F-Zero was inspired by Back to the Future and Batman

Simply put, there’s no such thing as original art. Everything created is an amalgamation of ideas gathered across a lifetime. A sprinkle of something here, and dollop of something there…mix it all together and you get something new and fresh. That’s just how the process of creating art works, and that’s exactly how things go down inside the walls of Nintendo as well.

While Takaya Imamura is no longer with Nintendo, he spent literally decades at the company helping them bring multiple franchises to life. That includes F-Zero, and thanks to a recent interview with Famitsu, we now know where some of Takaya’s inspirations came from when crafting Nintendo’s futuristic racer.

Not surprisingly, F-Zero was very much a product of the time. Imamura reveals that he and F-Zero director Kazunobu Shimizu had become enamored with two recent films; Back to the Future: Part Two and “Batman. The two ended up chatting about the movies quite a bit, and those discussions bled into the creation of F-Zero.

In particular, Imamura reveals that the Batmobile from Batman really wowed the two devs, and it left quite a strong impression. Between the Batmobile and Back to the Future’s DeLorean, you can really start to see how the idea of F-Zero came together!