you to some pretty dangerous 
heights.  On the third lap if you need extra boost take advantage of the 
recharge pad just before you enter the cave, on the right side of the track.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 01:26:549) The Acro Cannon G4 can beat the staff 
ghost no problem as long as you're consistent.  Obviously you'll never beat it 
if you keep dying on every corner, it takes a lot of practice.  When you first 
start he's probably going to disappear way ahead of you. he's got quite a lot 
of acceleration but don't worry about that.  Coming out of the landmine 
section is where you should catch up, hit as many as possible even though it 
may be dangerous, since it's the first lap it's no big deal to restart if you 
screw it up a couple of times.  Dive as you come out of the mine area and you 
should overtake him.  He takes the next couple of corners fairly well so it'll 
be nose to nose as you come up to the jumps.  Here's another great opportunity 
to get ahead.  If you're going at maximum normal speed when you hit the jump 
don't turn immediately, wait about a second or so and then jam the R trigger 
along with diagonal up-right on the analog stick.  If performed correctly you 
should be able to curve around in midair and land facing the right direction 
on the ice section of the track facing the opposite way you did when you hit 
the jump, it's like a huge U turn to the right.  This will have you ahead of 
the ghost by a hell of a lot of done right.  Aim yourself for the higher 
section of track and just play it cool to the finish line.  Boost like crazy 
at the start of the second lap and then fill it up again as much as you can in 
the tunnel, try and avoid the mines.  Now approaching the jump again do the 
exact same thing, except boost this time so it becomes even easier.  Learn 
when to time your boost though, it's still possible to overshoot your 
destination.  Since the recharge sections are short in the level you'll need 
to be a bit more careful with your boost on lap 3, try saving most of it for 
the end and start going nuts around the ice patch to ensure a victory.

TIME TRIAL (Personal Best: 01:11:589) We we're back to times that I'm really 
happy with and tricks that are worth mentioning.  Look no further if you want 
to beat the staff ghost by more than 15 seconds, but be warned that this 
process it extremely, extremely difficult.  Select the Quick Cannon G4 for 
this run, we'll need it for more than just its turning ability here, also its 
gliding ability.  Now some of these tricks are absolutely crazy, it's not 
going to be easy to describe them in text but do your best to follow along.  
There is really almost no need for MTS in this course, I didn't even use it 
when I got that time, but it does help if you're good at it on the second turn 
of the course, coming out of the S shape right at the beginning.  Now fly down 
into the tunnel, hit any mines if you wish but it isn't necessary.  Here's the 
first trick, when you come out of the tunnel dive down to the road.  Now you 
will notice something, as the road curves to the right, the left wall barrier 
stops just before the actual drop.  There is a little area of the road between 
where the wall ends and where the drop is, so that if you came out of the 
tunnel and decided not to turn very much you would probably fly off the course 
here.  Well what you want to do is indeed fly off the course here, the instant 
you go over the edge hit the L trigger and press ever so slightly down on the 
analog stick to lift your nose up a tiny bit, any more than a tiny bit and 
you'll stall compeltely.  If done correctly you should be able to turn in mid 
air without losing altitude and find yourself directly in front of the jump, 
completely skipping those nasty turns.  Now that far from all.  Hit the jump 
like you normally would, now the Quick Cannon G4 can turn incredibly sharply 
in mid air and you can easily fly over the the ice path area BUT you must let 
yourself fly forward a bit and do the large U turn anyway, if you cut the 
corner too much in mid air the game will consider it out of bounds.  Try it 
yourself.  Now when you land on the ice patch, head forward and nail the boost 
panel.  This is probably the hardest thing to do and you shouldn't even try 
using this technique until you can run everything else on this course 
perfectly.  Here's what you do, the boost panel that sends you off the edge 
you must hit it straight on facing the direction that it's pointing, meaning 
that you have to do a very sharp left turn before going over the edge, this is 
quite easy using the Quick Cannon.  Now that you are going perfectly straight 
in the air, perhaps pressing extremely lightly down on the analog stick to 
keep your nose up, but nothing more otherwise again, you'll lose altitude 
almost instantaneously.  Here's the super secret trick, it is possible to wait 
until you're just about over top of the road below you, now remember you have 
done your best to stay as high in the air as possible up until now, and just 
when you're about to go over the road to need to slam the right analog stick 
and the R trigger.  This will send you into a death plummet to your right but 
as you turn you'll realize that you're actually falling toward the overpass 
where you usually land after taking the higher path.  Now even if you are 
perfectly aimed at it, there's still problems.  If you didn't go out far 
enough you risk going off course, if you weren't straight enough there's a 
very common result of hitting the road and just exploding because you're 
vehicle is sideways.  Remember this trick can be done, and cuts a rediculous 
amount of time off your total, but there are still other ways to do well on 
this course.  On to the second lap.  Now here's a brand new trick not quite as 
difficult as that one, but more difficult than any of the others.  Now that 
you have boost, start using it like crazy when going through the tunnel.  
Hopefully you cleared out as many mines as possible on the first lap because 
hitting any will probably completely crew you up.  You need to boost and get 
going as fast as possible toward the edge of the tunnel, when you fly out stop 
boosting immediately, and stop pressing buttons entirely.  You need to get a 
huge amount of distance on this jump and you're not going to get it unless 
everything is perfect.  You destination is the road directly beside one of the 
three jumps.  This means that you are going directly from the tunnel to the 
jump, it's difficult but not nearly as difficult as the shortcut near the end.  
Now when you land you want to land right beside one of the jumps.  Even though 
you are coming at them on a perpendicular angle, you can still hit them the 
instant you land on the ground to be launched again.  This is your goal, to go 
from the tunnel, fly over to the ground beside the jump, land, and be 
instantly launched again.  While flying through the air position yourself so 
that you land in the correct direction on the ice road, and then repeat the 
process on the third lap.  This is the last trick that I know off, besides the 
fact that a suicide finish can be done right before the end, but after making 
a perfect run with all those tricks I would never have the balls to risk it.  
One more thing I'd like to mention is that it is possible to get enough air to 
land beside the jumps on the first lap as well, if you hit at least two mines 
sometimes it will provide the kind of speed you need, but since mines are so 
unpredictable and hard to hit sometimes, I've done this before but never on 
any kind of regular basis.  Hopefully some of this will come in handy.

|                                 Emerald Cup                        (00030) |
|  -----o------\                  Fire Field: Cylinder Knot                  |

BASIC ~ The recommended vehicle for this course is the Combat Goose Z, it has 
a powerful engine capable of high top speeds and really getting a kick out of 
the boost panels.  This course isn't really all that difficult, but that in 
itself is what makes the course difficult.  Since it's so straightforward 
there aren't exactly a lot of chances to get ahead of the competition.  You 
need to focus on hitting as many boost panels as possible, and since it's hard 
to tell exactly what side of the cylinder you;re on, memorizing their 
positions if quite a chore.  Start off the race and hit the boost that's right 
in front of you, then slide to the right a little bit about as far as the red 
and yellow strip.  As you approach another curve slide back left a bit to hit 
the next boost.  You'll notice that the red and yellow strip on has brown 
edges on the sides, this will become important for reference.  Get onto the 
strip that's just left of the second boost panel.  You should be riding on the 
outside of the turn.  The next boost is located on the left brown edge of this 
strip.  Stay on this edge to hit the next one as well, which comes just at the 
bottom of the hill.  Now loop around to the opposite side and get onto the 
right edge of that strip, as you come up over the bump you'll hit the next 
boost.  Stay on this edge even over the bump, just after the largest bump at 
the end is another boost panel on the right edge.  Now slowly slide to the 
left once you hit it in between the two red and yellow strips for the next 
boost.  Continue left and stay on the left edge of the strip to hit a boost.  
Stay on the inner side of the track to hit a couple of boost around the next 
corner.  Now the track will look a bit different as you climb a pipe 
approaching the next turn.  Get on the outer side to go around it and there's 
another boost on top of that.  One more boost on the outer edge of the next 
curve before coming to a section with some dangerous pipes coming down.  If 
you hit the last boost panel then you're on the opposite side of the cylinder 
and you need to gradually glide to the left to get to the other side, doing so 
should make it fairly easy to avoid the pipes and you'll pop out onto a 
recharge panel and near the finish line.  There aren't really any 
exceptionally good places to use boost on the next couple laps so just  use is 
on straight sections between boost panels to keep your speed up.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:40:909) Many people call this the hardest 
staff ghost in the game and I wouldn't disagree with them.  It's not uncommon 
to find those who have 25 staff ghost victories under their belts yet still 
cannot conquer this one.  To be honest, there is no foolproof strategy,  The 
Combat Goose Z can do it, quite easily in fact, but easily is relative of 
course.  I can usually beat the staff ghost on almost every run, but I still 
can't beat it by more than a mere couple of seconds so you can see that it's 
just a formula you need to learn and follow.  Hit every boost panel, don't 
just skip them because they're on the other side or out of your way or 
something.  Especially on the first lap they're you're only real source of 
extra speed.  If you do exactly what the staff ghost does then you will win, 
the Combat Goose is a much better car that his.  In fact one of the best ways 
to beat this course is spend a few runs trailing him and learning his path.  
If you can mimic his path identically, you'll be the one who wins.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal best: 02:36:257) I really don't have any special trick 
for doing well on this course, all I did was play it over and over again until 
I knew the boost panels well enough so that not only could I hit them all, I 
could cut them on the edge as well.  The one real source of extra speed may be 
the shift boosts you can get over the bumps, these are difficult to get but 
you can almost always get a powerful one as long as you boost just before 
going over the bumps, now what you do with this huge extra boost of speed is 
up to you, because there's a very good chance it's just going to send you out 
of control.  This is a great course to practice in the practice mode.
|  -----o------\                  Green Plant: Intersection                  |

BASIC ~ Choose the Combat Planet Z for this course, it works and handles well 
here.  The beginning of this course is quite simple, three boost panels 
leading up to a cylindrical tunnel.  The tunel soon starts to make some very 
sharp curves, you'll want to position yourself around the sides of the curve 
so you don't have to weather the bump bump you also don't need to go the long 
way every time, and since the sides will be pretty consistent no matter how 
much the top and bottom curve you should have to shift positions all that 
much.  Coming out of the tube you'll see a recharge panel, if we said that 
recharge panel is on the room you want to get yourself on the floor so that 
it's above you, this will send you straight into a boost panel.  Now go up the 
left side a bit and around the corner to hit another boost panel.  Gradually 
make your way right down to the path in between the two recharge panels.  If 
you go between them to the left you'll end up flying off course when the 
ceiling opens up.  Now stick to the right wall here because you'll be 
approaching a large obstacle in the centre.  You can go around this obstacle 
on either the left or right side, the right side has a boost panel.  Now 
there's a number of these, you need to shift back and forth using the L and R 
triggers from right to left to right etc so that you hit each of the 
alternating boost panels.  Coming out of this area is the most difficult part 
of the course, if you're playing the Grand Prix and just want to win then I 
recommend slowing down, if you're absolutely determined never to let go of the 
accelerator then the instant you go around the curve to the right, get ready 
to do a quick turn left before reaching the top of the hill because the course 
is going to try to throw you off at this point but if you're already in the 
process of a sharp turn then when you lift off you'll still be moving in the 
direction of the track and can set down safely.  On the next laps avoid 
boosting in the following two places, the loopy section of the cylinder with 
all the curves, and that dangerous section at the end.  Besides those two 
parts you'll do fine and can really get your speed up near the start.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:24:897) Same car, the staff ghost won't put up 
too much of a challenge.  Your real challenge is trying to balance speed with 
dangerous maneuvers.  Trying to boost near the end is suicide, don't do it!  
Make sure you can aim yourself toward the recharge panel on that final turn 
because the course is still fairly long and you'll need all the boost you can 
get.  After coming out of that loops cylinder section on the second and third 
laps recharge your boost but hit the L or R trigger and try to slide all the 
way around to the other side so you can hit the boost panel on the ceiling as 
well.  Boosting during the part with the obstacles is dangerous but efective, 
you'll find that again with this engine you can easily catch up to the staff 
ghost even when you are doing the same thing he is, so it's just a matter of 
not screwing up, there's no vehicle disadvantages to overcome.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:14:133) Take the main elements of the previous 
strategies and try to incorporate them into your top speed goal.  There's no 
really effective MTS routes here but you'll still notice I was able to beat 
the staff ghost by more than ten seconds, this is a result of the crazy amount 
of shift boosts you can get in this course, and consistent ones too.  During 
that section of crazy loops in the tube what you need to do is start aiming 
yourself so that you are on the inner side of the curve where the distance 
around the corner is shortest and the bump is most severe.  As you hit this 
bump at a good speed you will suddenly gain a boost of speed if done at the 
correct angle, this angle is almost perfeclty straight though so your intent 
is to make it so you think you're going to lift off the ground, and you will, 
but accompanying it will be an incredible boost of speed.  Get as many of 
these as you can, getting more than one of them in a row will be even more 
effective, so the better you are at it you'll almost find you can cut time off 
your best run almost exponentially.  There aren't any other extremely 
effective tricks that I'm aware of, but this one will work quite well.
|  -----o------\                Casino Palace: Double Branches               |

BASIC ~ For this course I recommend the use of the Acro Lynx G4, the G4 engine 
is a bit more effective for the oddly shaped roads of this course.  Now I hate 
this course with a passion, it's awkward and extremely hard to navigate, but 
with practice I was able to manage and you will too.  There's a number of 
branching paths, hence the name, but none of them make that much of a 
difference.  You'll come to one right off the bat, take the right path here.  
Hit the boost and start inching around the corner, you'll probably have to 
drift a bit in order to avoid hitting the wall.  Now coming out of there aim 
yourself so that you hit each of the boost panels here, but watch out because 
there are no walls on the sides.  If you accidentally fall off to the left 
there's a good chance you can land and the lower branch and still recover 
though.  Continue on until you come to another fork, now take the left path, 
there's a boost panel on the right side of the road and another one on the 
left side around the next corner.  Stay around the middle to hit the next two 
in between the recharge panel.  There's a number of boosters in a row leading 
to another fork, follow the right path and stay as close as you can to the 
right side, after going underneath the other road there's a hill with a boost 
on the right side that you won't see until the last second.  Now stick to the 
left and hit the boost while jamming the R trigger for another, and then the L 
trigger to hit the one on the left again, there's three in a row.  Also use 
the trigger buttons to hit the two that follow.  This will take you around to 
a fairly straight section and one final fork, on the first lap it's best to 
take the right path and use the two boosters as you approach the finish line.  
Now on the next lap boost as much as possible near the start because there's a 
recharge panel right near the beginning, in fact there are quite a few 
throughout.  There's two things mainly to keep in mind, the first and most 
important is this.  After the second fork at the pert where there are two 
recharge panels on either side of the road, followed by three boosters in a 
row do NOT boost after this, at the third fork it doesn't matter which way you 
go, you will fly off the course if you are going to fast.  The same actually 
applies to the hill near the end before the final fork.  At the final fork 
you'll want to boost and take the left path instead of the right this time.  
Hit the jump dead on and dive toward the ground in mid air, try to land near 
the last recharge panel on the left and level yourself off.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:59:117) I'd wager the staff ghost finds this 
course rather difficult as well, choosing a good vehicle is very important in 
being able to beat the ghost and I would recommend the Cosmic Cannon G4, same 
as the Combat Planet with a different engine.  You'll need to drift a lot in 
order to take some of those finer turns but once you have it down you can 
combine extreme speed with precision turning and find yourself leaps and 
bounds ahead of the staff ghost.  Avoiding walls is obviously important in all 
courses but especially here, since that's really the only thing that's going 
to keep you from netting a victory unless you go out of your way to avoid 
boost panels.  Despite being a heavy ship the same ideas still apply about the 
sloped road, you can easily fly off and need to adjust your speed before 
taking them.  Practice with this vehicle as much as possible.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal best: 02:45:289) Using the Cosmic Cannon G4 for this as 
well is not a bad idea.  There's a couple things you can do to help shave of a 
couple of seconds.  First of all both of them only really apply in lap two and 
three.  Once you have boost, at the first right turn that's fairly long and 
somewhat sharp you can actually effectively MTS with the Cosmic Cannon if 
you're skilled enough, this can give you quite a large boost of speed.  
Secondly when you come out of this turn start boosting like mad to get your 
speed up.  Stick to the right side and hit the boost panel and stay there to 
hit the second one, once you do jam the L trigger to hit the third one but 
don't let go, instead let yourself launch over the edge.  Try to stabilize 
yourself with the R trigger in mid air so that you make as soft a landing as 
possible on the lower level and take advantage of the three additional boost 
panels in front of you, this should help quite a bit.  Besides those things at 
the beginning the strategy is exactly the same.  There's one other thing 
though, a special kind of shift boost work on this course that I'll be 
describing in more detail on courses like Undulation and Trident, but you 
should still be aware of it.  During the part at the beginning before you drop 
off to the left while you're on the right side of the road hitting the boost 
panels, you can let yourself very gradually creep toward the edge.  The 
instant that your car drops over the edge, and I mean the INSTANT, press the L 
trigger toward the road to jump back on again for a boost of speed.  It's not 
nearly as effective in this course as others, but it is definitely possible.
|  -----o------\                     Lightning: Half Pipe                    |

BASIC ~ Recommended machine for this course is the Cosmic Cannon G4.  It's a 
dangerous course, the name obviously is indicant of its half pipe structure, 
go too far up either side and you'll fly off the course.  Start off and hit 
the boost panel in front of you.  You'll need to utilize the quick or drift 
turns quite a bit on this course, starting almost immediately with the second 
turn.  Around the corner is another boost panel, as you round the next bend 
try to ride up the left wall slightly so that you're on the inside of the 
curve.  As you go around gradually slide down as the curve ends and go up the 
right side to hit the next boost.  Up next is another booster panel on the 
left side, once you hit it return to the centre otherwise you'll bounce off 
the course as you go around.  The middle of the track now leads to a number of 
boost panels around the course in a dangerous spin with sections of the track 
opening up.  You'll notice a yellow line of lights, after hitting the first 
booster panel slide left and follow this path of lights to the next one.  
Continue to follow this light path, it will lead you safely trough two more 
boost panels and onto the track again.  Ride up the right wall on the next 
corner to stay on the inside and then hit the middle again for a booster.  
Stay in the middle along with the lights to another boost, and then up the 
right wall, watch out on this corner because it's easy to go over the edge.  
Here's the dangerous part you need to get over onto the left wall to hit the 
next panel, but then immediately quick turn right and straighten yourself out 
so that you don't launch over the side when the road dips down.  Next comes a 
dangerous S turn, aim to cut the corners tight to minimize your speed loss 
here and then hit the boost panel in the middle.  Around the next corner 
you'll see a number of red light pillars, these deal extremely minimal damage 
to you so don't worry about them, just get up the left side of the track to 
hit the booster and just gun for the finish line from there.  Same deal 
applies in the second lap, use your boost when it's safe to do so, a good 
place would be in that spiral where you follow the lights around.  The one 
other thing you need to be careful of besides the edges are those red lights, 
if you've gone crazy with all your boost and used it up, they'll destroy you 
the instant you pass under them.  You might want to hold off a little bit.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:50:296) The Cosmic Cannon G4 will obliterate 
this ghost, I can almost guarantee anyone who can get through this course 
without dying, and isn't afraid of boosting while doing so can beat this staff 
ghost by more than three seconds.  Boosting in that spiral of panels will get 
you so far ahead of the ghost it's not even funny, the dangerous parts come 
when you're boosting but also trying to ride up the walls as well, it's easy 
to find yourself with no time left to glide back ot the centre of the track 
again and all of a sudden you'll be thrown off.  This is especially true for 
that sharp S turn near the end, you might even want to brake a little before 
then, in the long run it's better than a huge crash there.  Save a little bit 
of boost for the end and use it just as you pass by the red lights, keep 
boosting along the recharge panel and victory will be yours.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:36:682) Once you start getting these tactics 
down the staff ghost will seem like child's play.  The Cosmic Cannon G4 is 
once again your weapon of choice here.  First of all when you start, after 
hitting the boost you'll notice that if you hit the little bump on the left 
turn at the right angle while holding the L trigger you can get a handy little 
shift boost.  Now play the course as you normally would around the next corner 
on the right and still further.  After passing the two boosts on the sides the 
road opens up for a second before becoming a half pipe again.  At this part 
there is a boost panel on the left side and you first shortcut.  What you want 
to do is hit that booster moving in the same direction it points, wait for 
about a fraction of a second and then slam the L trigger to launch yourself 
over the edge.  When done correctly (and this is actually quite easy) you'll 
skip the next turn and be able to land smoothly on the ground just before the 
spiral loop part, saves you a good couple of seconds.  Now as you approach the 
S turn, but not quite there, I mean the corner before with the right boost 
panel and then the dangerous left boost panel.  After hitting the left one 
straighten yourself out quickly on the path, if done right you'll get a decent 
shift boost from the speed as you go over the little hill approaching the S 
turn.  As for the S turn itself the best way to navigate it is to not navigate 
it at all, simply ride up the left wall and jam the L trigger just before it 
curves to quickly hop over the entire thing.  Not only does it save some time 
you're about ten times less likely to make a critical error.  Now for the 
final tip, and by far the most difficult one, so difficult in fact that I gave 
up on it even after practicing constantly.  Note that I also find Fat Shark is 
a better ship choice if you're going to be attempting this, but even then it's 
extremely difficult.  Note that the time I got there, I did not use this trick 
at all.  When you cross the finish line boost immediately and hit the boost 
panel right on the edge.  As you go down the little drop the road turns left, 
but you don't.  Instead go straight up the side and launch over the edge.  You 
need to get huge air here but it's pretty obvious what you're aiming for, the 
track in front of you, it's quite far away but given the right amount of speed 
it's very reachable.  The problem is that even when you reach it, if you 
didn't do a good enough job curving right while in mid air, you're just going 
to explode when you hit similar to in Serial Gaps.  You can try to master this 
manoeuvre but like I said, it's extremely difficult.
|  -----o------\                       Big Blue: Ordeal                      |

BASIC ~ It's no secret, I love this course as well.  Choose the Acro Lynx G4, 
I think it works quite well here.  Start off the course and go over the drop 
in front of you, make sure to tip your nose down and dive before pulling up at 
the last second to soften your landing.  Make a sharp right and then sharp 
left with the quick turn and you'll reach a fork.  Take the left path and dive 
to cut a little bit of time off.  Now go down, get ready to angle yourself 
left and then make a hard right.  This will take you over another jump and to 
a recharge panel.  Follow the road over two more drops, diving each time, it 
curves in an S pattern, try to do your best to stick close to the inside 
track.  The next corner is the biggest drop yet.  If you have enough momentum 
you can try and go straight ahead to the ground ahead of you, otherwise angle 
left and hit the parallel path.  This may hurt you a bit when you land if 
you're on an angle though, use the R trigger to straighten out.  There's a 
sharp left and then right leading to a drop.  Hit the boost panel and then do 
your best to ride along the ice where you'll find another boost panel in the 
centre.  Inside the tunnel you'll quickly come to a lare U turn, use the quick 
turn technique twice to take it easily, and the one that follows it.  Stay in 
the centre of the track to hit a boost panel as you go over the hill.  Now 
when you're outside again the next left turn is deceptively sharp.  Stick 
close to the left wall as the road corkscrews up and then thins out toward the 
finish line.  Use the same basic tactics on the later laps, except utilize the 
recharge panel on the right instead of riding the ice before the tunnel.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:50:808) The Acro Lynx G4 still makes a fine 
tool for taking down this ghost.  Start off and dive like the basic strategy, 
then take the left branch again.  Now the first thing to note is here.  As you 
approach the hill you'll need to turn left, then right in order to get around 
that square shaped turn.  What you should do is go left, then quick turn 
right, followed by a quick turn left again so that you hit the ramp on an 
angle to the left and glide through the air cutting off as much of the corner 
as possible, landing on the recharge pad.  For the next couple of roads 
there's not much to do besides cut the corners as much as you can.  Now before 
coming to the large drop, quick turn early so that you are going completely 
straight when you fly off the edge.  Press ever so lightly on the analog stick 
down to keep your nose straight and glide over to the corner where the path 
turns if you can.  Go around the corner and drop down to the boost panel, hit 
it and take either the recharge pad or the ice booster depending on which you 
need more.  The rest of the track toward the finish is straightforward, just 
avoid hitting the walls there aren't any tricks.  The last trick occurs right 
at the beginning of laps two and three.  Boost just beyond the finish line and 
when you go over the edge, instead of diving hold the R trigger to glide over 
so that you land on the road that goes straight toward the path branch, you 
can avoid that sharp right turn and save some time this way.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:31:477) I've got a special preference for this 
course, and considering beating the staff ghost by almost 20 seconds I'd say 
it works pretty well.  I find the Flying Cannon G4 works wonders here, as the 
name sort of implies, while you won't be doing any flying you will be doing 
quite a bit of gliding, and this shop does a great job.  Start the race and 
drop over the edge, dive down for the first lap and turn the corner.  Now 
comes the most difficult trick for the entire course, fortunately it's early.  
When you go up the ramp on the left, instead of going off it straight angle 
yourself to the left and go off it at a 45 degree angle.  You must be facing 
diagonally to the left, which means turning with the analog stick and the the 
trigger buttons.  You also have to angle yourself BEFORE leaving the ramp, 
when you try and turn in mid air in only leads to a speedy descent.  What you 
want to do is glide past the big blue building on the left side and land on 
the road just in front of the next ramp.  When you hit this ramp try to cut 
the corner as much as you can again, land near the recharge panel and 
straighten yourself out.  Now continue along the course until you come to the 
next large drop off.  This is the one where you're gliding over the gray road 
below that's full of 90 degree turns.  During the first lap you'll just want 
to aim yourself straight and hit the ground parallel to where you dropped off.  
Go over the ramp and hit the boost panels and race the course normally to the 
finish line.  Now on the second lap boost and cut the first corner by gliding 
to the right.  Do the exact same thing with the left branch ramp, cutting 
across past the building, but it should be easier now that you have a lot more 
speed.  On these later laps when you drop over the section with the gray road 
and sharp turns you can clear it entirely with the Flying Cannon G4 and land 
right at the ramp below the waterfall to save a load of time.  These are the 
tricks you need to use in order to get yourself a decent time on the course.  
Finally you can get a really good suicide finish at the end if you try to MTS 
near the end of that thin section of road and don't have any energy left, but 
this takes precision and practice and you shouldn't try it unless you've been 
able to do it consistently on practice runs.

|                                 Diamond Cup                        (00040) |
|  -----o------\                   Cosmo Terminal: Trident                   |

BASIC ~ This is a difficult course to ride due to the lack of any walls 
throughout, so be on the safe side your best bet will be the Acro Lynx G4.  At 
the start you are faced with your first of many branching paths.  For the 
first lap the best choice is the right branch, so take it and hit both the 
booster panels.  When they come together again, slide over and choose the left 
path.  Now at the next one take the middle path and get ready, the instant you 
go over the edge hold up on the analog to dive down and then correct your 
angle before hitting the ground again.  After you land and come to a fork 
again, take the right branch to get on the inside track.  Be sure that you're 
holding the R trigger when you go over the edge, there's a good chance of 
accidentally launching over the side at this point.  On the next lap boost 
constantly since there are so many recharge panels, take the middle path 
instead of the right one at the first fork on the later laps but everything 
else should remain the same.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:58:650) This staff ghost also ranks as one of 
the hardest in the game to conquer for a similar reason as the Cylinder Knot 
one, though at least for this one there are some advanced techniques that will 
allow you to beat it rather eaisly, these will be outlined in the time trial 
section.  As for the ghost itself, it follows pretty much the optimal path so 
there's nothing wrong with tailing it most of the time.  The ship I recommend 
is the Gallant Cannon G4, it runs at almost an identical speed to the staff 
ghost but will get more power out of the boosters.  Since you're so even;y 
match though you'll have to perform extremely well if you want to get ahead.  
There's not a lot you can do on the first lap but on the later laps you can 
get ahead by boosting 100% non-stop all the time, since the ghost sometimes 
avoids boosting on the more difficult sections.  The one place you may want to 
hold off is before the enormous drop, if you're going to fast while you fall 
you'll end up bouncing over the bumps even if you made a soft landing.  Save 
your boost and wait until you hit the ground before using it again, you should 
be just about empty by the time you reach the recharge panel.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal best: 02:49:969) Now I'd like to introduce a concept I 
had only touched on briefly before that will literally make or break your time 
on this course.  Though you've probably used shift boosts before, this entire 
course is pretty much your outlet for them, using them virtually whenever you 
want.  The tradeoff of course is that they are extremely extremely dangerous.  
What I did when I got my time was practice enough and use them often on the 
first lap when I had no other source of boost, this significantly decreased my 
time on the first lap and then I just boosted crazily but played it safe by 
avoiding shift boosts on subsequent laps.  Now here's how you should go about 
doing it.  First of all your vehicle of choice is the Gallant Cannon G4 for 
sure, you'll need a thin car if you want to do this right.  Fortunately you 
can start doing them almost immediately at the start of the race so it doesn't 
take much time to practice and retry whenever you fall.  The first is as you 
come up the the three way banch, you want to take the right path on the first 
lap of course, but instead of aiming yourself toward it, aim toward the right 
SIDE of the centre branch.  Now a split second after you pass the sign on your 
right between the paths, jam the R trigger to jump over from the middle path 
to the right path.  I say wait a split second for a reason, you need to get 
far enough so that there is a definitive gap, but not so far so that it's too 
big you can't get over to the path.  This is what makes it so difficult, the 
timing.  It's the little gap in between the paths that will give you the shift 
boost when you go over it.  You'll be able to tell if you did it right because 
you'll hear a sort of swooshing noise, see a little cloud appear under your 
car and if you're using the Gallant Cannon G4 at max speed, you'll go from 
about 850 to 1090 instantaneously and maintain that speed.  If you can't get 
this right don't worry because they don't all work this way.  Now that you're 
on the right path you need to wait for it to stop bending around.  Once it's 
going straight slide over to the far left edge (or right edge, whichever 
you're more comfortable with.)  Now allow yourself to very gradually slip off 
the edge, but you must predict when you're going over because you have 
approximately a tenth of a second to react and slam the R trigger to jump back 
onto the path.  Doing this right with trigger another shift boost and give you 
a considerable speed kick.  Make sure you hit the yellow booster in the centre 
as well.  If you're good you can probably do three of these before the path 
bends around again.  Don't ever try to do this on a bending or curving path, 
you will die no matter how good you are.  Now on the second split aim toward 
the middle path but jump across to the left one just after they branch.  Since 
the path is moving up and down here it's considerably harder to get a shift 
boost but if you try right at the tip of a hill where it flattens out you can 
still do it.  The one type of road where it's still safe to try besides flat 
road is road that's sloping down.  It's actually harder to get it right when 
it's sloping down, but it's also much safer to try because as you start to 
drop when going over the edge, the road is still dropping with you and you 
have more time to jump back on.  Use this technique as often as you can, 
pretty much the more you do the better time you're going to get, but obviously 
the more risk you're taking.  Find a delicate balance and you should be able 
to conquer my time with enough practice, I played it really safe.
|  -----o------\                  Sand Ocean: Lateral Shift                  |

BASIC ~ The Acro Lynx G4 is a fine ship to use here.  Here's pretty much how 
the course works, it's called Lateral Shift becuase you constantly need to 
laterally shift with the L and R triggers since there is a continuous wave of 
dead ends in front of you.  If you look at the map you can see that every once 
in awhile the course just ends and another path picks up to the left or right.  
You need to always be aware of these, the arrows on top of the overhead sign 
will tell you which way to move, but usually it's pretty obvious anyway.  
Start off and hit the boost panel, then stick to the left and be ready to 
shift over when you get near the sign.  Normally you can prepare by just 
angling your car so that it will simply take each one as if it was a turn and 
not an abrupt shift.  Continue further through the enclosed area, when you 
come out you'll notice that the walls have disappeared.  Keep doing the same 
thing you have been doing but obviously keep an eye on how close to the edge 
you are.  This especially holds true once you're around the bend because the 
path will start constricting to a very thin area in the middle, make sure you 
always stay in the centre until it opens up again at the section.  There's one 
final large  turn to the right, drift around this and then continue on the the 
finish line.  There's plenty of recharge panels on the course so your 
willingness to boost should only be held back by how comfortable you are at 
high speeds on dangerous courses that send dead ends at you.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:09:849) The staff ghost on this course is 
rather difficult if you aren't trying to use any of the more advanced 
techniques to beat him, I say this because the staff ghost actually uses them 
himself!  If you follow behind him you'll notice that he seems to get random 
speed boosts on the dead end corners, that's because he's utilizing the shift 
boost technique, so I recommend just going ahead and reading the time trial 
section.  I will tell you however that there's absolutely no reason you need 
to stoop to his level though, you can kick his ass without fancy moves like 
that, all you need is a strong backbone and a fast car.  The car I'm referring 
to is the Combat Cannon Z.  Now I'm telling you it is going to be very hard, 
if you choose to do it this way it will be one of the hardest staff ghosts.  I 
wasn't even sure if it was possible without copying his technique but I tried 
it myself two seconds ago and beat him using the Combat Cannon Z.  The thing 
is you're going to have to accept the fact that you'll be absolutely clobbered 
i nthe first and even second lap.  In fact at the end of the first lap I was 
behind by three seconds, and behind by one second by the final lap.  There's 
nothing you can do to start except watch him fly off into the distance.  Just 
hit all the booster panels and avoid all the walls, like I said expect to be 
about three seconds behind on the second lap (you should aim for 2.5 seconds 
though, it's not too difficult.)  Now on the second lap despite the fact that 
he's still using the shift boosts, he's a big sissy and if afraid to boost at 
every physically possible chance, but that's what you're going to have to do.  
In fact you'll be going so fast the the majority of your steering will be done 
with the L and R triggers while you rest the bend in your thumb on the A 
button and slam the Y button with your tip.  I'm serious when I say do NOT 
stop pressing the Y button until you reach a certain point.  That point is the 
big left curve you'll come to just after the walls disappear.  After coming 
out of the enclosed area boost once but then stop.  Let yourself go around 
that large corner at a normal speed and then boost once coming out of it.  
Save some boost for just after you get around the final right turn, then boost 
over the recharge panel and speed into the final lap.  Use the exact same 
technique here as well, in fact I find that he does rather poorly in the first 
lap, if you caught up by two seconds on the second, doing the exact same run 
on the third will probably result in catching up by three seconds.  Simple 
math tells us that if you're losing by three seconds on lap one, and catch up 
by 2 + 3 seconds for the next two, you're going to beat him by two seconds.  
Beating him by that much isn't very likely, but at least you'll win.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:52:211) For those who understandably find the 
previous strategy difficult, or those that just want the best time you'll need 
to familiarize yourself with the shift boosts.  If you got used to them on 
Cosmo Terminal that's perfect because they're about ten times easier here.  As 
you approach the dead end corners what you want to do is stay in the lane 
that's going to drop off, but as close as you can to the edge near the next 
road.  If it happens that the road continues on the right, the instant you fly 
off the edge jam the R trigger to jump onto the right path (through the wall) 
and get yourself a nice shift boost.  Not only are these easier to do than 
normal ones but they also give you the shift boosts almost every time, I would 
wager some of it is attributed to passing through the wall and that the extra 
bumps almost guarantees the boost, but even in the areas where the walls are 
gone they're still not that hard to do.  Practice using them on this course 
and with the Combat Planet Z you should be able to not only beat the staff 
ghost at his own game, but come off with some incredible times as well.
|  -----o------\                   Fire Field: Undulation                    |

BASIC ~ This is actually quite a fun course, though also a very dangerous one 
that continues the trend of courses with no walls.  You'll have to problems 
with the Acro Lynx G4 so you may as well select it.  To start off it's just a 
whole bunch of large hills one after the other.  Ride up and down and try to 
avoid getting carsick.  On one of the last large hills you may find yourself a 
don't bounce to much when you land back on the course.  There's a jump at the 
bottom but it really doesn't give you any advantage on the first lap so it's 
best to go around it and position yourself for the upcoming section.  Try and 
get yourself as straight as possible, there's no easy way to get over these 
bumps without at least bouncing around a little bit.  On the next hill it's 
another one that's likely going to launch you a bit, remember to hold the 
analog stick up a little so that you're angled with the sloping ground.  Over 
the next couple there are two booster panels on the elft and right sides, 
choose one and then speed up the hill and over the edge, diving as you fall.  
Coming up is a jump, at this speed it's a good idea to hit it and just hold up 
to dive as you fall, try and aim to the centre and straighten yourself out 
when you hit.  Nail one of the boost panels and it's on to lap two.  Now while 
you're boosting manually it's important to remember first of all that it's 
going to make the hills a whole lot bumpier.  It also makes the first jump 
worth taking as long as you jam down the L trigger.  Now when you come to the 
second jump you probably won't want to dive immediately, there is a suspended 
large pipe in the air and you're likely to hit it.  Try aiming yourself while 
in mid air and doing your best to dive once you pass over it.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:06:916) Now fortunately for you, this is 
pretty much considered to be the "beginner's" staff ghost, it is indeed 
probably the easiest in the game to beat, of course like any other staff ghost 
it's no pushover, but it seems like on this course you're much more likely to 
get yourself killed than actually lose the race.  The car you want is the same 
one you used for the Cosmo Terminal, the Gallant Cannon G4.  Just follow the 
basic strategy for the entire first lap, while he will pull ahead at the 
beginning you will quickly catch up with max speed and I guarantee you that 
with the Gallant Cannon G4 a normal run without utilizing any special tricks, 
as long as you don't have any screw ups, will leave you with a minimum lead of 
four seconds by the second lap.  On the second and third lap however he 
becomes serious, the problem for him is that you've got such a huge lead that 
closing the gap proves extremely difficult.  Your problem however is that 
boosting constantly, while a great asset to your speed, is incredibly 
dangerous and also makes for a lot of bumps if you don't keep correcting your 
angle after going over every bump.  One thing you can do to improve your lead 
comes just before the large drop off, after the side side by side boost 
panels.  Hit the boost panel on the left and then wait for approximately one 
second.  Now instead of going all the way to the top of this hill and over the 
edge, jam the L trigger and go over the side of the course.  You should easily 
be able to glide along and land on that lower part of the course you usually 
drop to, this saves you an incredible amount of time that would have been 
wasted going all the way up to the top, and your very small angle of descent 
means a soft landing when you hit the course again.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:51:733) Now for the ever improved time on this 
course, I must say that my time on this course is probably my best, I remember 
the run particularly and how much my heart was pounding as I approached the 
finish line.  For a third timein a row the key to success in this course is 
the same key  as the previous two Diamond Cup courses, the shift boosts.  
Using the gallant Cannon G4 you can get to massive shift boosts in this 
course, though it's not nearly as dangerous as the ones on Cosmo Terminal, 
it's quite a bit more dangerous than the ones on Lateral Shift, so it's the 
medium level of difficulty I guess.  Starting off the race you can get shift 
you go over the top of the hills, almost as you start to descend.  This works 
a lot better on the minor small hills than it does on the large ones in fact I 
find myself using the technique pretty much on every other hill, starting with 
the second one.  The next place it becomes effective is during the hilly 
section with the two recharge panels coming up to, including and past those 
side by side boosters, though you're still going to want to do the trick I 
mentioned in the staff ghost section where you drop off the side of the course 
to save time.  Get as many shift boosts as you can in each lap, even when 
boosting, although it's next to impossible to try it while boosting over a 
large hill, you can still get it on the smaller ones in later laps.
|  -----o------\                   Aeropolis: Dragon Slope                   |

BASIC ~ Another great course, this ones is home to the largest straight drop 
in the game.  Just to be consistent take the Acro Lynx G4.   Begin the race 
and boost around the first corner, and the second one as well.  Be careful on 
the third, it turns on an odd angle and if you get too close to the wall you 
risk smashing into it near the end.  Hit one of the two side by side booster 
panels and then the one in the middle to send yourself over the edge.  
Immediately start diving down, you'll notice there are different levels of 
road you can land on, but for this lap at least you'll most likely be landing 
on the lowest one every time.  Make sure to correct yourself before you hit.  
Continue doing this down and down again until you reach the bottom.  Down 
there is a boost panel followed by a long dangerous path of ice surrounded on 
the side by dirt and with no walls to boost.  Navigate this ice patch to 
another safer section of the course which takes you around a dangerous left 
turn and on a skinny path over a hill.  It's pretty straightforward toward the 
end.  On the second lap the main thing you are concerned with is the large 
drop.  While boosting you're obviously going to have more speed, and with that 
more distance.  You need to keep an eye out and make sure to level yourself 
early if you're going to land on a higher platform.  The higher up the better 
because it means you'll be able to drop toward the very bottom from the 
highest position and accumulate the most speed.  I'll outline how some of this 
can be used to your advantage in the next two sections.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:59:076) Ironic that the easiest staff ghost in 
the game is followed by the second easiest staff ghost in the game.  To be 
completely honest without using any special tricks or techniques I found 
myself beating it by 18 seconds on a practice run, when this course is played 
right you can absolutely obliterate this ghost and it's all about how you do 
the drop off.  Switch over to the Gallant Cannon G4 for this course, I 
wouldn't use any other ship.  On the first lap it's really not that important, 
just dive each time and hit the boost panels at the end and you'll be fine.  
It really starts to come into play on the second and third laps.  You'll need 
to be boosting all the way up to the edge before you drop, now this is a bit 
tricky considering the challenging corner that comes before the edge but if 
you can successfully utilize the quick turn you should be able to avoid 
hitting the wall.  When you drop after boosting you're still probably going to 
hit the lowest road, but that's okay.  Right before you land correct your 
angle for a smooth landing and boost just as you hit, this will send you at an 
extremely high speed into another boost panel over the edge, now you'll almost 
definitely land on the middle one.  You shouldn't need to boost when you land 
though, hit the booster at the end and this should send you down to the 
highest platform right on top of the boost panel and give you the ability to 
dive for the highest drop in the game until you land on the main road at the 
bottom.  Boost as you hit and nail the booster panel as well to go into the 
ice section at an insane speed.  Boost along the ice and recharge at the end.  
Repeat the process one more time on lap 3 for a guaranteed victory.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:34:770) Get ready for some insane speeds here.  
The difference between the time trial strategy and the staff ghost strategy is 
the inclusion on shift boosts, MTS and track jumping, but all in extremely 
small quantities.  First of all the most used of the three is MTS, you should 
be able to use this at the first couple of turns on laps two and three, but to 
make it effective you need to be able to use it accurately enough so that you 
can ride along the recharge panel as well.  This isn't really too important if 
you can't do it well.  The most important place to use MTS is on the ice patch 
after the huge drop.  Going into the ice patch start MTSing to the left to get 
a huge boost in speed, then switch to the right MTS mid way through to top it 
off.  This is important in trying to get the best possible time.  Finally 
there's the track skipping, first of all if you boost before going over the 
edge at the very top, and boost while you land each time you should be able to 
(if you're going fast enough) land on the top section of road on the second 
row rather than the last row, in this case if you boost when you land and hit 
the boost panel going over the edge, hold the L trigger to shift to the left a 
bit in mid air and completely skip the third level of platforms, this will be 
an enormous drop resulting in probably the highest top speed you've ever seen, 
and even better if you can level out and boost when you hit the road at the 
bottom to try and maintain it.  Finally if you're boosting during that skinny 
section, when you go over the top of the hill there's a good chance you'll be 
launched into the air, use this to glide a little to the right and drop down 
just after the S shaped turn at the bottom to save some time.  Now the third 
and least important trick is the shift boost, there's only one time to use 
this and that's on the final little bump at the end on the first lap.  If you 
go over this bump you'll notice that your car bounces a bit and you lose speed 
on the first lap, well if you hold up just a tiny bit on the analog stick to 
point your nose down when going over this, there's a good chance you can get a 
shift boost upon hitting the course again, it's not much but it helps.
|  -----o------\                Phantom Road: Slim-line Slits                |

BASIC ~ And now for my least favourite track in the universe, and I know I'm 
not alone on that one.  Personally I'd go with the Acro Lynx G4 here, might as 
well continue the trend.  This whole track is composed of very tight paths 
that go around large curves and pretty much beg you to crash into the wall, 
there are also some unpleasant dead end drops that come up here and there, so 
you need to be aware of what's ahead of you at all times.  Start off going up 
and around the large curve to the right, and down a huge drop to a booster 
panel.  Ahead of you is a fork in the road, take the left path and then the 
right path at the next corner.  Watch out for the ice on the right side, now 
here is where it tried to trick you.  If you stay on the recharge panel until 
the end you're going to end up flying off the cliff, the road is wide but is 
suddenly cut short and only continues along a thin stretch from the right 
side.  Take this path and then get over to the left side when it opens up 
again to avoid the next drop.  You'll want to stay in the exact centre for the 
next one and go around the rather sharp turn to the right and past the finish 
line.  Now on the second and third lap there's a couple of things you need to 
watch out for.  First of all if you boost like crazy right off the starting 
line you're going to end up launching off the course at the huge hill and 
while it's not to hard to land again, it'll lose you a fair bit of time.  
Secondly it gets a lot more dangerous not only because you're going extremely 
fast but because you need to ride along those recharge panels and then shift 
left or right at the last second to avoid going over the edge.  Not pleasant.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:03:268) Switch over to the Acro Cannon G4 
here, the cockpit should make controlling at high speeds a bit easier.  
Whether you take it as a good thing or not, this is one staff ghost that can 
be very easily beaten given enough practice.  You have one glaring advantage 
over him, and that's how much better the Acro Cannon G4 at max speed is than 
his car.  The disadvantage you have is that the staff ghost isn't constantly 
bouncing off all the walls, and yes that may be a bit of a generalization to 
those who control well on this course, but defeating the ghost just means 
closing the gap between constant high speeds, and constant slowing and 
stopping after hitting the walls.  If you even just play it safe with this 
car, boosting on straight paths and stuff you should still be able to beat the 
ghost by a good deal of time just by avoiding collisions.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:52:476) Now for this I really don't have any 
super special techniques, this is probably the only track where I play my best 
times about the same way I would play the game normally without trying to do 
any special tricks.  The main difference between this and the staff ghost is 
that when racing the staff ghost you can afford to play it safe around the 
corners, but if you're going for the best possible time you have to be 
boosting non-stop... all the time!  Find a delicate balance of control using 
both the analog and L/R triggers so that you can keep boosting around the 
corners and still be stable enough to remain away from the barries.

|                                   AX Cup                           (00050) |
|  -----o------\                   Aeropolis: Screw Drive                    |

BASIC ~ The AX cup starts out with a fairly simple course, the Acro Lynx G4 
works fine here.  There's not a lot to consider when racing this course, it's 
your basic introductory simple track made only slightly more difficult by the 
slopes and hills.  The only real difficult section is the final turn, which is 
a large U shaped turn to the left, make sure you utilize the quick turn 
technique in order to avoid smashing into any walls here and you'll be fine.

STAFF GHOST (Time to beat: 01:06:690) The staff ghost on this course is no 
pushover but with the right car you should be fine.  If you're used to the 
Quick Cannon G4 and can control it well, then it makes a fine car for 
defeating the staff ghost on this course.  You just need to understand that 
the majority of the turning using this car is done with the L and R triggers, 
not the analog stick.  It can turn the sharpest of corners with ease though 
using both the analog and the trigger buttons, so that final U turn at the end 
can be taken at a fantastic speed allowing you to really catch up on the staff 
ghost.  The main difficulty on this course is the recharge panel in the 
middle, while you're boosting on laps two and three you aren't going to be 
able to hit this very eaisly, though you may be on the left side of the road 
after the turn it's actually a lot easier to recharge on the right panel as 
the slope is a lot less severe, aim for that one when trying to fill up your 
meter.  Boosting constantly the whole way should land you a time of 1:05.

TIME TRIAL (Personal Best: 00:59:638) Now on to the time trial, there's plenty 
of ways to beef up your time on this course, and MTS is your golden ticket.  
You should find places to MTS constantly here, there's tons of corners and 
tons of chances to do it, even on the first lap it helps.  It's extremely 
dangerous in two places though, first of all on the first lap and every other 
lap you need to be very careful if you try and do it on the tight corner at 
the end, it's perfectly possible but extremely difficult.  Secondly on the 
later two laps when you're boosting, you are going to want to avoid doing it 
directly after the first turn.  Often if you're trying to MTS over that little 
insignificant hill you'll accidentally end up bumping yourself off the course.
There's also one more important thing to note, and it's so ridiculously 
effective that it may cut off more time than all the MTS combined.  On the 
last lap what you're going to want to do is only go across the recharge panel 
for about half the time and purposely let your meter fill only a third to a 
half full.  Now boost every bit of energy you have left so that you're on 
death's door by the time you approach the sharp U turn.  Now as you approach 
it straighten yourself out in the centre of the course and get ready to do an 
MTS to the left, forget about correcting yourself though just MTS and building 
up as much speed as possible and slam into the far wall of the curve, there 
really aren't any exact guidelines for this because it's at your discretion, 
but you'll notice when you do this you'll obviously end up killing yourself 
but bounce off the wall and fly off the course in a seemingly random direction 
depending on how much you bounced.  Now when flying off the course like this 
you may at times see speeds upwards of 6000 km/h, imagine it just so happened 
you flew off the course in the direction of the finish line.  This is 
absolutely 100% possible and actually happens quite often, practice this 
suicide finish so that you can do it with some consistency and it will cut an 
incredible amount of time off your run.  
|  -----o------\                 Outer Space: Meteor Stream                  |

BASIC ~ The Acro Lynx G4 works perfectly fine for this course.  This is quite 
an interesting level full of all sorts of different features, mostly ice 
ground that you'll have to navigate, but that shouldn't be too much of a 
problem.  Begin the race an drop down, stick to the middle where you'll hit a 
boost panel.  Now ahead of you is a tunnel made of ice, there's a boost panel 
right out in front of it, immediately after hitting this boost you'll want to 
quick turn to the right and then get ready to do it again to the left.  Aim 
yourself so that when you drift left you'll slide into the booster panel 
before straightening out around the corner.  Stay in the middle again to hit 
another booster, and another further down.  Now there's a tunnel that spirals 
around in circles, what you want to do is just stay moving in a straight line 
no matter what the tunnel does, try and avoid pressing any directional buttons 
unless you're sure you're on an angle.  Coming out of the tunnel you should 
still be around the centre of the path and ready to hit the next boost.  Now 
when you come to this next area slide over to the left a little so that you 
take less of a jolt going over the bump and then fly out of the tunnel, 
correct your angle of descent so that you hit the ground softly.  In front of 
you is a fork, the right path leads to three booster panels and the left path 
leads to recharge panels, it's pretty obvious which you want on the first lap.  
Take the right path and hit the three boosters followed by the final one when 
the roads connect again before you reach the finish line.  On lap two you need 
to be more careful because the high speeds will often send you off the track, 
especially in areas like after the first ice tunnel.  Make sure to make use of 
the recharge panels on the left branch in the later laps.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 01:38:178) The staff ghost puts up quite a good 
fight, but with the Combat Planet Z you can put up a better one.  One thing to 
note is that the staff ghost always takes the right branch meaning that during 
most of the race he has very little extra boost power, this can be both to 
your advantage and disadvantage because you'll be able to catch up well during 
the main course, but you'll drop behind by a good 1-2 seconds near the end, so 
you'll have to be winning by quite a bit in order to stay ahead.  On the final 
lap there's really to reason to recharge since the race is almost over, so 
take the right branch on both the first and last laps.  In fact it probably is 
best to take it on all laps, you just need to be good and filling up to full 
on the last recharge panel before you fly out of the tunnel.  To do this you 
should hang to the right side of the road when approaching and NOT be 
boosting, don't worry about falling behind here because all the energy you 
store will make up for it.  You should be able to hit the recharge panel right 
when it starts and then boost while you're charging to fly out of the tunnel 
and land far beyond the slope where correcting your angle should be easy.  You 
might want to check out the time trial strategy for the staff ghost as well.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:28:843) The Combat Planet Z remains your 
weapon of choice here as well.  There's a few things to note, mainly that the 
only advanced tactic worth utilizing on this course are shift boosts, but 
there's still only a couple places to get them, a good times mainly depends on 
your ability to control your craft well and get as much boost as possible on 
the recharge panels since you'll be skipping the biggest ones on each lap.  
There are two places to get shift boost primarily, one is very easy and one is 
not so easy.  The easy one comes just metres before the finish line.  After 
the final boost panel as you're approaching the finish line, on the right turn 
you want to get as close to the wall as possible.  You'll get a tiny little 
bump if you're right up to the wall on this turn, and it can easily become a 
shift boosting if you're holding the R trigger when you hit it.  The second 
place is a bit harder, on the final bump before the recharge panel leading out 
of the tunnel, if you hit it near the middle but you're holding the R trigger 
there's a good chance you'll shift boost right over the recharge panel, this 
actually helps out quite a bit.  Both of these can still be just as easily 
utilized on laps two and three.  For the best time on this course you 
absolutely cannot take the left branch on any lap so as you can assume the 
most important thing in the entire race is filling up your boost meter to max 
on the recharge panel leading out of the tunnel.  Practice coming into this 
area at high speeds but still aiming well enough to stay in the centre.
|  -----o------\                  Port Town: Cylinder Wave                   |

BASIC ~ Select either the Acro Lynx G4, or the Combat Cannon Z whichever 
you're more comfortable with, or any other car you like really.  This is 
another course similar to the Cylinder Knot, you can go around all sides which 
makes hitting all the boosts rather difficult, also it's not a perfectly round 
cylinder so going around gets rather awkward at times.  Star tthe race and hit 
the booster panel, then flip over to the other side to hit the next one.  When 
flipping over make sure you do it gradually so that you reduce the bump as 
much as possible.  The next one is on the other side again, but closer to the 
middle on the inside of the turn coming up.  Stay on the inside of the turn 
but gradually go right and hit the booster.  Flip over if you want to find a 
recharge panel.  Back on the other side is one booster followed by another on 
the inside of the turn and then one more which is probably the hardest booster 
ever to hit since it's on a very thin part of the inner curve.  Just beyond it 
is a junction, left and right are relative, but if you're on the side where 
you can see the boosts and the recharge panel, take the left one and hit all 
three boosts.  Drop down and hit the boost, then get on the outer side of the 
next turn and hit the boost.  Just to your left is another one and directly 
after that one more on the right.  Flip over to hit the final one and proceed 
down the very thin tube and off the edge.  Dive down and start the second lap.  
You'll need to be careful when boosting on this course, if you ever lose 
circles and wind up going in reverse.  Judge the track ahead of you first.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 02:06:837) The staff ghost on this course uses 
the most powerful machine in the game, Fat Shark, but luckily he doesn't use 
it very well.  Even making a number of mistakes you can still come out on top, 
the important thing is that you know which boosters are where and that you are 
capable of navigating around the cylinder without bumping too much and losing 
speed.  The staff ghost is pretty hesitant to boost most of the time, and he 
doesn't hit the largest recharge panels on the right path so contantly 
boosting except for the most dangerous corners is the key to victory

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 01:52:031) Getting a fast time on this course is 
extremely difficult.  There are no special tricks to use and very few ways of 
really getting ahead without painstaking memorization of the course and 
planning you route in full.  You must eliminate all speed loss when going 
around the cylinder by using the L and R triggers to help you glide around the 
steepest point, aim for all the boost panels on the edge and come up with the 
shortest route between two points, if there are two boosters near each other 
and one is on the bottom of the cylinder, you have to know whether it's on the 
right or left side and go around that edge to save more time.  It's not easy 
or pleasant, this is one of the harder courses, but for those who have trouble 
with some of the more advanced techniques, they should be able to do well.
|  -----o------\                   Lightning: Thunder Road                   |

BASIC ~ This is the second longest course in the game, beaten out only by the 
one that follows after it.  Again the Acro Lynx G4 and Combat Planet Z work 
great here.  The beginning of the course starts with a couple of boosters and 
a 90 degree turn, get used to these because there's almost no other kind here.  
Make sure you're proficient with the quick turn because it'll be a real time 
and energy saver you can use to cut the corners at extremely high speeds.  
Follow along underneath some overpasses up to a Z shaped turn to the left.  
There's a tunnel after leading to a drop off, dive straight down while 
airborne and then immediately quick turn right, and left.  Soon enough you'll 
reach a dangerous looking section of road with six 90 degree turns in a row, 
you could painfully try to quick turn for all of them or you could plan ahead 
and get over to the left side of the road and aim yourself to the right a 
little in a straight line path that passes through all of them without the 
need to turn at all.  Beyond that is a very thin road that curves left and a 
drop, dive down and bump your way along the ground to another tunnel.  At the 
top is a section recharge panel and hills.  Follow this and get ready for a 
sharp quick turn to the left, and you're on your way to the finish.  Be 
extremely careful with your boost on the next laps, dangerous things can 
happen at high speeds, especially during the tight corners and drops.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 03:18:272) The staff ghost is refreshingly easy 
to beat on this course using the Combat Planet Z, the car is just so much 
faster and more powerful than the ghost's, and on such a large course this 
really becomes obvious.  If you're constantly smashing walls or afraid to 
boost during half the course you're still going to find yourself behind, but 
you need to overcome these obstacles.  First of all there's enough recharge 
panels for you to boost constantly without running out, the problem is that 
boosting on those tight curves is almost impossible to do without hitting the 
wall, so use your discretion and boost like mad during some of the more 
straight paths or simple turns.  There's no reason you can beat the staff 
ghost by more than 10 seconds just by boosting non-stop.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 02:59:568) This is a great course for time trial, 
when you're using the Combat Planet Z and just trying to get going as fast as 
possible, this course really lets you experience the insane speeds that you'll 
reach.  There's a couple extra things to note for time trial mode, first this 
is actually quite a good course for shift boosts, in fact some of them are so 
easy to do that most people have problem used them often without noticing on 
this course.  They occur during that hilly section near the end of the race, 
during laps two and three if you're boosting over that section and trying you 
best to stay on the recharge panel you're going to end up getting a shift 
boost at the top of every hill.  Now this will occur if you're trying to stay 
on the recharge and controlling with the L and R trigger buttons, it won't 
occur if you're steering with the analog stick.  The other main thing to note 
al;ready noted it yourself.  On laps two and three if you're boosting you'll 
get a hell of a lot of air off that drop and instead of diving straight down, 
you should hold the R trigger to glide in mid air and land on the road that 
continues to the right, completely jumping that turn and eliminating the need 
to lose your speed, it works very well.  With these two techniques and 
boosting like there's no tomorrow, it's actually possible to see times below 
3:00 on this course, but it still takes phenomenal amounts of practice.
|  -----o------\                     Green Plant: Spiral                     |

BASIC ~ Now on to the longest and second last course of the game, this is the 
last "real" course considering the final one is just a big oval.  But this one 
is enormous and is eaisly the longest in the game.  Choose a car you like, 
Acro Lynx G4 is fine, and begin the race.  It starts you out heading into a 
tunnel, in order to avoid flying off the course you need to glide around to 
the top section which is where the road continues afterward.  Hit the boost 
and go along the road until you're dropped down onto the cylinder.  Dive off 
the edge and choose one of the two branches, either is fine and hit the 
booster.  The road is actually pretty straightforward for quite awhile, at 
least until you come to the next little drop off.  Stay close to the right to 
avoid any jolt you might get from going off at an angle then stay on the 
inside of the curve onto a curved section of ice, and onward to the end of the 
track.  Keep it up for the next two laps obviously.

STAFF GHOST ~ (Time to beat: 03:50:740) On such a long course you need to be 
fairly consistent in order to stay ahead of the staff ghost, meaning that more 
time obviously means more chance to screw up, but fortunately much of the 
course is made up of straight and wide paths so your chances of slamming the 
walls are somewhat reduced.  Use the Pretty Cannon G4 on this course, it 
handles very well and is a good deal faster than the staff ghost's car.  Much 
of the strategy for beating this ghost just lies in the fact that you can 
catch up easily on long straight-away stretches, but besides that and cutting 
the corners as close as you can, what you can also do on the second and third 
laps is after the part where you drop off the cylinder near the beginning and 
come to the path fork, whichever one you take after you hit the boost panel 
pull up your nose just a tiny little bit and you should be able to clear a 
decent portion of that open area in the middle, this helps quite a bit 
actually and should keep you in front of the ghost, the car does the rest.

TIME TRIAL ~ (Personal Best: 03:30:670) I prefer the Pretty Cannon G4 for this 
as well, it's an amazing ship and I thought it was a bit unfortunate I wasn't 
able to use it to get my best times on some other courses, but this is another 
one where I was able to beat the staff ghost by almost 20 seconds, so you know 
the ship can do the job well if given the chance.  Besides boosting constantly 
which is of course the story of every time trial, there are a couple of other 
things you can do, mainly in the MTS area.  I find MTS to be effective in a 
couple of places here.  First of all at the beginning on laps two and three it 
can be used for the turns leading up to the cylinder section.  Secondly and 
more importantly I find is if you are proficient at aiming your MTS drifts, 
it's very helpful on the right turn which has two patches of recharge stuff on 
either side of the road about mid way through the course.  One final place as 
well I'd suggest it of course is the huge sharp turn near the end before the 
ice where you're on an angle, it's a bit difficult to use effectively here but 
if you can manage you'll really speed this up.  Takes practice of course.
|  -----o------\                      Mute City: Sonic Oval                  |

BASIC ~ What possible strategy could you use here is the obvious question, but 
it's a track like any other and there's ways to play it.  The are only two 
basic ways to save time on this course, one is effective use of the booster 
panels and the other is effective turning on the large curves, you're going to 
want to stay as close to the wall as you possibly can, but still need to hit 
the boost panels so find a good mix of the two to keep speed.

STAFF GHOST & TIME TRIAL ~ (Time to beat: 00:46:893, Personal Best: 00:46:056)
It just so happens that the one course I'm not very good at has to be the 
shortest and simplest course i nthe game, I can barely beat the staff ghost so 
I'm not sure how helpful these tips can be.  First of all I recommend either 
tht Tornado Circle-V2 or Fat Shark.  When using these ships in order to keep 
up with the staff ghost you have to utilize the same trick that it is using, 
this is that whenever you come to a boost panel on a curve, instead of hitting 
the boost and then turning you need to turn and aim yourself in the direction 
you want to go before hitting the boost, this usually means using the quick 
turn on the left right before hitting the booster.  Second of all you should 
go nuts with the MTS on the corners, try and slide into boost panels as you go 
around but still... it's going to be incredibly difficult.  I encourage you to 
experiment and come up with things that work for you.

|                                 Story Mode                         (00000) |
|  -----o------\                    Captain Falcon Trains                    |

Mission 1: Get all capsules on the track and finish within 80 seconds!

This is basically your introduction to the game, you have three laps to 
collect a total of 25 capsules in three laps.  The track is shaped like a 
simple oval, so it won't be hard to just navigate around the course, the 
difficulty comes in making sure you collect all the capsules in the allotted 
time.  When first selecting your car a healthy mix of acceleration and max 
speed works great, but it's really not that critical for this mission.  If you 
find yourself having difficulty hitting the capsules move toward acceleration, 
if you have difficulty with the time limit move toward max speed.

Begin the race by making a straight line through the first two capsules.  Hit 
the boost pad and do your best to stay on that middle line, this way you will 
collect two more before the next boost bringing your total up to 4/25.  
Continue to remain on the middle line and collect the next three before the 
third boost panel.  Now there's a recharge path in the middle and capsules all 
over the place, don't worry about trying to get them all, they purposely make 
it so you need the three laps.  Take the right path but stick close to the 
recharge panel (not on it).  This will lead you through four more capsules 
before reacing the end of the recharge area and giving you a total of about 
11/25.  Slide back to the middle and stay on this line, grab the capcule and 
hit the boost panel.  The boost panel should send you straight into another 
capsule just before the final recharge pad.  Stick with the middle route to 
hit two more and net you approximately 16/25 by lap two.  You're doing well.

Lap two gives you the ability to boost but you can EASILY complete this 
challenge without boosting at all and staying at your normal speed will lessen 
your chance of missing some of the capsules.  On lap two just do whatever you 
want until you come to the first recharge panel in the middle.  Take the left 
path and collect all four of the capsules in a row on that side, and a fifth 
one just as you go past the end of the recharge panel.  Now don't aim for that 
booster in the centre, instead hug the left wall to collect another capsule 
coming out of the turn.  Now you should have about 22/25 going into lap three.

You should have lots of time still remaining, over thirty seconds even.  The 
final three capsules are lying right in the middle of that centre recharge 
panel, in the first lap you went right, in the second you went left now run 
straight over it to collect the remaining three.  If you happened to miss any 
on previous laps you should have adequate time to collect them all before 
dashing to the finish and completing the first challenge!
|  -----o------\                   Goroh: The Vengeful Samurai               |

Mission 2: Beat Samurai Goroh to the goal!

The idea of this challenge is a one on one race down a dangerous canyon road.  
It winds around in many S shaped patterns and huge boulders are constantly 
tumbling down from above.  The setting you want for this race is all the way 
to max speed, you'll need it to keep up with him.  Now the most important this 
you must remember is this, at the very start the game gives you boost power 
but you must not use it!  Getting ahead of Goroh will only make him speed up 
to keep up with you and in the long run you won't be any better off, just lay 
off it for now, with max speed you can easily keep him in sight.

There are four lanes in the road that I'll be referring to.  At the start of 
the race drive into the far right lane, here you will be safe from the first 
two sets of falling boulders.  On the sharp turn to the right you might have a 
bit more trouble staying alive here, not to mention the right line is by far 
the most dangerous and most likely to end up flying off the edge.  Stick to 
the right lane for now and just be weary of that last boulder, it looks close 
but it won't hit you in this lane.  Now on the next left turn get into the 
left lane, just before the turn ends quickly move as far right as you can 
without going over the edge to avoid the falling rock.

If you look up at your "rest: counter at the top which is the number to the 
right of the two character faces and tells you how much distance is remaining 
you should be at around 11,000.  Get back into the right lane until you come 
to the right turn, you can see a ton of rocks up on the cliff.  Once your past 
the first wave slowly slide over to the left side to be safer, then back again 
to the right.  Basically there's a barrage of rocks around the middle of the 
turn that will make the right lane dangerous, but you want to get back into it 
as soon as possible.  From about 4000 - 2500 you can stick with this lane but 
you'll probably have to slide over a bit to dodge the rocks that come down 
around 2500.  Now from here get into the right lane and start boosting!  If 
you boost from around 2000 you should easily have enough to get you going at a 
fantastic speed toward the end and send you flying past Samurai Goroh.

This certainly isn't a template you have to follow, to be honest with the 
exception of the rock fall around 2500 remaining, you can stay in the right 
lane the entire time and be  safe, only a bit of navigation is required.
|  -----o------\                    High Stakes in Mute City                 |

Mission 3: Reach the goal first!

This is the first real race of the story mode.  You must win a three lap race 
against a number of other racers.  The catch is that the course is quite 
difficult, made up entirely of 90 degree turns.  You are given one advantage 
though, at the corner of most turns is a special ramp that launches you in the 
air, effectively giving you the ability to cut the corners.  Select the max 
speed option before beginning this race.

At the start there are no jumps so in order to get around the corners without 
risking slamming the wayy make sure you cut them as tight as you can, turn 
right at the very edge of the corner, there's a right, left, right and another 
right.  Starting at this corner you can see a jump on the left side, it might 
not be too obvious at first put run into it and you will be launched in the 
air.  Turn your craft to the left and avoid tipping the nose up or down.  Use 
the L and R buttons as well to help you glide.  Turn the next two corners and 
jump over the left turn, there's another jump in front of the dirt path but 
unless you are really poor at moving between the paths I don't recommend you 
take it because it's faster to just keep accelerating on the ground.  Cut the 
next corner with the jump and the one after that.  A couple more right turns 
and a left turn and you're done your first lap.

Now that you have boost power things become somewhat more dangerous.  You're 
going to have to make sure you fully understand the concept of drifting.  
Since you'll be boosting just to stay ahead of the competition you will need 
to drift around corners in order to avoid the walls.  As you approach a corner 
take it like the following, say it's a right turn:  You should hold right on 
the analog stick and then tap L and R at the same time, this will send you 
into a drift.  While in a drift you can then let go of the L trigger and just 
hold the R trigger to perform a sharp right turn.  Practice and master this 
technique.  On the corners when you hit the jumps you will find that you jump 
a hell of a lot higher at such fantastic speeds, don't let this overwhelm you 
and just make sure you never end up flying off the course.  After the dirt 
path area around the next corner to the right you will come to a Z shaped 
turn, if you hit the jump on this corner while boosting you can actually jump 
two corners and get a serious lead on your opponents.  There are no jumps near 
the end and the turns are sharp and hard to see so be ready to drift a lot.  
The main difference between laps two and three is that on lap three you will 
probably have to deal with running low on boost, make sure to slow down a bit 
when approaching the recharge panels, the extra boost you get will balance any 
speed you lost in the long run.
|  -----o------\                 Challenge of the Bloody Chain               |

Mission 4: Crush Michael Chain's machine and hit the checkpoint first!

The idea of this mission is to destroy all the cars on the map and then 
finally to destroy Michael Chain's car itself.  Max speed if definitely what 
you're going to want here, you won't be hitting a lot of walls.  

This mission is a much more difficult one than the previous ones, destroying 
all the cars isn't much of a challenge, the real challenge lies in destroying 
Michael Chain before you hit the finish line.  But lets start at the 
beginning, right off the bat use some boost to catch up to the first three 
cars and attack with the Z spin attack, I don't recommend using the dash 
attack at all, the Z button spin works much better for the big crowds.  Don't 
just go up behind a car and start spinning, you need to move left and right to 
smash the cars with your momentum while spinning.  If you want to maximize 
your kills then you should drive up behind cars, hit the boost button and then 
slam the analog stick in the direction of the cars while you're still boosting 
to smash as many as you can, in the normal difficulty they will go down in a 
single good hit.  Mid way through the race you will come to a recharge panel.

By the recharge panel you should probably have about half of them dead, or 15 
kills already.  You can still keep smashing cars even on the recharge panel 
since it only takes a single good hit to kill them.  The more cars you smash 
the closer you will get to Michael Chain until every other car on the track is 
gone and you automatically catch up to him.  He will keep his speed 
approximately the same as yours so you get many chances for the good hits but 
be careful as he will attack back.  If you get a good chance for a dash attack 
(performed by holding X and pressing left or right on the analog stick) then 
you might want to try it as this attack can be pretty powerful if aimed 
correctly.  A few good hits will take him out then just cross the finish line.
|  -----o------\                         Save Jody!                          |

Mission 5: The power planet is going to blow!  Escape within 50 seconds!

If you look at the course preview you can see it's just a straight line, well 
that's correct however it's not going to be that easy, there are tons of 
obstacles here.  Max speed is your only choice here considering that it's just 
a straight line unless you really plan on hitting a lot of walls.

On normal mode they're really nice to you and give you far more time than 
you'll need, you can expect to be able to hit a number of obstacles and still 
be able to escape in the nick of time.  Here's how you should proceed, this is 
a guideline but the old adage of practice makes perfect applies to this level 
more than any other because it's really a matter of memorization.  You will 
find a number of capsules along the way and these recharge you boost meter, 
make sure to pick up as many as you can, missing them will really hurt.

Start boosting the instant you have control and stay on the exact middle line, 
you will go through one energy capsule and then a second one.  The instant you 
get the second one tap the L trigger because you are going to have to dodge a 
gate just slightly to the left.  Once you've passed through slide back to the 
middle again to get the capsule.  After you pick up the capsule hold the R 
trigger until you are riding directly in the centre of the right side of the 
wall, two gates will come up from the floor and ceiling and the only way to 
dodge them is to be driving on the side.  Slide back to the middle and grab 
the capsule as you make your way over to the left wall to avoid another set of 
horizontal gates.  Back to the middle again grab the capsule and stay in the 
middle!  Continue to stay in the middle until the next capsule, then slide 
left until you reach the curve in the wall but do not go up it, the next doors 
come in diagonally and the opening will be on the left side of the main road.

There's another capsule in the middle and a second diagonal door, this time 
with the opening on the right side.  When you get through it be ready to avoid 
the pillars and then shift to the middle and squeeze through the double 
closing doors.  Grab the capsule and slide to either the left or right because 
an X shaped door is closing with openings similar to those on both diagonal 
doors.  Get the capsule in the middle and slide up the side of the wall, you 
will have to avoid a set of double horizontal gates which is quite difficult.  
Once you're through straighten yourself out in the middle as much as possible 
because ahead of you beyond the capsule is a set of triple gates in the 
middle, you must be going perfectly straight to avoid them.  There is no 
capsule on the other side to the instant you're through you will have to 
position yourself on the side wall to avoid the hardest set of gates, three 
horizontal ones in a row.  If you can make it through this you're home free.  
Slide to the middle and hit all the boost panels, make sure you are going 
absolutely straight ahead so you don't miss the centre ramp.
|  -----o------\                     Black Shadow's Trap                     |

Mission 6: The bomb is speed sensitive!  Keep your speed over 700 km/h!

Despite being a speed related mission I actually recommend putting a far bit 
of your meter toward the acceleration side basically because driving normally 
you will easily be able to stay above 700 km/h no matter what you're set to, 
and the slower top speed will give you more reaction time.

Take it easy during this whole course and don't boost, at all, period.  There 
are a number of others generic cars on the road but each one of them will 
gladly move out of your way so if you see that you are coming up behind a car, 
don't worry too much as it will almost certainly be to the side as you 
approach.  Turns are dangerous but aren't too risky, as long as you make the 
majority of the turn even if you hit the wall it probably won't be severe 
enough to send you below 700 km/h.  There may be a few turns where you need to 
drift to get around them safely, but still very little danger.

The true danger comes at 11,000 remaining when all of a sudden you are forced 
over a patch of dirt.  When you approach this distance keep a close eye and 
get ready to boost!  If you don't boost here you will most certainly slow down 
too much and end up exploding.  Once you're beyond the preliminary dirt 
patches you come to a section with more of them and traffic as well blocking 
the non-dirt paths.  It's probably a better idea to boost over the dirt than 
boost to the side a risk a nasty collision.  As you approach the very end you 
will go in a very steep loop and will temporarily lose the ability to see far 
ahead, the path curves here so stick to the middle to avoid hitting the walls 
when you come out of it and before you know, you're at the end.
|  -----o------\                    The F-ZERO Grand Prix                    |

Mission 7: Become the Grand Prix champion!

Most people find this to be the hardest mission in the game, and with good 
reason.  You have to win a race against some really tough opponents on an 
equally tough course.  Unless you're extremely skill with hairpin turns I 
recommend a medium mix of speed and acceleration because you can expect to hit 
a lot of walls on this course.

Basically this course consists of drop offs, slippery ice, fiery damage ground 
and tight paths.  With thirty racers crammed together in this tight paths you 
can expect some serious collisions.  Black Shadow is automatically scripted to 
win this race every time with Blood Falcon coming in second so if you happen 
to see those cars during the race feel free to attack them, Black Shadow's car 
is black with a raised cockpit coming out the top.  Start the race by just 
sticking with the pack, avoid the fire ground and ice ground as it comes up.  
After the big drop off you'll be send into a series of sharp turns and you can 
expect to start hitting walls here.  Drift around these corners to the best of 
your ability.  Soon enough you'll come to an even more dangerous section of 
thin road with no walls on either side and a boost panel.  Whatever you do 
don't try and be aggressive here, just stick to the middle of the road.  On 
the other side is a bunch of fire ground panels and a long stretch of 
regneration stuff, then land mines and finally the second lap.

When you have the ability to boost start off the lap by doing so once or 
twice, almost regardless of your position this should bring you almost up to 
first place.  Drive normally again and save you boost for the straight away 
between the sharp turn area and the path with no walls.  If you run low on 
boost at that part take the net area slowly, you will find it's really easy to 
accidentally kill yourself on the fire ground from overboosting.  There's 
enough recharge panel to get back up to max and you should be in a fairly good 
position even if it isn't first place.  During the last lap start off with a 
couple of boosts again but hold back a bit during the dangerous cornering 
area.  You are going to want to have enough to boost two or three times right 
before the recharge panel hits and then go crazy boosting on the last section 
including and after the recharge panel.  It is even possible to go from almost 
20th place to first if you're crazy enough and hitting the boost button fast 
enough.  One final advanced technique is to purposely hit the landmines while 
boositng on the final lap, though you take considerable damage you can get 
massive speed boosts sometimes by really nailing them.
|  -----o------\                 Secrets of the Champion Belt                |

Mission 8: Win the battle with Deathborn!  Reach the goal first to win!

Choose a speed option that's really close to the top acceleration mark, again 
this is a course which is not too friendly when it comes to good clean turns 
and you'll need as much leeway as you can get.

There's all sorts of ways you can get yourself seriously hurt from fire ground 
to landmines.  During the first lap you have an extra special job to take care 
of, there are all sorts of landmines all over the course and what works best 
is to literally aim yourself toward almost every single one you see assuming 
you aren't dangerously low on energy.  This will do two things, first it will 
give you a speed boost which helps out and second it will really clean up the 
field for later laps when you're boosting and don't have time to look around.

When you hit the second lap start boosting.  This is one level where you 
really don't have to worry about being ahead of Deathborn at all times, he 
does a pretty good job of staying at a constant pace ahead of you.  Boost on 
straight paths and when coming out of turns but certainly not going into 
turns.  Avoid mines while boosting because they offer a good chance of sending 
you flying off the course even if you have full energy.  Utilize the drift 
technique often, especially as you come to the final two turns, drift left 
very sharply and then to the right and boost as you come out of that corner 
toward the finish line.  Do the same thing for the final lap but be 
conservative with your boost energy so that you can go all out when you 
approach the finish line which works much better than keeping it constant.
|  -----o------\                  Finale: Enter the Creators                 |

Mission 9: Conquer the Staff Ghost!  Make it to the goal first and win!

The idea behind this race is simply you against a ghost, meaning that no 
matter how you perform or how many times you try to bodycheck the thing, it's 
not going to move because it's a prerecorded ghost racer.  In its simplest 
forms this mission is a just a time trial, but it takes place on an extremely 
difficult course.  If you've played the Rainbow Road course in the original 
Mariokart for the SNES you'll have the idea, nice, shiny, colourful and no 
walls!  Select a speed toward acceleration 100% and get ready.

My top recommendation is not using the L or R triggers at all, or as little as 
possible.  There are a few places you will pretty much have to use them but 
other than that they will just increase you chances of sliding over the edge.  
DO all your primary controlling with the analog stick so that you can stay in 
control as much as possible.  The ghost is extremely slow, it is possible to 
beat it on 100% acceleration and without boosting once, the real difficulty 
comes in not falling off the edge.  You will do a few practice turns at the 
start of the lap, then soon enough you can see before you even reach it a 
fairly sharp turn to the right leading to the spiral, here you will probably 
have to correct your angle a bit with the R trigger, but don't use it too 
much!  The second place you will need one of the trigger buttons is the L 
trigger at the top of the spiral, get to know when the top is approaching and 
press down on the L trigger a little early to straighten out.

During the next couple of sections you will be fin with the analog stick, as 
you come over the big hump just stay in the middle which will keep you safe 
since you can't see the road ahead.  Beyond that are a number of drop offs 
accompanied by some sharp turns, quickly tap L and R then the trigger 
corresponding to the direction of your turn to turn quickly.  The instant you 
are airborne make sure you're straight because you'll want to lay off the L 
and R buttons when you hit the ground until you come to the next sharp drop 
off.  As you cross the finish line boost once, then again.  Now don't boost AT 
ALL under any circumstances until you cross into lap three.  This will give 
you more than enough lead to conquer the ghost easily.

|                                 Unlockables                        (00060) |

New difficulty modes are unlocked by beating the ones before it, so beating 
the story mode chapters unlocks the Very Hard story mode chapters, beating all 
the Grand Prix races on Expert will unlock master.

You can unlock the special AX pilots and ships by beating the story mode 
chapters on Very Hard, they are unlocked one at a time.

You can unlock the special AX courses by beating all Grand Prixs on master.

Parts and such are unlocked just by beating various Grand Prix races and can 
be bought in the F-Zero shop in the customize menu.

You can unlock two special music tracks by inputting special button codes 
while in the customize menu, then you can purchase them yourself, once you 
have them press the Z button when selecting a Big Blue or Mute City course.

Big Blue - Z, Le, Ri, Le, Z, Y, X, Z, Le, Ri, Le, Ri, Z, X, Z, X, Z

Mute City - X, X, X, Y, X, X, X, Y, Z, Z, Le, Ri, Le, Ri, Le, Ri

Staff Ghosts can be unlocked by coming within ten seconds of their time in the 
time trial mode, then bought from the shop to race.

Finally you can unlock special character specific movies by beating Master 
difficulty on any cup with one of the story character ships.

|                                 Custom Ships                       (00100) |

The following is a list of the custom ships that I made reference to 
throughout the guide, and they're by far what I consider to the best ships in 
the game.  The only ship I consider to be one of the best that isn't on this 
list is Fat Shark, as it is one of the character pre-made vehicles.

|        Name        |       Body       |     Cockpit      |     Booster     |
|                    | Sky Horse        | Super Lynx       | Titan -G4       |
|                    | My favourite all around machine, good for everything  |
|                    | Speedy Dragon    | Combat Cannon    | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Best MTS ship in the game                             |
|                    | Giant Planet     | Combat Cannon    | Triple -Z       |
|                    | Heavy ship with geat booster, good overall            |
|                    | Sky Horse        | Combat Cannon    | Triple -Z       |
|                    | Variant of Acro Lynx G4, faster but slides            |
|                    | Giant Planet     | Combat Cannon    | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Variant of Combat Planet Z with G4 engine             |
|                    | Sky Horse        | Combat Cannon    | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Variant of Acro Lynx G4, handles differently          |
|                    | Aqua Goose       | Combat Cannon    | Triple -Z       |
|                    | Fast good handling machine, used for Cylinder Knot    |
|                    | Aqua Goose       | Super Lynx       | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Many consider it the best ship for beginners          |
|                    | Liberty Manta    | Combat Cannon    | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Glides extremely well in the air, used for Ordeal     |
|                    | Funny Swallow    | Combat Cannon    | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Variant of Quick Cannon G4, used for Spiral           |
|                    | Dread Hammer     | Combat Cannon    | Titan -G4       |
|                    | Best shift booster ship, extremely powerful and fast  |
|                    | Giant Planet     | Combat Cannon    | Thunderbolt -V2 |
|                    | Heavy ship used for courses with many boost panels    |

|                                Custom Parts                        (00101) |
|  -----o------\                             Body                            |

|              Name                |       Weight       |      Strength      |
| Brave Eagle                      | 460kg              |         D          |
| Giant Planet                     | 1020kg             |         B          |
| Megalo Cruiser                   | 1600kg             |         A          |
| Splash Whale                     | 280kg              |         E          |
| Wild Chariot                     | 800kg              |         B          |
| Valiant Jaguar                   | 1000kg             |         B          |
| Holy Spider                      | 540kg              |         C          |
| Funny Swallow                    | 490kg              |         D          |
| Optical Wing                     | 420kg              |         D          |
| Big Tyrant                       | 1500kg             |         A          |
| Grand Base                       | 1380kg             |         A          |
| Fire Wolf                        | 840kg              |         B          |
| Dread Hammer                     | 1440kg             |         A          |
| Silver Sword                     | 620kg              |         C          |
| Rapid Barrel                     | 580kg              |         C          |
| Sky Horse                        | 640kg              |         C          |
| Aqua Goose                       | 700kg              |         C          |
| Space Cancer                     | 680kg              |         C          |
| Speedy Dragon                    | 240kg              |         E          |
| Liberty Mania                    | 380kg              |         D          |
|  -----o------\                           Cockpit                           |

|              Name                |       Weight       |      Strength      |
| Wonder Worm                      | 290kg              |         D          |
| Combat Cannon                    | 620kg              |         A          |
| Muscle Gorilla                   | 360kg              |         C          |
| Cyber Fox                        | 370kg              |         C          |
| Heat Snake                       | 480kg              |         B          |
| Rave Driller                     | 230kg              |         E          |
| Aerial Bullet                    | 240kg              |         E          |
| Spark Bird                       | 530kg              |         B          |
| Blast Camel                      | 280kg              |         D          |
| Dark Chaser                      | 250kg              |         E          |
| Garnet Phantom                   | 640kg              |         A          |
| Bright Spear                     | 330kg              |         C          |
| Super Lynx                       | 460kg              |         B          |
| Crystal Egg                      | 270kg              |         D          |
| Windy Shark                      | 220kg              |         E          |
| Red Rex                          | 350kg              |         C          |
| Sonic Soldier                    | 310kg              |         C          |
| Moon Snail                       | 260kg              |         D          |
| Scud Viper                       | 320kg              |         C          |
| Energy Crest                     | 500kg              |         B          |
|  -----o------\                           Booster                           |

|              Name                |       Weight       |      Strength      |
| Euros -01                        | 160kg              |         E          |
| Triangle -GT                     | 340kg              |         C          |
| Sunrise 140                      | 140kg              |         E          |
| Saturn -SG                       | 240kg              |         D          |
| Buster -X                        | 360kg              |         C          |
| Devilfish -RX                    | 800kg              |         A          |
| Titan -G4                        | 540kg              |         B          |
| Extreme -ZZ                      | 480kg              |         B          |
| Thunderbolt -V2                  | 860kg              |         A          |
| Boxer -2C                        | 350kg              |         C          |
| Punisher -4X                     | 580kg              |         B          |
| Scorpion -R                      | 400kg              |         C          |
| Raiden -88                       | 530kg              |         B          |
| Impulse 220                      | 220kg              |         D          |
| Bazooka -YS                      | 250kg              |         D          |
| Meteor-RR                        | 500kg              |         B          |
| Tiger -RZ                        | 380kg              |         C          |
| Jupiter -Q                       | 230kg              |         D          |
| Comet -V                         | 330kg              |         C          |
| Triple -Z                        | 660kg              |         A          |

|                             Character Machines                     (00102) |

| Antonio Guster                      | Baba                                 |
| Racer: Green Panther       | Sex: M | Racer: Iron Tiger           | Sex: M |
| Weight: 4541     | Age: 36          | Weight: 3924      | Age: 19          |
| Body: A    | Boost: B   | Grip: D   | Body: B    | Boost: D    | Grip: A   |

| Billy                               | Bio Rex                              |
| Racer: Mad Wolf            | Sex: M | Racer: Big Fang             | Sex: ? |
| Weight: 3285     | Age: 7           | Weight: 3350      | Age: 9           |
| Body: B    | Boost: B   | Grip: C   | Body: B    | Boost: D    | Grip: A   |

| Black Shadow                        | Blood Falcon                         |
| Racer: Black Bull          | Sex: M | Racer: Blood Hawk           | Sex: M |
| Weight: 5158     | Age: ?           | Weight: 2579      | Age: 37          |
| Body: A    | Boost: E   | Grip: A   | Body: C    | Boost: C    | Grip: A   |

| Captain Falcon                      | Dai San Gen                          |
| Racer: Blue Falcon         | Sex: M | Racer: Pink Spider          | Sex: M |
| Weight: 2777     | Age: 37          | Weight: 1100      | Age: 64          |
| Body: B    | Boost: C   | Grip: B   | Body: C    | Boost: C    | Grip: A   |

| Daigoroh                            | Deathborn                            |
| Racer: Silver Rat          | Sex: M | Racer: Dark Schneider       | Sex: M |
| Weight: 880      | Age: 10          | Weight: 2080      | Age: ?           |
| Body: D    | Boost: A   | Grip: D   | Body: A    | Boost: B    | Grip: D   |

| Digi Boy                            | Don Genie                            |
| Racer: Cosmic Dolphin      | Sex:   | Racer: Fat Shark            | Sex: M |
| Weight: 900      | Age: 8           | Weight: 2490      | Age: 65          |
| Body: E    | Boost: A   | Grip: C   | Body: A    | Boost: A    | Grip: E   |

| Dr. Clash                           | Dr. Stewart                          |
| Racer: Crazy Bear          | Sex: M | Racer: Golden Fox           | Sex:   |
| Weight: 4894     | Age: 55          | Weight: 3130      | Age: 42          |
| Body: A    | Boost: B   | Grip: E   | Body: D    | Boost: A    | Grip: D   |

| Draq                                | Beastman                             |
| Racer: Mighty Gazelle      | Sex: M | Racer: Hyper Speeder        | Sex: M |
| Weight: 2094     | Age: 137         | Weight: 2934      | Age: 30          |
| Body: A    | Boost: C   | Grip: C   | Body: B    | Boost: D    | Grip: A   |

| Gomar and Shioh                     | Jack Levin                           |
| Racer: Twin Noritta        | Sex: M | Racer: Astro Robin          | Sex: M |
| Weight: 1719     | Age: ?           | Weight: 2314      | Age: 19          |
| Body: E    | Boost: A   | Grip: C   | Body: B    | Boost: D    | Grip: A   |

| Jamed McCloud                       | John Tanaka                          |
| Racer: Little Wyvern       | Sex: M | Racer: Wonder Wasp          | Sex: M |
| Weight: 3064     | Age: 32          | Weight: 1984      | Age: 31          |
| Body: E    | Boost: B   | Grip: B   | Body: D    | Boost: A    | Grip: D   |

| Kate Alen                           | Leon                                 |
| Racer: Super Pirahna       | Sex: F | Racer: Space Angler         | Sex: M |
| Weight: 2226     | Age: 30          | Weight: 2006      | Age: 16          |

| Lily Flyer                          | Michael Chain                        |
| Racer: Bunny Flash         | Sex: F | Racer: Wild Boar            | Sex: M |
| Weight: 1414     | Age: 14          | Weight: 4252      | Age: 39          |
| Body: D    | Boost: B   | Grip: A   | Body: A    | Boost: C    | Grip: C   |

| Mighty Gazelle                      | Mr. Ead                              |
| Racer: Red Gazelle         | Sex: M | Racer: Great Star           | Sex: ? |
| Weight: 2932     | Age: 37          | Weight: 4122      | Age: ?           |
| Body: E    | Boost: A   | Grip: C   | Body: E    | Boost: A    | Grip: D   |

| Mrs. Arrow                          | Jody Summer                          |
| Racer: Queen Meteor        | Sex:   | Racer: White Cat            | Sex: F |
| Weight: 2513     | Age: 27          | Weight: 2535      | Age: 25          |
| Body: E    | Boost: B   | Grip: B   | Body: C    | Boost: C    | Grip: A   |

| Octoman                             | Phoenix                              |
| Racer: Deep Claw           | Sex: M | Racer: Rainbow Pheonix      | Sex:   |
| Weight: 2182     | Age: ?           | Weight: 1080      | Age: 26          |
| Body: B    | Boost: B   | Grip: C   | Body: B    | Boost: B    | Grip: C   |

| Pico                                | PJ                                   |
| Racer: Wild Goose          | Sex: M | Racer: Groovy Taxi          | Sex: M |
| Weight: 3571     | Age: 124         | Weight: 1280      | Age: 35          |
| Body: A    | Boost: B   | Grip: C   | Body: B    | Boost: D    | Grip: B   |

| Princia Ramode                      | QQQ                                  |
| Racer: Spark Moon          | Sex: F | Racer: Rolling Turtle       | Sex: M |
| Weight: 1620     | Age: 16          | Weight: 999       | Age: ?           |
| Body: B    | Boost: C   | Grip: B   | Body: A    | Boost: D    | Grip: B   |

| Roger Buster                        | Samurai Goroh                        |
| Racer: Mighty Hurricane    | Sex: M | Racer: Fire Stingray        | Sex: M |
| Weight: 3924     | Age: 41          | Weight: 4320      | Age: 45          |
| Body: E    | Boost: B   | Grip: B   | Body: A    | Boost: D    | Grip: B   |

| Silver Neelsen                      | Spade                                |
| Racer: Night Thunder       | Sex: M | Racer: Magic Seagull        | Sex: M |
| Weight: 3373     | Age: 98          | Weight: 1330      | Age: ?           |
| Body: B    | Boost: A   | Grip: E   | Body: B    | Boost: A    | Grip: E   |

| Super Arrow                         | The Skull                            |
| Racer: King Meteor         | Sex: M | Racer: Sonic Phantom        | Sex: M |
| Weight: 1896     | Age: 35          | Weight: 2226      | Age: 241         |
| Body: E    | Boost: B   | Grip: B   | Body: C    | Boost: A    | Grip: D   |

| Zoda                                                                       |
| Racer: Death Anchor        | Sex: M                                        |
| Weight: 3571     | Age: ?                                                  |

|                             Character Profiles                     (00103) |

| Deathborn                           |  Sex: Male    |  Age: ?    |  No.00  |
|                                                                            |
| This mysterious pilot makes even Black Shadow, the evil emporer, shudder   |
| with fear.  Since the huge accident four years ago, several F-ZERO pilots  |
| have turned up missing: in all of the mssing-persons investigations        |
| conducted by the Space Police, Deathborn was the primary suspect.          |
| Deathborn has died three times, but each time was brought back to life by  |
| life by exchanging his real body parts for mechanical ones.  Through       |
| these procedures, he has become essentially immortal.  A device installed  |
| within his body allows him to travel freely through space making it        |
| possible for him to mysteriously appear anywhere at any time.  He banishes |
| those he dislikes to the outer limits of space where they become drifting  |
| vagabonds for all eternity.  Deathborn is plotting to take over the        |
| universe.  His plan is to obtain the ultimate power that would allow him   |
| to determine life and death on every star as he sees fit.                  |
|                                                                            |

| Mighty Gazelle                      |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 37   |  No.01  |
|                                                                            |
| Four years ago Mighty Gazelle was the pilot who took the worst damage in   |
| the huge accident that lead to the temporary suspension of the F-ZERO      |
| Grand Prix races.  He just barely escaped death and was resurrected as a   |
| cyborg primarily made up of mechanical body parts.  Living only for F-ZERO |
| he ignores the complaints of those who oppose his race participation--no   |
| protest would make him skip a race.  Because he is a cyborg, he has been   |
| able to polish his racing skills without fear of death.  Through analysis  |
| of his past races, he has fine-tuned all of his reflex-related components. |
|                                                                            |

| Jody Summer                         |  Sex: Female  |  Age: 25   |  No.02  |
|                                                                            |
| Jody summer is a combat-machine pilot affiliated with the Galactic Space   |
| Federation.  Her ability is highly regarded, and she is recognized as a    |
| hero by both her peers and superiors.  For these reasons she was chosen    |
| as the spokesperson for the Federation.  She wasn't able to win the last   |
| Grand Prix championship but was praised for her bravery and subsequently   |
| chosen to be Miss Galactic Space Federation.  She still doesn't have a     |
| great deal of experience as an F-ZERO pilot, but she has an incredible     |
| ability to control speed--that skill alone makes her the target of a great |
| many rivals.                                                               |
|                                                                            |

| Dr. Stewart                         |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 42   |  No.03  |
|                                                                            |
| His real name is Robert Stewart.  A long time ago, he was a charismatic    |
| surgeon with legendary surgical skills.  However, the death of his father, |
| professor Kevin Stewart, provided him the the opportunity to become a      |
| pilot.  As a racer, he's known for his refined technical prowess and       |
| friendly demeanor.  In the big accident four years ago, Dr. Stewart put    |
| his skills as a paramedic to use and treated many of the inured.           |
| Miraculously, due to his heroic efforts, no fatalities occurred.           |
|                                                                            |

| Baba                                |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 19   |  No.04  |
|                                                                            |
| This "wild child" was born and raised amid the natural beauty of Giant, a  |
| planet with expansive tracts of green land.  He has preternatural animal   |
| instincts and a resilient, well-toned physique, both of which factored     |
| into his recruitment by the F-ZERO Pilot Selection Comittee.  He left his  |
| home and underwent a great deal of training in order to make his F-ZERO    |
| Grand Prix debut last year.  He didn't win, unfortunately, and knowing he  |
| still had much to learn, he set out on a spiritual journey.  As a result,  |
| his physical strength has increased twofold.  However, he is also a bit    |
| overconfident now and is considered somewhat of a big mouth.               |
|                                                                            |

| Samurai Goroh                       |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 45   |  No.05  |
|                                                                            |
| In outward appearance, Goroh is a bounty hunter just like Falcon, but in   |
| actuality, he is the boss of an intergalactic group of bandits with a      |
| terrible reputation.  This group of cutthroats is said to use the Red      |
| Canyon for a hideout.  Exactly what Goroh has plundered and extorted over  |
| the years is unknown.  As a bounty hunter, he travels from planet to       |
| planet evaluating the value of possible spoils.  He actually dreams of     |
| performing notorious deeds as a bounty hunter, but Falcon always seems to  |
| beat him to the punch in the newest and most profitable projects--Goroh is |
| very bitter about this.  He enters every Grand Prix without fail and is    |
| known as a rival of Falcon who will never stop trying to defeat him.       |
|                                                                            |

| Pico                                |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 124  |  No.06  |
|                                                                            |
| Pico was a member of a special unit of the Poripoto army and carried out a |
| number of dangerous missions.  He is very aggressive, yet cool-headed      |
| enough to do what needs to be done to the bitter end.  Individuals         |
| who mess with him often don't live to do anything else.  After retirement, |
| Pico opened a small shop near the military base, but he still operates     |
| as a notorious assassin.  The accident four years ago is said to have      |
| been caused by his dangerous driving, and for this reason he is disliked   |
| by many of the F-ZERO fans.  This doesn't stop him from running the        |
| circuit as recklessly as always.                                           |
|                                                                            |

| Captain Falcon                      |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 37   |  No.07  |
|                                                                            |
| Captain Falcon was the winner of the previous F-ZERO Grand Prix, an        |
| achievement that boosted his already high popularity even higher.  Beyond  |
| racing, he is quite well-known as an extremely capable bounty hunter--just |
| how many criminals he's brought in is unknown, but the number is said to   |
| be astronomic.  Aside from the fact that he hails from Port Town, his past |
| is a complete mystery.  His mind and body are honed from the many battles  |
| he has survived, and there is no challenge he can't overcome.              |
|                                                                            |

| Octoman                             |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 88   |  No.08  |
|                                                                            |
| Octoman is a representative of Takora, a planet currently at odds with the |
| Milky Way Space Federation.  The confrontation between the Federation and  |
| Takora grows more long and drawn out by the day.  The Takoraians are       |
| surrounded by enemies and are in a very unstable economic state.  Die to   |
| this, Octoman wants to win the Grand Prix so that he can pay the education |
| costs of his children.  He plans to contribute the rest of his earnings to |
| the government of Takora to give it hope for the future.                   |
|                                                                            |

| Mr. EAD                             |  Sex: Male    |  Age: ?    |  No.09  |
|                                                                            |
| Mr. EAD is an android created by the mysterious development group EAD.     |
| His objective in this Grand Prix is to complete the final testing phase    |
| for his IQ and AI programming.  After his run on the last F-ZERO Grand     |
| Prix, he endured many trials-combat training, spy activities, college      |
| exams, and many others.  If all of his capabilities function as calculated |
| there should be nothing that can keep him from his winning the Grand Prix. |
| His victory will signify the birth of a flawless android.                  |
|                                                                            |

| James McCloud                       |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 32   |  No.10  |
|                                                                            |
| McCloud is the leader of the flight squad Galaxy Dog. He had his combat    |
| plane converted into an F-ZERO machine in order to compete in the Grand    |
| Prix. During peacetime there is very little work available, so McCloud     |
| has entered his second race in an attempt to take home the big prize       |
| money. He is motivated to become the new champion by thoughts of his       |
| wife and young son, both of whom need his support.                         |
|                                                                            |

| Billy                               |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 7    |  No.11  |
|                                                                            |
| One of Billy's ancestors was a trained rocket pilot and the first monkey   |
| in space.  Whether by genetic predisposition or not, Billy's ability as a  |
| pilot is truly exceptional, and he's the first monkey to enter the F-ZERO  |
| Grand Prix.  He was raised in a special lab where he was educated in human |
| literacy and communication skills.  The lab concurrently developed an      |
| F-ZERO racer suitable for a monkey and bestowed upon him the homor of      |
| piloting it in the Grand Prix.                                             |
|                                                                            |

| Kate Alen                           |  Sex: Female  |  Age: 30   |  No.12  |
|                                                                            |
| Kate is the megastar singer who was chosen to sing at the opening          |
| ceremonies of the past several F-ZERO Grand Prix races.  Her fans are wild |
| about her powerful dance moves and soulful voocals.  Completely allured by |
| the extreme speed of the race, Kate chose to pursue F-ZERO racing rather   |
| than furthering her musical career.  Taking full advantage of her sense    |
| rhythm and athleticism, she plans to run a rambunctious race.              |
|                                                                            |

| Zoda                                |  Sex: Male    |  Age: ?    |  No.13  |
|                                                                            |
| Zoda is in a long dispute with the hero of justice, Super Arrow.  He has   |
| also been marked by Captain Falcon, and once was almost captured for his   |
| bounty.  Zoda's crazed tendencies come from a special device that pumps    |
| adrenaline and dopamine into his body.  He enters the Grand Prix races to  |
| raise funding for his sinister plots, and during the latest race, he       |
| plans to take out anyone who dares interfere with his master plan.         |
|                                                                            |

| Jack Levin                          |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 19   |  No.14  |
|                                                                            |
| Jack is a former pop-group member who set the entertainment industry on    |
| fire by persuing his dream to become an F-ZERO pilot, and now he wins the  |
| hearts of many female fans on the F-ZERO scene.  Any merchandise bearing   |
| Jack's face is an instant sellout.  While most people speak only of his    |
| good looks and popularity, his racing skills are also worthy of comment.   |
|                                                                            |

| Bio Rex                             |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 9    |  No.15  |
|                                                                            |
| Utilizing advanced biotechnologies, Bio Rex was created from a fossilized  |
| dinosaur egg.  Genetic design allowed for the development of higher brain  |
| functions equivalent to that of a human, but as a carnivorous predator, he |
| is still as aggressive as Pico.  He first entered the Grand Prix to prove  |
| his superiority over humans, but this time around he has entered to        |
| satisfy his ravenous appetite for mammoth ribs.                            |
|                                                                            |

| The Skull                           |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 241  |  No.16  |
|                                                                            |
| The Skull was one the greatest driver in the F-MAX Grand Prix, a           |
| competition that predates the coming of F-ZERO by some 200 years.  Thanks  |
| to the inexplicable powers of science and black magic, he has returned to  |
| this world to compete once again.  With his remarkable technique and       |
| descision-making powers, he now has a chance to extend his legacy into     |
| a new generation.                                                          |
|                                                                            |

| Antonio Guster                      |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 36   |  No.17  |
|                                                                            |
| Antonio was the right-hand man of Samurai Goroh, but Goroh betrayed and    |
| abandoned him in the hands of the Galactic Space Allies.  After his        | 
| release, he became a solo bandit, and now his only purpose in life is to   |
| have his revenge of Goroh, ideally in front of millions of fans on the     |
| F-ZERO circuit.                                                            |
|                                                                            |

| Beastman                            |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 30   |  No.18  |
|                                                                            |
| Beastman became a beast hunter after a nasty encounter with a gigantic     |
| crocodile on the planet White.  After surviving the ordeal, he decided     |
| that he wanted to protect people from such dangerous creates.  He is       |
| actually quite shy and in order to keep his bashful nature from being      |
| discoered, he adorned himself in the imposing outfit of a dinosaur.        |
| Before long, due to his heroic deeds and growing popularity, he became     |
| known as the Beastman.  Having dealt with all the beasts on his own        |
| planet, he entered the F-ZERO X Grand Prix for promotional reasons.  There |
| he met Bio Rex for the first time, and knowing the creature was competing, |
| he made a vow to protect the other pilots and crown from such a dangerous  |
| beast.                                                                     |
|                                                                            |

| Leon                                |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 16   |  No.19  |
|                                                                            |
| Leon is from the war-torn planet of Zou, where he lost both of his parents |
| during the big war 12 years ago.  As the planet suffered through the       |
| aftereffects of the war, it was decided that one F-ZERO machine should be  |
| sent to the Grand Prix with Leon as its pilot: a symbol of hope for the    |
| ailing planet.  Leon has a great track record in the F-ZERO races as a     |
| result of his well-balanced abilities, and he desperately witses to        |
| become champion in order to save the children of Zou from poverty.         |
|                                                                            |

| Super Arrow                         |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 35   |  No.20  |
|                                                                            |
| Super Arrow is a superhero who defends peace on Earth.  He entered the     |
| last F-ZERO race to chase his old enemy, Zoda.  At the time, Super Arrow   |
| had never even driven before, so he had to hurriedly register for an       |
| F-ZERO license just so that he could enter the race.  Even so, he managed  |
| to race competitively by utilizing his superpowers.  Zoda has entered the  |
| race again, and Super Arrow must do all he can to stop him and end his     |
| reign of terror.  He is known for his relentlessly unforgiving attitude    |
| toward criminals, but when it comes to his wife, Mrs. Arrow, he's as       |
| docile as a puppy.                                                         |
|                                                                            |

| Mrs. Arrow                          |  Sex: Female  |  Age: 27   |  No.21  |
|                                                                            |
| Mrs. Arrow strives to defend her husband, Super Arrow, in and out of the   |
| home.  She entered the last F-ZERO race to assist her husband, who had no  |
| previous experience as a pilot.  An F-ZERO circuit model before marriage,  |
| she was the first former circuit model to compete as a pilot.              |
|                                                                            |

| Gomar & Shioh                       |  Sex: M/M     |  Age: 102  |  No.22  |
|                                                                            |
| On the planet Huckmine, the Furikake people have an odd custom--they pair  |
| up with a partner as soon as they're born to do everything together.  The  |
| intelligent Gomar is very short and envies the stature of Shioh, while     |
| Shioh is a tall creature who admires Gomar greatly and depends entirely    |
| on his decision-making.  This peculiar pair work together, deftly          |
| manipulating their F-ZERO machine built for two.  However, these two       |
| partners--who have been together as long as they can remember--will both   |
| marry next year, thereby undergoing a partner change.  This event has      |
| given rise to many rumors about this F-ZERO Grand Prix being thier last    |
| together.                                                                  |
|                                                                            |

| Silver Neelsen                      |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 98   |  No.23  |
|                                                                            |
| People call Neelsen "Ironman Silver."  Despite holding the record for the  |
| most F-ZERO races entered by a singlepilot, he has yet to win a Grand      |
| Prix.  He turns 99 next year and is debating retirement, but he also       |
| considers it a good possibility that he'll continue his race career even   |
| after he turns 100.  Silver loves the old-school machines, and he's        |
| become quite crotchety in his old age.  He often criticizes the newfangled |
| machines that other pilots are racing.                                     |
|                                                                            |

| Michael Chain                       |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 39   |  No.24  |
|                                                                            |
| Michael is the head of the racing clan known as the Bloody Chain, whose    |
| membership up until a few years ago exceeded ten thousand racers.  He      |
| enters the F-ZERO to showcase his skills and to represent the entire crew, |
| but his efforts are falling short and members have begun to leave the      |
| organization.  The Bloody Chain numbers have now fallen well below ten     |
| thousand, and it's rumored that the crew could be totally dissolved in     |
| the next several years.                                                    |
|                                                                            |

| Blood Flacon                        |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 37   |  No.25  |
|                                                                            |
| Although listed in the race literature as 37 years old, Blood Falcon is    |
| actually a clone created from Captain Falcon's DNA, which was stolen       |
| while he was hospitalized after the huge accident four years ago.  With    |
| that in mind, Blood Falcon is technically only four years old.  He is      |
| capable of everything Captain Flacon can do, but he has been strictly      |
| taught to obey all the commands of his evil master, Black Shadow.          |
|                                                                            |

| John Tanaka                         |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 31   |  No.26  |
|                                                                            |
| John, the mechanic of the Galactic Space Federation, is in the same unit   |
| as Jody Summers.  Secretly harboring feelings for her, he entered the race |
| to protect her from danger.  If, by a stroke of luck, he wins the Grand    |
| Prix, he's even considering proposing.                                     |
|                                                                            |

| Draq                                |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 137  |  No.27  |
|                                                                            |
| Draq works with Roger Buster, managing a portion of their cargo-shipping   |
| business.  He is an absolutely gigantic fan of F-ZERO and has dreamed of   |
| entering the circuit himself since he was small.  Roughly one year ago,    |
| Draq and Roger came across two F-ZERO machines tagged with an unknown      |
| recipient and no return address.  Draq quickly convinced Roger to let them |
| enter the machines in the last Grand Prix, telling him that they would     |
| surely be recognized and the rightful owners would come forward to claim   |
| them.  No one claimed the machines however, and the two partners have      |
| decided to try again.  Draq hopes to win a Grand Prix himself before the   |
| owners come to claim the machines--then he could use the prize money to    |
| buy a craft of his own.                                                    |
|                                                                            |

| Roger Buster                        |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 41   |  No.28  |
|                                                                            |
| Roger is a galactic deliveryman famous for his policy of "No consignment   |
| too dangerous!"  He's set to enter the race again with Draq in machines    |
| of unknown ownership.  While Draq is a huge F-ZERO fan, Roger himself      |
| isn't too interested in it.  For Roger, finding the proper owner of the    |
| machines so that he can complete his deliveries is the overall goal of the |
| competition.                                                               |
|                                                                            |

| Dr. Clash                           |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 55   |  No.29  |
|                                                                            |
| Dr. Clash is an F-ZERO engineer unable to give up his dream of becoming an |
| F-ZERO pilot.  He created a special gadget to compensate for his limited   |
| athletic abilities and, after spending years of research to customize his  |
| F-ZERO machine, finally got to race.                                       |
|                                                                            |

| Black Shadow                        |  Sex: Male    |  Age: ?    |  No.30  |
|                                                                            |
| Black Shadow is a cold-blooded king of evil feared by all.  However,       |
| Captain Flacon has seen much success capturing his foot soldiers, and      |
| Black Shadow wants nothing more than to see the end of this meddling       |
| bounty hunter, preferably in front of millions of fans.                    |
|                                                                            |

| Don Genie                           |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 65   |  No.31  |
|                                                                            |
| Don Genie is the famous mogul head of the universal traders.  He has been  |
| arrested several times for secretly trading in energy resources and        |
| weapons.  Each time he's arrested, he's forced to pay a small fortune in   |
| bail to get himself free.  At this time, it's unknown whether Don is       |
| participating in the F-ZERO races because he wants to publicize his        |
| trading company of whether it's just for fun.  One thing is for sure,      |
| though: it must be related to some sinister gambling ploy he's put         |
| together.  It's also rumored that Don Genie has some connection with Black |
| Shadow, the emporer of evil.                                               |
|                                                                            |

| Digi-Boy                            |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 8    |  No.32  |
|                                                                            |
| Digi-Boy's real name is Terry Getter, and he's a young genius currently    |
| attending Einstein Academy.  While he's still just a kid, he's been dubbed |
| Digi-Boy because there's no digital device he can't deftly use--he's even  |
| invented many of his own.  He's also analyzed every past F-ZERO race and   |
| has subsequently devised a perfect equation to work with his self-built    |
| machine so that he can win the next race.  In his dictionary, there is no  |
| such work as luck.                                                         |
|                                                                            |

| Dai San Gen                         |  Sex: M/F/M   |  Age: 64   |  No.33  |
|                                                                            |
| These triplets come from the planet Shinar.  The average lifespan of the   |
| beings of Shinar is 200 years, extremely long compared to that of          |
| earthlings.  However, even after reaching adulthood, they remain quite     |
| small.  Using telepathy, they don't need to speak to communicate.  Dai,    |
| San and Gen have incredible teamwork skills and an amazing ability to      |
| operate their machines as one.  Dai takes care of handling, San handles    |
| navigation, and Gen handles acceleration and breaking.                     |
|                                                                            |

| Spade                               |  Sex: Male    |  Age: ?    |  No.34  |
|                                                                            |
| Spade is a circus performer and an accomplished magician.  He has decided  |
| to take up racing in order to win enough money to rescue the circus from   |
| its financial difficulties.  His racing techniques are risky and sometimes |
| amazing, but he quite fickle and will sometimes drop out of a race         |
| suddenly or not run it seriously.  As a result, his overall record isn't   |
| that geat.  Nobody, not even his friends at the circus, have seen the face |
| behind Spade's mask.                                                       |
|                                                                            |

| Daigoroh                            |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 10   |  No.35  |
|                                                                            |
| Daigoroh is the only son of Samurai Goroh.  He's so bad that even his      |
| father can't keep him under control.  Daigoroh is a master swordsman and   |
| loves to run riot with his sword whipping through the air.  He has         |
| immense respect for his father and will boast about him regarding any      |
| subject.  He hopes to earn the praise of his father by defeating Captain   |
| Falcon, his father's biggest enemy.  As a pilot, he has more aptitude and  |
| potential than his father, and many are eagerly waiting to see what kind   |
| of pilot he grows up to be.                                                |
|                                                                            |

| Princia                             |  Sex: Female  |  Age: 16   |  No.36  |
|                                                                            |
| Princia Ramode is the princess of the Desert Kingdom on the planet Magica, |
| a society with highly advanced scientific knowledge.  Her characteristic   |
| curiosity often leads her into mischief and often gets her into dangerous  |
| predicaments.  In order to increase her wisdom and life experience before  |
| becoming queen she secretly ran off with her sevants on an adventure to    |
| a host of other planets.  When she arrived on Earth, she happened to catch |
| a glimpse of an F-ZERO Grand Prix and whimsically decided that she, too,   |
| wanted to race.  Knowing that no amount of persuasion would budge her once |
| she sets her mind on something, her servants were left with no choice but  |
| to prepare a machine that fully utilized the scientific technology of      |
| Magica.                                                                    |
|                                                                            |

| Lily                                |  Sex: Female  |  Age: 14   |  No.37  |
|                                                                            |
| Lily is affiliated with the reserves of the Galactic Space Forces and has  |
| received extensive warfare training since shortly after she was born.  She |
| has always received excellent marks in her training clases and has even    |
| participated in recent skirmishes as emergency support.  While she         |
| sometimes displays the air of a naive girl, she strictly obeys every       |
| command of her superior officers and aims to execute all of her            |
| responsibilities perfectly, regardless of their nature.  Lily has entered  |
| the F-ZERO cup competition simply as part of her training.  She hopes to   |
| polish her snap decision-making skills under pressure.                     |
|                                                                            |

| PJ                                  |  Sex: Male    |  Age: ?    |  No.38  |
|                                                                            |
| PJ works as a cabbie for Galaxy Cab, a company whose taxis travel from     |
| planet to planet all over the universe.  As the biggest earner at Galaxy   |
| Cab, he demanded an increase in wages, which resulted in a fight with the  |
| owner of the company and wound up earning him a temporary suspension.  PJ  |
| then saw an article about the F-ZERO races, and it changed his life.  He   |
| took all of his savings and transformed his taxi into an F-ZERO machine.   |
| Can he really take the driving skills that he forged as a taxi driver      |
| and use them to win the Grand Prix?                                        |
|                                                                            |

| QQQ                                 |  Sex: ?       |  Age: ?    |  No.39  |
|                                                                            |
| QQQ is a junk robot that was found buried in a scrap pile in a galactic    |
| waste-management facility.  It's still unclear why it was discarded there, |
| but it was coincedentally picked from the heap and repaired by a very able |
| space-police detective named Phoenix and quickly became his partner.  For  |
| a robot, QQQ's construction is quite obsolete, but its artificial          |
| intelligence is still ocnsidered cutting-edge for any age.  QQQ is         |
| tortured by the knowledge that some very important data lies somewhere in  |
| its AI programming.  Since the robot was damaged when it was thrown away,  |
| its memory cannot currently access it.  The truth of the mystery data is   |
| this: QQQ was brought from the future by Phoenix and has the necessary     |
| navigation hardware needed to traverse time.  However, if its AI is not    |
| repaired (thereby restoring its memory), it will never be able to return   |
| to the future.                                                             |
|                                                                            |

| Phoenix                             |  Sex: Male    |  Age: 26   |  No.40  |
|                                                                            |
| Phoenix is a time traveller who has come back in time from the future.     |
| His role is that of a space detective dispatched to protect the natural    |
| progression of time and history.  He came to this era after receiving      |
| information that an event would occur in this next F-ZERO Grand Prix       |
| that would change the history of the entire universe.  He's now busy       |
| running around in his beloved time machine, the Rainbow Phoenix, trying    |
| to stop this event before it occurs.                                       |
|                                                                            |

|                                Version History                     (00104) |

Version 0.00 - (January 27th, 2005)   - Began the walkthrough
Version 1.00 - (February 13th, 2005)  - Completed the walkthrough

|                                    Legal                           (00105) |


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say right now that you are very welcome.  

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Hey ZoopSoul and me frog, badass guides, both of you

