System: Switch 2
Release date: June 5, 2025
Developer: Shin’en
Publisher: Shin’en
I love anti-gravity racers. My very first one was F-Zero GX, one of the two games I picked up with my GameCube in 2003, when I was six. I was addicted. I put dozens upon dozens of hours into the game, with its difficulty level only encouraging me to play more. My dad saw how much I loved it, and he owned a PlayStation 2 at the time. As a gift, he gifted me WipeOut Fusion the following year. A similar style of game, and another one I fell in love with, albeit not to the same extent. Still, as the years went by, F-Zero and WipeOut became series with infrequent releases at best. An itch formed within me for a new futuristic space racer, and unbeknownst to me, there was another one making the rounds from Shin’en.
Fast Racing League released on the Wii Shop Channel in 2011, featuring gameplay inspired by the games mentioned above, with a unique polarity mechanic where the boost pads are colored orange and blue, and you need to switch your vehicle’s color to match mid-race to use them or lose speed if you don’t.
This game completely escaped my purview at the time, as did its sequel Fast Racing Neo, which was a 2015 Wii U release. The third entry in the Fast series, Fast RMX, was a launch Nintendo Switch game, and sure enough at the launch of Switch 2, Shin’en is here again with Fast Fusion. Fast RMX was a game I bought at launch for Nintendo Switch, and I absolutely adored it. Filling that Blue Falcon-shaped hole in my heart, it offered all of the courses from Fast Racing Neo, plus more, and even more again later as free updates. The polarity mechanic tested my reactions, and there was even Hero Mode, a mode in the game where your boost meter becomes your health bar, and suddenly the gameplay feels even more F-Zero. So my excitement for Fast Fusion was palpable, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it. Did it live up to the hype?
Fast Fusion’s gameplay stays close to previous titles in the Fast series, with the aforementioned polarity mechanic at the forefront once more. The unique draw for this new game is the fusion mechanic, where vehicles can be combined to augment the appearance and stats of cars to suit your play style. There are hundreds of combinations from the plentiful amount of cars that can be unlocked through gameplay. New courses, cups and cars are all unlocked through the in-game currency, which is earned from performances in the cups. The price for each car and course increases the further you progress, but prize money also goes up as the difficulty does, so the rewards feel more significant as you feel yourself improve.
Cups consist of three race courses each, with four cups total, adding up to twelve courses overall. While some may have hoped for more, each course is gameplay-rich, with different routes and shortcuts within them, and I always felt like I learned a new trick to shave time off my record every time I replayed them. My three favorite courses were Yama Crest, Nensho Crater, and Vanilla Haze. They all posed a tough challenge, but with many opportunities to skip ahead of your rival racers with fast reactions and good jump timing. This becomes more necessary as you move up from novice Subsonic to intermediate Supersonic, and the extremely difficult expert Hypersonic difficulty league.
Races follow the standard three-lap structure, with ten racers including yourself bashing into each other to get ahead at a frenzied pace that will keep you on your toes. As was the case when I first played Fast RMX, I wiped out a lot, but thankfully in the standard modes, Fast Fusion is more forgiving when you crash and burn. Although you may lose a few places, you’ll be returned to the track in seconds. No instant retirement here in standard play.
Aside from the main cups, the suite of options for play includes the returning Super Hero Mode, which also mirrors the courses to offer another layer of challenge to test players; Time Attack, which is a genre staple; as well as multiplayer. You can use Nintendo Switch 2’s GameShare feature to play with someone else who also has their own handheld, or play online. Four-player split screen is also available. Lastly, alongside the Fusion Shop where you can buy new cars and combine them, there is also a Jukebox where your hard-earned coins can be spent on tracks from the varied Fast Fusion soundtrack, as well as earlier entries in the Fast series, including the original game, Fast Racing League from Nintendo Wii.
The game is graphically stunning, boasting 4K 60FPS in TV mode. Shin’en has included several options for fidelity and frame rate, including Performance (60FPS, 1080p handheld), Quality (30FPS, 1080p high-quality handheld), and an Ultra Quality option (4K, 30 FPS), which is exclusive to TV mode. This offers players plenty of options for how they wish to play the game.
There’s only one thing stopping me from calling this one of my favorite anti-grav racers of all time: the limited online options. There is no ranked, unranked or lobby-based matchmaking to play online. You can play with a friend through GameShare and GameChat online, but there are no other options. I could see myself sinking hours into an online mode for Fast Fusion, and it is the only thing holding this game back in my personal opinion. I hope this is something Shin’en considers for the future as an update.
I absolutely loved my time with Fast Fusion and have no intention to stopping anytime soon. My singular complaint about the lack of online options isn’t enough to significantly diminish how I feel about this game, and for the meager price that Shin’en is asking (just $15), this is a must-have for all Nintendo Switch 2 owners.
Fast Fusion copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.
