F-ZERO X

If my memory serves me well, this would be the third time I beat all cups in Master [First on the Wii VC ver. with Hyper Speeder at a date I don't remember, and second on PJ64 with Black Bull on 2021 maybe- there's a recording of Joker Cup from back then on my channel], and this would be the first time I do it with Blood Hawk. The details on how I pulled this off on a $20 non hall effect controller with Blood Hawk of all machines will be in the collapsible below about how to play this game without a perfect analog stick.

All of these were done with RetroAchievements active, so you can find those completions on my profile with the gold border [Hardcore mode means no savestates]. I used Bizhawk for the base game since RAPJ64 doesn't support the Master cheevos for some reason, but I could use RAPJ64 for the 64DD cheevos since BizHawk's 64DD core [Ares64] ran slow on my PC] and thankfully the 64DD Master cheevos weren't disabled in RAPJ64.

June 24th 2025 - Jack Cup

June 24th 2025 - Queen Cup

June 25th 2025 - King Cup

June 25th 2025 - Joker Cup

June 25th 2025 - X Cup[TO BE UPLOADED]

64DD Cup Runs

June 25th 2025 - DD1 Cup

June 25th 2025 - DD2 Cup

If you've played this game before or watched Sepi's video about the game, you may know that this game is very much designed for the super precise analog stick the Nintendo 64 had...which has some consequences if trying to play it on anything with drift or with far less precision.

Essentially, trying to push the stick too far at certain speeds will make you lose grip on the spot, which is more frequent with lower grip machines, meaning you are required to try and do high-speed wide turns with precise steering, very reminscent of playing arcade racers that rely on using the steering wheel for tight lines.

Unfortunately, as you may have guessed, if you don't have an analog stick that's perfect for that job [putting aside the need of good precision with your thumb...Super Monkey Ball, anyone?], accidentally overshooting with the stick and losing your grip will be frequent, and you do NOT want that if you want to win in Master since the CPUs expect you to drive those lines like a monster. Putting aside the Slider strat, careful driving when aiming for high speeds [as the margin for error increases the faster you go] is paramount yet very difficult to maintain without the right controller.

So...what you can do if you don't have a hall effect/perfect analog stick? If you are playing on a PC emulator, thankfully, there IS a way, which is what I used: Tinkering with the analog range/sensitivity.

The big upside is that you can make it easier to not just do smaller adjustments more reliably [for lines] but to also prevent accidental overshooting with the steering. In my case, I used 40% at Bizhawk [vanilla cups] and 42% on RAProject64 with NRage's input plugin [64DD cups], which worked wonders into letting me steer comfortably at low speeds with the Blood Hawk even when full sending the stick, while allowing for the precision I needed at high speeds over wide turns.

The catch? You'll have to learn to compensate your lowered steering capacity at low speeds through side attacks - remember you're lowering the maximum you can steer on your analog stick, so you may not have the fastest turnsing available for tracks that expect you to zigzag a lot. In some tracks, I had to go for intentional grip losses [easy to do with the side brakes] to sharply drift inside then side attack to course correct if I wanted to get through without scraping the wall too much, but in most cases I took the wall ride if necessary or just out of muscle memory due to my attention being at the pressure of the race itself. But hey, as you should have watched above, it CAN be done...as long as you are willing to get your hands dirty with other machines, but that's pretty much part of the F-Zero X process.